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Captaincy General of Guatemala Capitanía General de Guatemala (Spanish) | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1542–1821 | |||||||||||
| Motto: Plus ultra "Further Beyond" | |||||||||||
| Anthem: Marcha Real "Royal March" | |||||||||||
.svg) New Spain in 1794, with the Captaincy General of Guatemala shown in pink  Central America around 1800 | |||||||||||
| Status | Kingdom Captaincy general | ||||||||||
| Capital |
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| Common languages |
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| Religion | Catholicism | ||||||||||
| Government | Monarchy | ||||||||||
• 1542–1621 | Philip III | ||||||||||
• 1621–1665 | Philip IV | ||||||||||
• 1808–1813 | Joseph I Bonaparte (not recognized) | ||||||||||
• 1810–1814 | Cortes of Cádiz | ||||||||||
• 1814–1821 | Ferdinand VII | ||||||||||
| Captaincy General | |||||||||||
| Legislature | Audiencia of Guatemala | ||||||||||
| Historical era | Spanish colonial era | ||||||||||
• Established | 1542 | ||||||||||
| 15 September 1821 | |||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||
• c. 1800 | 425,000[1] | ||||||||||
| Currency | Peso | ||||||||||
| ISO 3166 code | GT | ||||||||||
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TheCaptaincy General of Guatemala (Spanish:Capitanía General de Guatemala), also known as theKingdom of Guatemala (Spanish:Reino de Guatemala), was an administrative division of theSpanish Empire, under the viceroyalty ofNew Spain inCentral America, including present-dayCosta Rica,Nicaragua,Honduras,El Salvador,Guatemala, and the Mexican state ofChiapas. The governor-captain general was also president of theRoyal Audiencia of Guatemala, the superior court.
Colonization of the area that became the Captaincy General began in 1524. In the north, the brothers Gonzalo andPedro de Alvarado,Hernán Cortés and others headed various expeditions into Guatemala and Honduras. In the southFrancisco Hernández de Córdoba, acting under the auspices ofPedro Arias Dávila inPanama, moved into what is today Nicaragua.
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The capital of Guatemala has moved many times over the centuries. On 27 July 1524,Pedro de Alvarado declared theKaqchikel cityIximche the first regional capital, styledSantiago de los Caballeros de Guatemala ("St. James of the Knights of Guatemala").[3][4][5] However, hostilities between the Spaniards and the Kaqchikel soon made the city uninhabitable.
In 1526 the Spanish founded a new capital atTecpán Guatemala.Tecpán is theNahuatl word for "palace".[6] Tecpán is sometimes called the "first" capital because it was the first permanent Spanish military center, but theSpaniards soon abandoned it due to Kaqchikel attacks that made defense of the city untenable.
In 1527, the capital was moved to the Almolonga Valley to the east, on the site of today'sSan Miguel Escobar district ofCiudad Vieja, nearAntigua Guatemala.[7][8] This settlement was destroyed by a catastrophiclahar fromVolcan de Agua in 1541, and the survivors abandoned the site.
In 1543, the capital was again refounded several kilometres away atAntigua Guatemala. Over the next two centuries, this city would become one of the richest of theNew World capitals. However, it too was destroyed, this time by a devastating series of earthquakes, and the city was ordered abandoned in 1776.
The final and current capital is the modern-dayGuatemala City.
The Church played an important role in the administration of the overseas possessions of the Spanish crown. The firstdioceses were established inLeón, Nicaragua andGuatemala in 1534. Anotherdiocese was created inChiapas in 1539. The dioceses of Guatemala and Chiapas were suffragan to theArchdiocese of Seville, until 1546 when they were placed under theArchdiocese of Mexico. The Diocese of León was made suffragan toArchdiocese of Lima in 1546. Another short-lived diocese was set up inVerapaz, Guatemala in 1559. Along the Caribbean coast, there were several attempts to establish a diocese in Honduras—which finally succeeded in 1561 with theDiocese of Comayagua—which was placed under theArchdiocese of Santo Domingo.
In 1543 the territory of the kingdom was defined with the establishment of theAudiencia of Guatemala, which took most of Central America as its jurisdiction. Thisaudiencia, along with the one inLima, took over the territory of the firstAudiencia of Panama. It was the first institution to define Central America (with the exception of Panama) as a region within the Spanish Empire.
In 1609 the area became acaptaincy general, when the governor andAudiencia president was also granted the title ofcaptain general to deal with foreign threats to the area from the Caribbean, granting the area autonomy in administrative and military matters. Around the same timeHabsburg Spain created other captaincies general inPuerto Rico (1580),Cuba (1607) andYucatán (1617).
In the 17th century, a process of uniting the church hierarchy of Central America also began. The dioceses of Comayagua and León becamesuffragan to theArchdiocese of Mexico in 1620 and 1647, respectively. Finally, in the 18th century, Guatemala was raised to an archdiocese in 1743 and the dioceses of León, Chiapas and Comayagua were made suffragan to it, giving the region unity and autonomy in religious matters.
As part of theBourbon Reforms in 1786 the crown established a series ofintendancies in the area, which replaced most of the oldercorregimientos. The intendants were granted broad fiscal powers and charged with promoting the local economy. The new intendancies wereSan Salvador (El Salvador), Ciudad Real (Chiapas), Comayagua (Honduras), and León (Nicaragua).
The governor-captain general-president of Guatemala became thesuperintendente general of the territory and functioned as thede facto intendant of Guatemala proper. The agricultural, southern region of Costa Rica remained under a civil and military governor with fiscal oversight only over military expenses; the expenses of the civil government were handled by the intendant of León. These intendancies helped shape local political identity and provided the basis of the future nations of Central America.
With the removal ofFerdinand VII during thePeninsular War,independence movements broke out in the intendancies of San Salvador and León in 1811, which were quickly suppressed. In 1812 theCortes of Cádiz divided the region into two provinces:Guatemala (consisting of Guatemala, Belize, Chiapas, Honduras and El Salvador) andNicaragua y Costa Rica. These provinces existed from 1812 to 1814 and once again from 1820 to 1821, the period during which theSpanish Constitution of 1812 was in effect. The two provinces elected seven deputies to the Cortes during the first period.[9]
Gabino Gainza Fernandez de Medrano, thejefe político superior (governor) of Guatemala remained the Captain General of Central America and Chiapas. The Captaincy General ended in 1821 with the signing of theAct of Independence of Central America, after which the regional elite supported thePlan of Iguala and joined theFirst Mexican Empire byannexation.[10] With the exception of Chiapas, the region peacefully seceded from Mexico in July 1823, establishing theUnited Provinces of Central America. While the region remained politically cohesive for a short time, centrifugal forces soon pulled the individual provinces apart by 1842.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Santiago de Guatemala".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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