Introduction
In March of 1859, the Honduran Ministry of Foreign Relations received a complaint from the neighbouring government of El Salvador. The grievance alleged that following a brief outburst of civil unrest in El Salvador in which insurrectionists had attempted to overthrow the recently established liberal government of Gerardo Barrios, some of the defeated rebels – referred to pejoratively as evildoers [malvados], bandits and anarchistsFootnote 1 – had established themselves on the Honduran side of the border, only to continue threatening border towns in El Salvador. Consequently, the government of El Salvador requested that Honduran authorities intervene by arresting recently arrived Salvadorean emigrants. In response, conservative Honduran President José Guardiola's foreign minister expressed sympathy with the broader problem of maintaining peace throughout Central America. However, the letter stated that Honduran law made the country an asilo sagrado or ‘sacred asylum’ for all ‘who wished to live under its laws’. Therefore, Honduran authorities would not restrict private individuals’ right to enter the territory. At most, he suggested the possibility of trying to move recently arrived migrants toward the interior, but denying these newcomers the right to reside in Honduran territory was not an option.Footnote 2 Moreover, when Salvadorean officials continued to complain, the Honduran foreign minister warned the neighbouring government against taking matters into its own hands. According to the correspondence, Honduras would remain a sacred asylum for all private individuals who wanted to enter the territory. But if foreign troops crossed the border, such a violation of sovereignty would threaten the ‘honour and security of the republic’ and possibly ‘provoke the evils of war’.Footnote 3
The documents cited above provide a window into the meanings that Central American governments applied to themselves, to each other, and to human movement during the ongoing process of defining and redefining national projects on the isthmus. On the one hand, the incident alludes to a broader pattern of strife between liberal and conservative factions which often erupted into civil wars which in many ways shaped Central America's early political history. Given this context, it is perhaps not surprising that a conservative Honduran administration would protect rebels who might be trying to subvert a liberal Salvadorean government. Nonetheless, the Honduran government's invocation of asilo sagrado in explaining this decision has interesting implications that go far beyond the liberal and conservative conflicts. Rather than giving asylum on a case-by-case basis, or even using the excuse that it would be too difficult to track down the rebels, the Honduran government instead declared that the nation's territory was a literal asylum for all. Viewing this incident in isolation, it may seem strange that the Honduran government would take such an extreme approach as to incorporate the right to migrate into the very definition of the land. However, this practice actually fitted into a larger pattern of how Central American governments defined territory that already had decades of precedent.
The purpose of this article, therefore, is to contribute to broader discussions of Latin American nation-making by focusing on the interplay among territory, sovereignty and human movement in nineteenth-century Central America. Guiding this analysis are the questions: How did early Central American nations create sovereign spaces? How did these sovereignty practices impact the meaning of human movement? And finally, how do these historical processes provide context for assessing the meaning of bordering practices in the region today?
In response, this article argues first that whereas early Central American leaders were indeed preoccupied with establishing sovereignty relative to other governments, they did not treat private individuals moving around as a threat to sovereignty. Quite the opposite, early Central American law-makers approached migration as an opportunity to reinforce national sovereignty: not only by affirming individuals’ right to migrate, but by linking this right to the defining qualities of the national territory through which sovereignty manifested as something real. This tendency is perhaps best illustrated in the concept of asilo sagrado, which appeared sporadically in Central American founding documents starting as early as 1824. In some ways, this placed Central America within a larger trend of Latin American nation-making, given that some South American nations likewise included the right to migrate in their constitutions on occasion. Nonetheless, asilo sagrado was uniquely Central American, and arguably a more extreme approach to free migration since other countries simply stated that foreigners would be allowed to enter the territory, whereas asilo sagrado linked migration protections to the fundamental meaning of the territory.
It is also significant that this openness was not simply a rhetorical device to theorise sovereignty, but rather a principle that informed governing practices. When people moving around seemed unruly or suspicious, it was possible that some officials might perceive them as a threat to public order. Nonetheless, even in these cases when governments worried about migrants disturbing public order, governments usually remained friendly to people crossing borders, rarely trying to stop migration and usually only calling for extra surveillance or encouraging migrants to relocate further into the interior. As a caveat, this did not mean that asylum or the right to migrate was absolute in all cases. For example, governments did not rule out extradition on a case-by-case basis, nor banishing specific people who literally threatened sovereignty by trying to overthrow the government. Additionally, public health emergencies such as cholera outbreaks sometimes led to occasional border closures, and patriarchal legal structures in some instances made it more difficult for single women to migrate. Nonetheless, it is still significant that single women were expressly included in the right to migrate in many instances, sanitary cordons were temporary, and, overall, legal protections for private individuals crossing borders remained quite expansive without hinging on one's economic contributions, race, prior permission to enter the territory, or the need to flee persecution.
Finally, in response to the final question regarding long-term implications, I would further argue that highlighting Central America's early national approaches to territory and migration puts two longer historical processes into perspective: Central America's more recent shift toward closed-border regimes comparable to those of its North American neighbours; and Central America's more recent divergence from its South American neighbours, who in contrast have reclaimed the mantle of liberal immigration policies in the twenty-first century.Footnote 4 A full analysis of why these divergences occurred is beyond the scope of this article, yet these divergences raise interesting questions regarding the ongoing link between migration and sovereignty. For example, some theorists have presumed that migration controls are fundamental to maintaining sovereignty in a globalised world, constituting a ‘reciprocity of sovereignty and illegality’.Footnote 5 Nonetheless, it is not clear that Central America's alignment with North American efforts to constrain migration have been a boon to sovereignty. Again, the goal of this article is not to have the last word on these questions, but rather to highlight how this article's analysis of early national trends provides useful context for broader change-over-time questions regarding the link between sovereignty and migration.
This article draws from constitutions produced throughout Latin America in the nineteenth century, as well as from archival research in different Central American regions, including Costa Rica, Guatemala and Chiapas. While constitutions provide an entryway into the discourses and legal structures that governments mobilised in defining sovereignty, archival documents provide insight into how agents on the ground put these ideas into practice. Specifically, the archival research emphasises legal codes, government orders, and correspondence to and from border officials. In engaging these sources, the primary objective is to assess sovereignty in practice, evaluating how early national leaders officially declared, performed and practised sovereignty. Consequently, an intellectual history on the wider philosophical influences of these ideas, or analyses of constitutional proposals that shaped debates yet never came into force, is beyond the scope of this study. Still, this article does whenever possible attempt to provide relevant context for constitutional or legal trends, as well as suggestions for secondary works that address these topics more directly.
Regarding terminology, this article defines migration broadly as the act of physically moving, either permanently or temporarily, from one bordered jurisdiction to another. Sometimes these bordered jurisdictions are nation-states, but in some cases, they are constituent states of a broader national entity such as the Federal Republic of Central America, which from 1824 to 1839 included Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica. It is also worth noting that whereas ‘migrant’ is a useful term in the present to refer to someone participating in the act of migration, I have never seen the direct Spanish translation of the term, migrante, in any of the primary sources consulted for this study. More commonly, people migrating from across the Atlantic were referred to as extranjeros, whereas people migrating within Central America were usually referred to by place of origin (e.g. nicaragüense, hondureño), or by the catch-all term emigrado, which was especially common to refer to those displaced by civil unrest.
The following analysis begins with a brief section on Central American independence, constitutionalism, and approaches to sovereignty in the Spanish Americas. The article then examines early Central American nation-making during the period of the Federal Republic, with a particular emphasis on the role of sacred asylum and free migration in expressing sovereignty. Next, the article assesses Central American approaches to bordering and migration after the dissolution of the Federal Republic in order to highlight continuity in government practices linking sovereignty to free migration in the new nation-states that emerged from the Federal Republic. Finally, the article concludes by reflecting on the long-term significance of these historical processes: problematising frameworks presuming that free migration and sovereignty are inherently opposed, as well as highlighting aspects of the divergence between Central American and South American approaches to bordering.
Sovereignty, Territory and the Creation of Latin American Nation-States
The early nineteenth century saw a flurry of nation-making activity in the Americas as independence movements proliferated with increasing success, especially in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula which forced the abdication of the Spanish monarch in 1808. In the ensuing decade and a half, Latin American populations launched a number of insurgencies along with producing dozens of declarations of independence, constitutions and other founding documents engaging a range of local and global currents of thought.Footnote 6 In Central America specifically, independence occurred with relatively little armed conflict.Footnote 7 Even without large-scale insurgencies, however, Central Americans formed juntas and participated in debates about self-governance throughout the revolutionary era.Footnote 8 Since the sixteenth century, the Spanish colonial system had administered the provinces of Guatemala, Chiapas, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica – together under the Captaincy General of Guatemala, which itself was at least nominally attached to the Viceroyalty of New Spain with its capital in Mexico City. After more than a decade of uprisings, Mexico eventually gained independence in 1821 with Agustín de Iturbide declaring himself emperor. Fearing the threat of a Mexican invasion, Central American leaders initially voted to join Mexico, yet Iturbide's support rapidly dissipated, and his newly declared Mexican Empire fractured. In the process, the former territories of the Captaincy General of Guatemala – with the notable exception of Chiapas – joined to form the Federal Republic of Central America in 1824.Footnote 9
Alongside the insurgencies that helped to remove colonial governance, independence movements also led to vibrant discussions regarding what type of political entities would come next. As Hilda Sabato summarised in the 2018 book Republics of the New World (Princeton University Press), ‘The founders of the new polities faced two main challenges. First, how to reconstruct political authority on the bases of popular sovereignty … [and] Second, how to define the human and territorial contours of the polities that were to be the sources of that sovereign power as well as the domains for its application.’Footnote 10 Regarding the first challenge, various studies have examined how Latin American founders engaged with a range of philosophical precedents from other parts of the world in order to establish republican norms,Footnote 11 though these norms remained highly contested among different sectors of society.Footnote 12 For the second challenge, numerous studies have also examined how new nation-states approached degrees of inclusion in the national body, demonstrating how Latin American governments often encouraged immigration as part of a ‘modernization’ project of population growth and ‘whitening’,Footnote 13 though sovereignty could become fraught if immigrants appealed to foreign governments for immunity from local laws.Footnote 14
The purpose of this article is to expand on these findings by exploring a third challenge facing Latin American founders: the challenge of defining the nature of territory. Whereas nation-states did not invent sovereignty, one of their defining characteristics has been rooting sovereignty in a bounded, physical territory.Footnote 15 That sovereignty is linked to bounded spaces may seem intuitive now; however, sovereignty was not always so territory-centric. Lauren Benton's influential 2010 study A Search for Sovereignty (Cambridge University Press), for example, argues that European kingdoms and empires prior to the nineteenth century defined sovereignty primarily in terms of subjects, making territorial holdings somewhat incidental.Footnote 16 Nation-states have inverted this view, however, by defining sovereignty as spreading evenly over a defined territory.
A discussion of why this shift took place is beyond the scope of this article, though some historians have argued that maps themselves played a key role in this process, with the development of scaled, aerial-view maps informing how those in government imagined space and therefore what it meant to rule.Footnote 17 What is certain, however, is that elements of this shift in what it meant to rule were visible in early Latin American republics, and defining territory featured prominently in how founding documents explained the constitutive elements of the nation-states themselves. The 1821 Constitution of the Republic of Colombia provides an instructive example. Article 2 addressed sovereignty directly by saying that it ‘resides essentially in the nation’, but then elaborated that government authorities are the ‘agents who conduct this sovereignty in practice’. Moreover, the Constitution further grounded this exercise of authority specifically in territory by naming, in Article 6, the constituent territories where this sovereignty could manifest, thus giving territory a fundamental role in making sovereignty real. Significantly, this same approach to linking the people, the territory and the government was also evident in the Chilean constitutions of 1822 and 1823, the Mexican Constitution of 1824, and the Central American constitutions of 1824.Footnote 18
Interestingly, within this approach to territory and sovereignty, the precise placement of borders usually remained vague. In the absence of rigorous surveying until much later in the century, most constitutions either defined their territories by invoking colonial jurisdictions, by referencing natural landmarks, or some combination of both. The Colombian Constitution of 1821, for example, epitomised the colonial jurisdiction approach, declaring the national territory to be ‘the same that comprised the ancient viceroyalty of New Granada and Captaincy General of Venezuela’.Footnote 19 The Chilean Constitution of 1822, on the other hand, illustrated the natural-landmark approach by stating that its territory ‘is known by natural limits’, going on to list Cape Horn, the Atacama Desert, the Pacific Ocean and the Andes as the boundaries in each direction.Footnote 20 Central American constitutions then followed these same patterns. The 1824 Constitution of the Federal Republic declared the territory ‘the same as previously understood as the Kingdom of Guatemala, with the exception for now of the province of Chiapas’, and went on to name the five constituent states (Articles 5 and 6).Footnote 21 Similarly, the 1825 Constitution of Honduras defined its territory as ‘everything that corresponds, and has corresponded, to the “Bishopric [Obispado] of Honduras”’.Footnote 22 The 1824 Constitution of El Salvador also invoked colonial jurisdictions, though it added a list of rivers and coastlines that mark these boundaries, while Costa Rica's 1825 Ley Fundamental only listed natural landmarks.Footnote 23 And Guatemala's 1825 Constitution offered perhaps the vaguest definition of all, declaring its territory ‘all of the pueblos’ that allegedly comprised certain named jurisdictions.Footnote 24
Given this context, Sabato's overview was of course correct to assert that defining the ‘contours’ of the territory was a challenge facing the early national leaders. Still, founding documents indicate how binding sovereignty to territory as the physical space for sovereignty's expression did not depend on having these contours figured out, so determining the exact shape of the territory was far less urgent than inventing the character of the territory. Indeed, even in linking definitions of sovereignty to national territories, constitutions frequently included statements that the precise locations of borders could be determined later.Footnote 25 Moreover, as an additional caveat, it often remained contested how power would be shared within national spaces, both among branches of government as well as among local, state and federal jurisdictions which claimed varying degrees of their own sovereignty or autonomy. For Central America specifically, Jordana Dym's seminal 2006 study From Sovereign Villages to National States (University of New Mexico Press) made extensive use of municipal records to show that creating national sovereignty was paradoxically a city-driven process, making localism a key factor in how Central Americans created a unified Federal Republic that eventually fractured.Footnote 26
Even in the context of these debates over nested sovereignties, however, the logic of binding a meaningful territory – however vaguely bordered – to the expression of sovereignty remained predominant. While the 1824 Constitution of El Salvador proclaimed that El Salvador would be a state of the larger Federal Republic of Central America, Article 3 stated expressly that ‘the state is free, sovereign and independent in its interior administration and government’. Article 4 then went on to specify the territory over which this interior sovereignty would be expressed.Footnote 27 The following year, in 1825, Guatemala and Costa Rica passed a constitution and ‘ley fundamental’, respectively, using similar wording to both name their territories and infuse them with the character of sovereignty in interior administration.Footnote 28 The Honduran Constitution of 1825 deviated slightly from this pattern by naming its territories and declaring its interior administration ‘free and independent’ without specifically using the word sovereignty, though the logic was largely the same.Footnote 29 And the 1826 Constitution of Nicaragua did invoke sovereignty specifically, using wording almost identical to the earlier Constitution of El Salvador.Footnote 30 In sum, territory figured prominently in how Latin American founders produced new sovereignties, and consequently, imbuing these territories with meanings became a critical aspect of practising sovereignty.
Sovereignty, Territory and Central America's Sacred Asylum
While national founders in Latin America were certainly aware of the US Constitution and took at least some inspiration from this example, it is significant that using territory to define sovereignty is completely absent in the US model. Defining territory did have precedents in other constitutional models such as the French Constitution of 1791, the Haitian Constitution of 1801, or the Spanish Constitution of Cádiz in 1812, which Latin American leaders likewise engaged.Footnote 31 However, whereas none of these models included provisions for migration, Latin American constitutions often did, revealing a key site of innovation. Again, the Colombian Constitution of 1821 serves as an early example, with Article 183 stating that all foreigners ‘will be admitted in Colombia’, along with the constitutions of Uruguay and Venezuela in 1830 and the Ecuadorean Constitution of 1835, which all included similar language.Footnote 32
The boldest approach to protecting free migration, however, appeared in the 1824 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Central America. This document not only declared that foreigners had the right to enter the territory, but in fact imbued the territory itself with this meaning by declaring the nation a sacred asylum. Article 12 explained: ‘The republic is a sacred asylum for all foreigners, and the fatherland [patria] of all who want to reside in its territory.’ With this article, the Federal Republic of Central America placed at the heart of defining its newly sovereign territory a sacred mandate to protect foreigners’ right to immigrate. Whereas the Central American version of asilo sagrado was quite innovative, the term itself had roots in colonial and medieval legal practices. Traditionally, asilo sagrado referred to the ability of churches to intercede on a case-by-case basis on behalf of someone accused of a crime while also providing a physical space of asylum where the person might safely reside. The practice originated in Europe with a strong basis in the Iberian legal tradition, though it made its way to the Spanish Americas.Footnote 33 That the church would choose to support the supplicant, or that this intercession would prove decisive, was not guaranteed, and in fact secular authorities worked to erode the power of asilo sagrado throughout the eighteenth century.Footnote 34 Accordingly, its exercise in the Spanish Americas during the colonial period was extremely limited in scope, though not entirely non-existent.
The Central American version, however, stood out for several reasons, perhaps most immediately for its universal application. As stated above, the application of asilo sagrado in colonial law was not guaranteed, but rather heavily dependent on the will and influence of the church where a supplicant might be appealing for asylum. In contrast, the Central American version was granted to all by default, with exceptions added later on a case-by-case basis, in practice quite rarely. It is also noteworthy that in redefining asilo sagrado, Central American founders deployed the concept to support immigration in general, as opposed to restricting asylum to only those facing specific types of persecution. This approach is evidenced not only in the text, but in laws and practices that followed which supported free migration without adding requirements that immigrants should be fleeing persecution or unjust accusations. Moreover, it is also significant that in the Central American version, asylum was not a legal practice so much as a literal definition of place. Again, the phrasing of Article 12 of the 1824 Constitution stated clearly that the space of the Republic literally was a sacred asylum, as opposed to making asylum a status that the new nation would offer.
To some extent, invoking asylum specifically in order to give meaning to space also had roots in medieval practices. Some scholars of European feudalism, for example, have argued that royal immunities rooted in similar religio-juridical practices such as sanctuary were key to creating, defining and maintaining meaningful spaces within the feudal order.Footnote 35 In a similar way, Central America's open-border policy defined the distinct nature of the bounded space of the nation. In order to create Central American independence, national leaders needed to assert that the bounded jurisdiction of Central America was a meaningful space, and the image of an open asylum provided this meaning. Moreover, this approach to defining the nature of a sovereign territory was not limited to the 1824 Constitution of the Federal Republic. The 1825 Constitution of Guatemala, for example, likewise declared its territory a sacred asylum for all foreigners who wanted to reside there, though it added the expectation that foreigners settle ‘with agreement to its laws’.Footnote 36 In this way, the article defined the character of the territory as a space open to human movement, as well as a space in which everyone fell under Guatemalan law regardless of their movement.
To some extent, the use of asilo sagrado in the 1824 Constitution also served as a claim regarding the religion of the new nation. Indeed, Article 12 appears in the section titled ‘Of Government and Religion’, and the article immediately preceding declares Apostalic Roman Catholicism the official religion. Still, religious concerns alone cannot fully explain the decision to incorporate asilo sagrado into founding documents in this way. After all, most other Latin American constitutions at the time also named Catholicism the state religion, yet defining the territory as an asilo sagrado was unique to Central America.
Along with religious motives, this new version of asilo sagrado almost certainly addressed economic and demographic concerns. In this sense, Central America was also no different from other Latin America nations who likewise crafted open immigration policies in the nineteenth century in hopes of spurring economic productivity with population growth, as well as ‘whitening’ the population by attracting European immigrants in particular.Footnote 37 Even beyond the Constitution, such concerns are evident in early Central American legal policies. For example, leading up to the passing of the 1824 Constitution, the Central American National Assembly passed a series of parallel decrees on immigration in 1824. While constructing immigration within a language of rights, these laws also demonstrated a concern with economic development, incentivising population growth and production by offering easy access to land. Furthermore, the 1824 decrees also suggested a concern with racially ‘whitening’ the nation since the immigrants were expected to come from Europe, and the law offered extra benefits for immigrant men and women who married Indigenous locals.Footnote 38
Nonetheless, even though economic and demographic concerns were important in Central American policy-making toward migration, these motives do not fully explain the implications of defining the republic as a sacred asylum. Again, other Latin American countries had similar economic and demographic motives, yet only Central America declared its territory a sacred asylum. Additionally, it is also significant that Central American governments did not make economic usefulness a precondition for legal migration. It is true that policy-makers certainly hoped that immigrants would have a positive impact on the economy, and economic contributions strengthened citizenship applications.Footnote 39 However, to simply establish legal presence, free migration remained the legal norm, even in cases when it would not obviously fit into the desired demographic or economic ends. Tellingly, a congressional order in 1826 asked officials in ports and border towns to be especially accommodating to foreigners with ‘useful’ professions, though others were not to be turned away.Footnote 40
Accordingly, the implications of making the republic a sacred asylum extended beyond religious, economic or demographic policy. While Central American leaders may have shared these concerns with other Latin American founders, Central America was unique in binding free migration so explicitly to the definition of its territory. Regardless of other policy concerns, therefore, asilo sagrado served to define the nature of the territory, thus fitting into a broader set of practices asserting sovereignty through national territory. By defining the meaning of the territory – in this case, an officially Catholic sacred asylum for all migrants – Central American founders were also making the existence of the newly sovereign nation more concrete. Ultimately, at stake in creating a sacred asylum and protecting migration was also inventing the territory through which the sovereignty of the nation could be practised.
The Central American Republic and Migration in Practice, 1824–38
Moreover, Central America's definition of the territory as an open asylum was not merely rhetorical, but characterised the approach to migration in practice as well. Consequently, legal impediments to free movement were extremely rare in the Federal Republic, arising only in special cases and usually with minimal consequences. For example, an 1824 law excluded slave traders from free migration, declaring along with the end of slavery that no person participating in the trafficking of slaves would be permitted to enter the country.Footnote 41 Also in 1824, local government officials in Guatemala circulated a memo among customs officials recommending that they check the passports of ‘suspicious’ foreigners, though significantly, the instructions did not say that suspicious people could be denied entry – only that their names should be recorded.Footnote 42 A similar memo related to passports in 1826 then clarified that whereas all foreigners were expected to check in with local officials upon arrival, foreigners without passports were not to be harassed but rather helped to attain new ones.Footnote 43 It is also noteworthy that these documents never gave any indication that fleeing persecution should be a precondition for entry, but rather they indicate that allowing any foreigner to enter and reside in the country was the default norm in practice.
As a caveat, while the principle of asilo sagrado asserted the right of foreigners – even those deemed suspicious – to enter the territory of the Republic, there were some efforts to limit internal migration within Central America, though these instances were also limited. For example, during a period of civil strife in Nicaragua in 1825, Costa Rican authorities suggested that local officials at the border should turn away Nicaraguans suspected of having any involvement in the ‘disturbances’ or civil unrest that broke out in Nicaragua shortly after independence.Footnote 44 Evidence indicates that even this policy was never implemented in practice, however, as local officials immediately responded by pointing out that it would be impossible to distinguish dangerous Nicaraguans just by looking at them.Footnote 45 Moreover, the Costa Rican state government soon changed course, with officials in the capital clarifying in 1827 that the state was an ‘inviolable asylum’, and that Nicaraguans should have the right to enter the state, even during times of rebellion.Footnote 46 Subsequent orders then encouraged local officials to monitor the conduct of Nicaraguans, though not to impede arrivals.Footnote 47
Nicaraguans would remain the object of Costa Rican legislation, with some towns in the 1830s suggesting the use of vagrancy laws to coerce unemployed Nicaraguans to move somewhere else. Still even these laws did not deny Nicaraguans the right to enter the state of Costa Rica.Footnote 48 A stronger exception to the norm of free movement, therefore, occurred in 1837 when the Costa Rican government declared a sanitary cordon at the Nicaraguan border in response to a cholera outbreak. Interestingly, however, this decree not only tried to stop Nicaraguans from entering Costa Rican territory but also prevented Costa Ricans leaving, so it was less a restriction on outsiders entering the territory so much as an effort to impede movement in general in response to a public health emergency.Footnote 49
Nonetheless, despite occasional concerns regarding civil order or public health, Central American governments overall revealed themselves to be comfortable with people moving around within the Federal Republic. Indeed, the right to internal migration even had some affirmative protections. The 1826 State Constitution of Nicaragua, for example, not only reiterated the language of asilo sagrado for foreigners, but also expressly protected Nicaraguans’ right to migrate to ‘any point in the Republic’ and return freely.Footnote 50 To some extent, such measures might be placed alongside asilo sagrado to indicate a general support for the right to move around with minimal interference, though it is also worth clarifying that legal discourses drew clear distinctions between ‘foreigners’ [extranjeros] and other Central Americans. The 1825 State Constitution of Guatemala, for example, while discussing naturalisation procedures contrasted extranjeros against ‘inhabitants … in whichever of the other states of the Federation’.Footnote 51 The 1824 Constitution of the Federal Republic used similar logic, though it went even further to distinguish extranjeros from ‘anyone born in the Republics of America’, who would receive expedited citizenship upon arrival in Central America.Footnote 52 Ultimately, while minor restrictions to internal migration were not completely absent, it is interesting that discussions to protect human movement among territories largely coincided with defining the national space as a universal asylum for foreign arrivals.
Perhaps the biggest exception to the policy of asilo sagrado for foreigners, on the other hand, occurred in 1829 on the heels of Francisco Morazán's uprising and formation of a new liberal government. While Morazán's ally José Francisco Barrundia served as interim president, Central America followed the example of Mexico in issuing sanctions against Spain for the monarchy's failure to recognise independence. The Central American sanctions focused primarily on restricting commerce, banning any Spanish merchants from trading in Central American ports, as well as Central American merchants sending cargo to Spain or any of its territories. To enforce these restrictions, however, the decree stipulated that ‘no subject of the Spanish government of any class, age, or condition will be permitted to enter the territory of the Republic or disembark in its ports’, thus adding implicit restrictions on migration.Footnote 53 By exempting Spanish subjects from entry, the decree infringed on the blanket practice of making Central America a sacred asylum for all who ‘want to reside in its territory’. Still, it is significant that Central American officials took measures to protect people of Spanish origin already living in the territory by expediting naturalisation proceedings and issuing Central American passports. For example, in 1829 there was a spike in cartas de naturaleza, or naturalisation certificates, issued in Central America leading up to the Spanish ban.Footnote 54 Moreover, the sanctions did not include deportations of Spanish subjects already living in Central America, making them far less harsh than the anti-Spanish sanctions passed by Mexico a year earlier in 1828.Footnote 55 It is also telling that this rare exception to the principle of sacred asylum was directly related to the issue of sovereignty. With a foreign power literally denying the right of the sovereign nation to exist, ‘subjects’ of this foreign power – especially traders sailing under the Spanish flag – were arguably not so much private individuals migrating so much as representatives of a foreign power hostile to Central American sovereignty. Barring this extreme case, however, Central American leaders approached protecting free migration as a boon to sovereignty, and asilo sagrado made this a defining attribute of the territory.
Along with deploying a discourse of asylum and migrant rights in order to make territory meaningful, Central America further strengthened sovereignty by looking for ways to visibly perform the right to rule. On this issue, the border between Central America and Mexico provides an instructive example. Even though the colonial province of Chiapas had traditionally fallen under the immediate authority of Guatemala throughout the colonial era, as early as 1821, many Chiapanecan leaders were already calling for a break from Guatemala.Footnote 56 These calls led to a brief period of declared independence, followed by annexation to Iturbide's short-lived Mexican Empire.Footnote 57 After the dissolution of the Iturbide regime in 1823, Chiapas was independent for another brief period until becoming a Mexican state again in 1824.Footnote 58 The border region of Soconusco remained in dispute, however, and both the Guatemalan and Chiapanecan governments rushed to visibly demonstrate sovereignty over the territory and define it as their own. In August of 1824, for example, Guatemalan officials announced that Soconusco had declared its loyalty to Central America, and the Guatemalan Congress approved sending troops to Soconusco to bolster this claim.Footnote 59 In response, leaders within Chiapas took similar action, issuing their own call for troops to be sent to Soconusco in August 1825 while asking other Mexican states and the federal government for support.Footnote 60 On the one hand, sending troops was a pragmatic reaction to the tense geopolitical environment of the time, with both governments fearing that the other might invade. Yet even beyond the immediate pragmatism of preparing for a possible invasion, sending troops to the border fitted into a wider programme of establishing a visible state presence in territory claimed as sovereign. However, it is significant that in claiming territorial sovereignty, these troops’ only concern was to restrict the activities of the other government – not to constrain the movement of private individuals. Indeed, neither government complained about people moving around as a threat to territorial integrity, yet both complained frequently about troop movements since interventions of foreign states were viewed as violations of sovereignty.Footnote 61
Sovereignty and Free Migration in a Divided Central America, 1838–60
The geopolitical situation in Central America shifted in the late 1830s as the Federal Republic dissolved and the constituent states became the independent nation-states that make up Central America today. Rivalries among the states, as well as among various political factions, had long created tensions in the Republic, and new tensions erupted as critiques of Morazán's heavy-handed rule mounted. The situation became especially tense in the Guatemalan highlands where a popular uprising led by Rafael Carrera eventually dealt a decisive blow to the Morazán government.Footnote 62 The hostilities between Carrera and Morazán were still ongoing in April 1838 when Nicaragua took the initiative to declare independence from the rest of the Federal Republic. The National Assembly voted to allow the secession and updated the Constitution to recognise each state's right to decide its own affairs, thus effectively ending the era of the Federal Republic. Costa Rica and Honduras seceded soon after, leaving Guatemala and El Salvador to finalise their separation in 1841.Footnote 63
Significantly, it was not a given that this separation would remain permanent, and in fact numerous initiatives to formally reunite the Central American states continued even into the twentieth century.Footnote 64 As early as 1848, for example, representatives from El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras signed the Pact of Nacaome to ‘tie our States with a common link [vínculo]’ and establish a provisional governing body called the ‘Diet’ with the goal of eventually reviving the legislative assembly of the Confederation.Footnote 65 The initiative only had limited success since Guatemala and Costa Rica refused to join, though it illustrates how Central American governments maintained shared affinities in spite of the conflicts that ruptured the Federal Republic. Moreover, even beyond efforts to politically reunite the Central American states, these affinities were further demonstrated in how official discourses and new founding documents treated the migration of other Central Americans. For example, in discussing who pertained to the newly independent nation, the 1841 Constitution of El Salvador distinguished between ‘naturalised foreigners’ and ‘children of the other states of the old union’ as separate categories.Footnote 66 Accordingly, the Constitution reiterated that despite the dissolution of the Federal Republic and the creation of new national territories, other Central Americans were not foreigners. The 1845 Constitution of Guatemala and the 1848 Constitution of Honduras contained similar language specifying that other Central Americans were not foreigners and would enjoy expedited naturalisation.Footnote 67 In some ways, this was comparable to the logic used in Ecuador, Venezuela and Colombia after the rupture of the unified Gran Colombia, with the initial constitutions including similar provisions.Footnote 68 In Central America specifically, this way of thinking did not only apply to the immediate aftermath of the Federal Republic's dissolution, but became the norm for decades to come. In fact, the earliest example that I have been able to find of a Central American being associated with the term extranjero in another Central American state occurred in 1879, and in this particular case, a Nicaraguan immigrant in Costa Rica was suing to be granted extranjero status so that his son could avoid military conscription.Footnote 69
Moreover, even in this new political context of the dissolved Federal Republic, the image of asylum and the principle of free migration remained influential in defining sovereign spaces. The Costa Rican Constitution of 1844, for example, defined its territory as an asylum for foreigners, though the updated language offered a more secular version, calling Costa Rica an ‘inviolable asylum’ rather than a sacred asylum.Footnote 70 In contrast, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras did not include asylum in their founding documents immediately after the dissolution of the Federal Republic, though all three countries added asilo sagrado back into their constitutions in 1886, 1893 and 1894, respectively.Footnote 71 Additionally, asilo sagrado often informed legal codes even when it was left out of founding documents, as was the case with Honduras in the 1850s.Footnote 72 Also paralleling the practices of the earlier Federal Republic, these references to asylum were not merely rhetorical, but in fact continued to inform legal discourses and daily practices related to migration. Accordingly, restrictions on free movement remained rare. Costa Rica, for example, issued new passport laws in 1845, in theory generating some modicum of limitation on free movement by creating an administrative procedure for crossing borders. However, these restrictions were extremely minor. In fact, rather than restricting migration, the purpose of these new laws was primarily raising revenue in the sale of passports to people exiting the country. With respect to foreigners entering the country, the laws did say that port officials should check passports upon entry, though foreigners travelling without passports were not to be turned away. Rather, foreigners without a passport simply paid an additional fee which would go toward funds for building a hospital.Footnote 73
Restrictions on movement among Central American states were also limited, though exceptions did exist. For example, the 1843 Confederation Pact signed by Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras did place potential restrictions on the free movement of deserting soldiers and escaped convicts, asserting that they would have to be extradited if caught in another country. Accordingly, while the default norm was to allow anyone to enter the territory without having to prove economic usefulness or humanitarian need, asylum in this period did not provide absolute immunity against the claims of other governments, just as asilo sagrado had seen certain exceptions during the years of the Federal Republic. This resulted in an implicit check on absolute free movement, though it is significant that specific categories of people – deserting soldiers and escaped convicts – mentioned in the Pact were defined according to obligations owed to other states, arguably making them more representatives of foreign powers than private individuals. Consistent with this logic, the Pact also forbade troops from crossing borders, a practice long considered a violation of sovereignty. For private individuals representing themselves without specific military or carceral obligations, however, the Pact left borders open, and even expressly included political dissidents among those who had the right to migrate.Footnote 74
A bigger test of Central America's commitment to free movement, however, occurred during civil wars and filibuster invasions of the 1840s and 1850s, thus raising the spectre of rebels and armed bands crossing from one country to another. Even in this context, however, free movement and asilo sagrado remained the norm in practice. Regarding the border between Guatemala and Chiapas, for example, a rebellion in the nearby Mexican state of Tabasco generated concern among Guatemalan officials, who in 1840 sent troops to protect the border. Still, the purpose of these troops was only to prevent anyone from inciting violence, and the Guatemalan government never gave orders to impede migration.Footnote 75 Moreover, while negotiating the final dissolution of the Central American Republic with El Salvador around the same time, Guatemalan officials agreed explicitly that the governments should not impede anyone, including former rebels, from either leaving from or returning to their country of origin.Footnote 76
In the following years, the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica led to similar situations. Whereas Costa Rica had increased its political distance from Nicaragua by refusing to sign the Nacaome Pact after the dissolution of the Federal Republic, the government continued to keep a close watch on how the armed conflicts in Nicaragua progressed, and would even lend direct military support to fighting against the William Walker government later in 1856.Footnote 77 Years before Walker's arrival, however, Costa Rican officials were already paying attention to how the conflicts increased human movement. In 1849, for example, officials in the Costa Rican border region of Guanacaste began reporting that violent uprisings in Nicaragua had displaced hundreds of Nicaraguans, many of whom were now arriving in Costa Rica. Significantly, the Costa Rican government approached the situation as a refugee crisis rather than a security crisis, taking no action to restrict free migration.Footnote 78 The Costa Rican Congress considered codifying the country's commitment to protecting free migration with a new migration law proposed in 1852. The law ultimately did not pass, though its text provides an interesting window into how Costa Rican law-makers discussed migration at a time that Nicaraguan arrivals were increasing. Like the Constitution of 1824, this new migration law had a moral component, conceptualising immigration as a ‘right’ (derecho), but also an economic dimension, adding the caveat that the right to migrate applied to anyone capable of working. The law also revealed the patriarchal assumptions that accompanied how national leaders imagined free migration, stating explicitly that ‘both sexes’ had the right to migrate, yet adding the additional caveat that certain single women needed the permission of a male sponsor in order to exercise this right.Footnote 79
Significantly, Costa Rica's general openness to migration was soon put to the test as ongoing wars in neighbouring Nicaragua in 1854 led to refugees fleeing war-torn areas. These refugees clearly had the right to migrate according to Costa Rican law, yet the context of the civil war raised the spectre of rebel groups using the Costa Rican side of the border to regroup. Consequently, the Costa Rican government did ask officials in border towns to impede the congregation of armed groups at the border. However, consistent with the longstanding commitment to free migration, the border remained open to private individuals and the free migration law was indeed kept in practice, even in these extreme circumstances.Footnote 80 In fact, officials recommended that suspicious individuals who might try to organise armed uprisings should not be deported, but rather moved toward the interior of Costa Rica.Footnote 81
Whereas Costa Rican officials did not explicitly invoke asilo sagrado in the documents that I have seen related to the 1854 influx of Nicaraguan emigrants, it is interesting that Honduran officials did when addressing a similar case in 1859, described in the opening of this article. The relationship between Honduras and El Salvador was also somewhat different from that of Nicaragua and Costa Rica since both El Salvador and Honduras had joined the Nacaome Pact in 1847, though by 1859 found themselves on opposite sides of the ongoing liberal–conservative divide. Interestingly, Honduras had even included a provision in its 1848 Constitution stating that even though it considered itself sovereign, it also was ‘one of the confederated states of Central America’ since it had signed the Nacaome Pact.Footnote 82 This provision was still in force in 1859 as indicated by an official reprint of this Constitution in 1858 which still included this language.Footnote 83 Interestingly, asilo sagrado was not in force in the Honduran Constitution in 1859, and distrust of outsiders would continue to mount over the next decade, indicated by the 1873 Constitution adding in an article stating explicitly that foreigners ‘will not be able to consider themselves of a better condition’ than Hondurans.Footnote 84 Regardless, Honduran officials in 1859 decided that the best course of action to practise the nation's sovereignty was to uphold the principle of asilo sagrado and to assert the quality of the national territory as a space of free movement, and this approach to defining territory would remain influential for decades to come.
Central America, Sovereignty and Long-Term Implications
It is noteworthy, however, that while this mutually reinforcing configuration of territory, sovereignty and protected movement did remain influential for most of the nineteenth century in Central America, a major shift occurred in the following century as Central American governments made borders increasingly restrictive in ways that parallel the closed-border practices of the United States.Footnote 85 A full discussion of why this transition occurred is beyond the scope of this article, though I would argue that the early national examples examined in this article provide vital context for reflecting on the significance of this shift. Specifically, this article places into stark relief how the change over time in Central American border policy has resulted in major divergences: firstly, Central America's divergence from its own early approaches to territoriality and migration; and secondly, Central America's divergence from its South American neighbours.
At first glance, Central America's divergence from its early immigration policies may seem unremarkable since at least on the surface this fits within a familiar narrative – exemplified by the United States though in many ways characteristic of modern nation-states – of nations beginning with relatively liberal immigration policies yet steadily becoming more restrictive following the catalyst of anti-Asian racism near the turn of the twentieth century.Footnote 86 Indeed, important aspects of the narrative, including anti-Chinese sentiment, are also well documented in the Latin American and even Central American context.Footnote 87 Nonetheless, a closer look at this history reveals some key differences that matter in assessing change-over-time implications. For example, whereas the United States never had affirmative open-border laws in the first place, much less any legal concepts akin to asilo sagrado that connected protecting migration to the quality of the territory itself, Central America had both, creating a fundamentally different starting point for its later shift toward restrictive border regimes. Accordingly, an important premise for future research is to approach this long-term trend not as a natural progression that is simply self-evident as governments and their apparatuses became more capable of restricting migration, but rather as a major philosophical shift in the meaning of Central American nations.
Moreover, migration policy presents an important site for change-over-time comparisons between Central America and South America. Whereas this article has argued that early national Central America stood out even among Latin American republics for how it emphasised protecting migration in its founding documents, within the context of the twenty-first century, South American states have taken far more initiative to support people who move around. Especially since the 1990s, South American governments have promoted the right to migrate through numerous legal mechanisms and amnesty declarations for legalising irregular migrants, as well as creating regional pacts, such as the Pacto Andino or MERCOSUR, which include free movement among member countries.Footnote 88 Furthermore, protecting human movement has even returned to constitution-writing, with the 2008 Constitution of Ecuador declaring migration a universal right and outlining principles for legalising irregular immigrants.Footnote 89 As a caveat, some researchers have rightly noted that South American governments have not always followed through on the obligation to provide services or documentation to migrants in a timely manner, especially in the context of mass migration from Venezuela and the Covid-19 pandemic.Footnote 90 Still, regularisation and the recognition of the right to migrate continues to be the norm in contrast to the securitisation practices that have come to characterise the rest of the Americas.Footnote 91 In some ways, this South American trend is part of a newer way of conceptualising rights in response to twentieth-century processes. Yet, in other ways, it is a return to the older norm. Indeed, this is the conclusion of Diego Acosta's 2018 book The National versus the Foreigner in South America (Cambridge University Press), which argues that the closed borders of the Cold War-era dictatorships in South America were exceptional, whereas efforts to protect migrants in the post-dictatorship era fit with a broader historical norm.Footnote 92 Were Central American governments to pursue similar policies, I argue that this would similarly be a return to the historical norm.
In theory, it is not impossible to imagine that the Central American states could follow a similar trajectory to at least protect free movement within the region. For example, the isthmus maintains close political and economic ties, along with formal supranational infrastructure such as the Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana (Central American Integration System, SICA) and the Central American Courts of Justice (CACJ). However, in contrast to the South American models, regional pacts in Central America so far have largely ignored the issue of migration, instead opting for models of economic integration that privilege the free movement of materials and goods rather than people. One reason for this divergence appears to be the heavy-handed role that the United States has played in Central America. Numerous researchers have documented the long history of direct military intervention in the region, for example during the ‘banana republic’ era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as during the brutal civil wars of the Cold War era.Footnote 93 And more recently, the United States has exercised great influence in orchestrating the economic and political orders that emerged at the end of the armed conflicts of the 1980s, leading to an era of neoliberal development policies frequently referred to as the ‘Washington Consensus’.Footnote 94 Accordingly, even though the United States is not a member of SICA, its heavy influence in Central America represents a key variable that distinguishes the situation on the isthmus from that of its South American neighbours. For example, around the same time that SICA was forming, the United States negotiated the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).Footnote 95 Much like the better-known North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was negotiated with Mexico, the agreement conspicuously ignored the issue of migration. At least in the case of NAFTA, researchers have argued persuasively that this was intentional on the part of US policy-makers since the whole point was to give US manufacturers access to cheap labour on the other side of the border, by definition requiring workers to stay put.Footnote 96 Accordingly, this approach to economic development – allowing capital and corporations to cross borders freely but not people, characteristic of US policy – has apparently had more influence in Central America than in South America, and while there are certainly internal reasons for why Central American leaders have embraced this model, it would be difficult to argue that US pressure has not influenced these processes.
As a final thought, it is worth considering how these two divergences reflect the ongoing quest for sovereignty in Latin American nations. Some theorists have presumed that in a globalised world in which governments are increasingly handcuffed by the whims of foreign powers and the penetration of global markets, asserting the right to restrict migration has become the ‘last bastion of sovereignty’.Footnote 97 This view may accurately describe some cases; however, given the role that US pressure has played in promoting Central America's shift toward more restrictive borders, even within regional blocs, it is not clear that illegality and sovereignty are automatically reciprocal. This is not to say, of course, that Central American approaches to migration are completely imposed by outsiders, as prominent Central American leaders – notably in Guatemala and Costa Rica – have placed new restrictions on immigration and sometimes even have come to echo discourses that claim migration is a threat to sovereignty.Footnote 98 Still, these discourses are not universally accepted, and given the ongoing pressure by the United States for Central American governments to constrain migration, the resulting closed-border regimes hardly seem like a boon to sovereignty.Footnote 99 Ultimately, these reflections are preliminary, and more systematic research is necessary to draw stronger conclusions. However, viewing border policies as long-term processes calls into question whether Central America's current closed-border regime has actually increased sovereignty, either relative to earlier periods when borders were more open, or to its South American neighbours in the present.
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