death and founded a dynasty to perpetu-
ate it afterward; and Omar Torrijos
Herrera (1929–1981), who ruled Panama
from 1968 until his death. In 1954 the
United States covertly assisted in the
overthrow of Guatemalan president
Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951–1954),
whose left-wing land redistribution poli-
cies had angered both American commu-
nist-hunters and the United Fruit
Company, a U.S. company that had
invested heavily in Guatemala.
Central America’s political and social
tensions boiled over in the 1960s and
1970s in numerous conflicts. In
Guatemala, leftist guerrillas launched a
civil war against the ruling elite that last-
ed 36 years, from 1960 to 1996, the
longest civil war in Latin American histo-
ry. In 1969 more than 2,000 people died
in a conflict between El Salvador and
Honduras called the Soccer War, so
named because it was sparked by El
Salvador’s defeat of Honduras in a soccer
series, though it stemmed from deeper
tensions over heavy Salvadoran immigra-
tion to Honduras. In the late 1970s left-
wing rebels initiated offensives against
government forces in El Salvador and
Nicaragua.
By disrupting economic life, war
exacerbated the poverty already faced by
most of the region’s inhabitants. For
many Central Americans, the only hope
lay north—in the United States. They
came legally when possible, illegally when
necessary, often traveling overland
through Mexico, then crossing the bor-
der. They settled most heavily in Los
Angeles, though Central American com-
munities also sprang up in New York,
Florida, and other places where Hispanic
Americans were already living.THE FIGHT FOR RIGHTS
As the Hispanic-American population of
the United States grew in the 1960s and
1970s, a movement for civil rights and
cultural recognition grew among the
nation’s largest ethnic subgroup of
Hispanic Americans—those of Mexican
descent. It sprang up in the context of the
African-American civil rights movementLA RAZA UNIDA 189Migrant Labor Routes