Before the Spanish arrival during the Pre-Columbian time, Central America was a region populated mostly by the Mesoamerican civilization,. The Maya stressed the Mayan culture as the most important, which flourished mainly in what is now the territory of Guatemala and also neighboring areas of Belize, Honduras and El Salvador coming to reach its peak during the classical period ranging from 250 until 900 A.D.

The Maya who shared with other Mesoamerican cultures some cultural characteristics as the belief in many gods and the belief in life after death, were able to accurately predict lunar and solar eclipses. They calculated the motions of planets, discovered the mathematical idea of zero and created a calendar even more accurate than the used nowadays.

Already in the XV century the Catholic Kings of Spain funded the navigator Christopher Columbus in his project to search for species and gold in the East. However, during the four voyages undertaken by Columbus, he headed to America and not India as he always had believed he had done. From August 1502 to May 1503, Columbus and his four ships traveled throughout the Central American coast. Incredulous, the natives watched a group of pale-skinned people talking and shouting in a strange language, Columbus approached and contacted the chief being this an important event in two ways: a meeting of the inhabitants of Old Europe and indigenous America.

In 1510 the Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa founded in Darien (Panama) the first productive colony of America, and used labor from the African continent for the cultivation of sugar. It was his successor, Pedreras Davila who expanded the territories to the north and south.

From the XVI to the XIX century colonial Central America was divided in two jurisdictions, on the one hand the Audiencia de Guatemala, which stretched from Chiapas (now the southern state of Mexico) to Costa Rica, which was part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain which enjoyed certain autonomy in its capital, La Antigua, that became bureaucratic, eclesial, commercial and administrative center. On the other hand, the rest of Central American territory ( nowadays occupied by the Republic of Panama), with its major transit route, was added to the Viceroyalty of New Granada, initially dependent of thr Viceroyalty of Peru.

After the arrival of the Spanish in the XVI century, the great majority of the population of Central America shared a common history with the exception of Belize, which was populated by the British until 1973.

In 1821, Central America declared its independence from Spain becoming effective on September 15. Currently, and since 1951 with the creation of the General Secretariat of the Organization of Central American States, the region has been involved in an integration process that still continues and is reinforced every day.