The colonial district of Guatemala stretched from present-day Mexico’s southernmost state, Chiapas, through what is now Costa Rica.
It included all of what are now Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicarigua, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Its capital was Antigua, which is now Guatemala City in the modern nation of Guatemala.
Theodore Roosevelt, who was at the age of thirty in 1898, was strongly interested in Central and Latin America. At the time, he was a lieutenant colonel serving in Cuba during the Spanish American War.
After he became president in 1901, he supported the Panamanian revolution of 1903 and the building of the Panama Canal.
