Mesoamerican region

This article is about the modern economic region. For the pre-Columbian culture area, see Mesoamerica. For other uses of the term, see Mesoamerica (disambiguation).

The Mesoamerican region (often abbreviated MAR) is a trans-national economic region recognized by the OECD among other economic and developmental organizations, comprising of the united economies of the seven countries in Central America —Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama— plus the nine federal states of Mexico in the southeastern portion of that country —Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Veracruz and Yucatán.

Designated as an 'economic territory" by the OECD, the identification of the Mesoamerican region as a focus for common regional economic development has been observed since the adoption in 2001 by the signatory countries of the Puebla-Panama Plan (PPP), an initiative intended to foster regional integration and development across southeastern Mexico and the countries of Central America. The PPP also includes the country of Colombia; other than this, the territory and governments involved with the PPP are the same as those covered by OECD's Mesoamerican region.

The geographical region defined by the MAR loosely correlates with that of Mesoamerica, the pre-Columbian culture area defined and identified by archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and ethnohistorians. For several thousand years prior to the European colonization of the Americas beginning in the early 16th century, the diverse cultures and civilizations of Mesoamerica also shared a number of broad cultural, historical and linguistic traits in common.

References

OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2006). OECD Territorial Reviews: The Mesoamerican region: Southeastern Mexico and Central America. OECD Governance series , vol. 2006, no. 5, pp.1–202 (SourceOECD online edition ed.). Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. ISBN 92-64-02191-4. OCLC 67114707. ISSN 1608-0246. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help); templatestyles stripmarker in |author= at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)