Here is a collection of books that I have read and can vouch for.

Natives, Europeans, and Africans in Sixteenth-Century Santiago de Guatemala This is a thoughtful examination of the different castes and classes of colonial Santiago, and it focuses on the interactions between ordinary people rather than high class society.

Santiago De Guatemala, 1541-1773: City, Caste, and the Colonial Experience Same subject matter as above, except this covers a broader time frame to almost the end of the colonial period. This focuses more on change over time and uses tables, graphs, and statistics to show how demographics shifted and what that implies about social interactions.

Maya Revolt and Revolution in the Eighteenth Century If the above two books focus on the colonial capital, this book focuses on the hinterland and how the Maya communities of what is now Guatemala negotiated their relationship with the colonial regime. Granted this book also has 2 chapters about the Yucatán in Mexico, but 4 chapters are about Guatemala and most of the 1st chapter is also about Guatemala - so overall this is Central America. This is hideously expensive now on Amazon - I lucked out and paid like $5 for it.

Colonial Cakchiquels: Highland Maya Adaptations to Spanish Rule, 1600-1700 This book focuses on one particular community in Guatemala and goes into depth regarding daily life in their communities, beliefs, social relations, etc.

Chocolate in Mesoamerica: A Cultural History of Cacao Wait, don't go! The book is ostensibly about cacao, but really this is about the cultural history of cacao in Central America and southern Mexico. It's about 50-50 and goes up to the modern era. So there are chapters on colonial production in El Salvador and Guatemala, modern usage of cacao in various foods and beverages in Central America, how the word "cacao" spread from the Olmec through various Central American Amerindian languages all the way down to Panamá, modern Belize luxury chocolate.

Blacks and Blackness in Central America: Between Race and Place This is about the construction of "blackness" and how ethnic markers shift and form time. This is both colonial (slaves that earned wages in Honduras, the evolution of "ladino" in Guatemala, Miskitía) and modern (British West Indians in Central America, how African ancestry is remembered or forgotten in Costa Rica and Nicaragua). A lot of nations show up, but the weight of the book is to Nicaragua.

Protestantism in Guatemala: Living in the New Jerusalem How did Guatemala become the most Protestant country in Latin America? Find out here! The book explores the factors that lead people to convert, how churches developed, their relationship to the sending churches back in the US and to each other.

Déjà vu. Somoza-Ortega As the name implies this is technically a polemical work comparing the current Nicaraguan president Ortega to the deceased dictator Somoza. However if you skip the Intro and Conclusion, the body of the text is entirely historical. The author shows the front pages of various newspapers from the 1970s and then provides a 1-page facing explanation of what is happening. It is really neat to see history unfold just by newspapers!

To Die in this Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965 If you read any book, read this! Focusing on Pacific Nicaragua, this book explores how Central America - a region which upon independence was around 80% Amerindian - developed a ladino population. In other words, how Indian communities became ladino, how they adapted or resisted to the narrative of mestizaje, etc.

Myths of Modernity: Peonage and Patriarchy in Nicaragua This is a fascinating book with a very specific central thesis: contrary to the FSLN's party line in the 1980s, Nicaragua did NOT become a fully capitalist society with a rural proletariat during the 19th and 20th century. Instead the author contends (correctly in my opinion) that Nicaragua become a more intensely feudal society between independence and the 1960s, expanding both coerced labor and systems of male control over women, children, and other subordinates.

Thanks to God and the Revolution: Popular Religion and Class Consciousness in the New Nicaragua Exactly what it says on the cover. This book explores the role of religious ideology and religious communities in revolutionary Nicaragua.

Modernity at Gunpoint: Firearms, Politics, and Culture in Mexico and Central America This book explores the role of guns and gun culture in Mexico and Central America. The Central America chapters focus on the role of guns in songs, pop culture, literature, fashion - especially in the wake of the Civil Wars and the subsequent huge numbers of ex-combatants.