At the end of the Mexican war of Independence, Spain lost a good chunk of their North American territory which included Mexico, Central America north of Panama and what is now the south-western United States. By the time 1821 rolled around, Spain's South American territories like Venezuela and Bolivia have also ditched Spanish colonialism. On 15 September 1821, the Act of Independence of Central America AKA the Act of Independence of Guatemala was signed just 13 days before the Mexican War of Independence ended. The document announced that Central America was free from Spain and established a new nation called the Federal Republic of Central America which came to be in 1823, breaking free from Mexico on 1 July of that year. However, the union unravelled over ideological differences at some point in 1838 and by the time 1841 came and went, Honduras, El Salvador (not to be confused with San Salvador in the Bahamas where a certain explorer and colonizer named Christopher Columbus landed though oddly enough there is El Salvador's own capital city though unrelated to the aforementioned Bahamian island), Nicaragua and Guatemala had become independent in their own right. All except a part of Honduras named Belize which became its own country in 1981 with its name only coming about in 1973 to replace its former title of British Honduras.