influence continued. While the international engagement began with the fruit companies which dominated the economy of the Atlantic side of most Central American countries, in the 1970s they were joined by multi-national textile companies which established large-scale workshops (maquiladoras) to produce clothing for the international market. Many of the shops are owned by Asian (especially Korean) concerns, though their target markets remain in North American. Cultural characteristics The western Caribbean zone is a multicultural region, including populations of Spanish mestizo origin, indigenous groups, African-indigenous mixed race populations, Europeans and European Americans, and creole populations of African and mixed African-European origin. However, one of the characteristics of much of the region is the speaking of English, not only in Belize, a former English colony, but also as enclaved populations along the coast from Panama to Belize. In the case of the Belize and the Cayman Islands English is the official language, but there are significant English speaking majorities in the Bay Islands of Honduras. In the countries of official Spanish language, the English speaking minorities have often been disparaged, particularly in Honduras, where the English speaking population is perceived as having been brought in by the fruit companies as a means of undercutting indigenous and mestizo landholding and labor. Their more ancient connections to English colonialism or attempted colonialism, as along the Miskito coast of Nicaragua and Honduras, has been combined with the perceptions that they are agents of North American/United States imperialism. This perception has led to occasionally racist depictions of the population the popular press and among politicians. These sentiments were often manifested by the deportation of workers who could be established as having originated in Belize or Jamaica (as well as other English speaking Caribbean colonies. Beyond linguistic identities, the Western Caribbean often exhibited culinary habits associated with the English speaking Caribbean, or family structure characteristic of that region, such as a reluctance to enter into legal marriages, but instead, what is frequently called "common law" marriages. The family structure that results from the marriage strategies of the English-speaking Caribbean, often called the matrifocal family, was first described and identified by Nancie Gonzalez in her work on the Garifuna of Nicaragua and Belize. See also Caribbean Caribbean Basin Caribbean Sea West Indies References Regions of the Caribbean Geography of the Caribbean Geography of Central America History of the Caribbean History of Central America Regions of Central America Regions