'isthmus' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to refer to a narrow strip of land connecting two larger sections of land, usually with water on either side. For example, "The Isthmus of Panama connects North and South America."
It's a testing experience trying to get some shopping done in Juchitán (pronounced "Hoocheetan") – a market town on the Pacific coast of Mexico, on the isthmus of Tehuantepec in the state of Oaxaca.
But once Theodore Roosevelt had "won the isthmus" by creating Panama as an American neo-colony, the final construction of the canal cost less than budgeted, as Mr Míguez likes to point out.
In 2009 the isthmus saw nearly 19,000 murders or 45 per 100,000 people, making it the most violent place in the world.While the mafias are untroubled by national boundaries, Central America's governments bicker over them.
THE Central American isthmus is smaller than Texas.
BATTLEFIELDS aside, the countries known as "the northern triangle" of the Central American isthmus form what is now the most violent region on earth.
Rightly or wrongly, the Reagan administration believed that the whole Central American isthmus was about to go communist (it overlooked the fact that American support for right-wing dictators had blocked the path of peaceful change).Fortunately, Central America has moved on.
But, now, it is pushing a cheaper alternative: a "land bridge" consisting of oil and cargo terminals on either side of the isthmus, connected by pipelines, roads and railways.
Elsewhere in the isthmus, jailing a few corrupt politicians, and then doing the same to big tax evaders, might bring swifter returns.
The atmosphere on the bridge relaxes, and cups of coffee appear.The Panamanian isthmus was too high and rocky for the original French and later American builders to clear a sea-level passage like the Suez Canal, so ships have to be lifted 26 metres (85 feet) from the Pacific to enter the lake midway through the canal, and lowered again on the Atlantic side.
And, to cap it all, climate change to which the unfortunate Central Americans have contributed virtually nothing seems to be increasing the ferocity of nature in the isthmus.
The isthmus seethes with ideological polarisation and political mistrust.
