Central Americas Forgotten History by Aviva Chomsky

Central Americas Forgotten History by Aviva Chomsky

Restores the region's fraught history of repression and resistance to popular consciousness and connects the United States' interventions and influence to the influx of refugees seeking asylum today.

At the center of the current immigration debate are migrants from Central America fleeing poverty, corruption, and violence in search of refuge in the United States. In Central America's Forgotten History, Aviva Chomsky answers the urgent question "How did we get here?" Centering the centuries-long intertwined histories of US expansion and Indigenous and Central American struggles against inequality and oppression, Chomsky highlights the pernicious cycle of colonial and neocolonial development policies that promote cultures of violence and forgetting without any accountability or restorative reparations.

Focusing on the valiant struggles for social and economic justice in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, Chomsky restores these vivid and gripping events to popular consciousness. Tracing the roots of displacement and migration in Central America to the Spanish conquest and bringing us to the present day, she concludes that the more immediate roots of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras lie in the wars and in the US interventions of the 1980s and the peace accords of the 1990s that set the stage for neoliberalism in Central America.

Chomsky also examines how and why histories and memories are suppressed, and the impact of losing historical memory. Only by erasing history can we claim that Central American countries created their own poverty and violence, while the United States' enjoyment and profit from their bananas, coffee, mining, clothing, and export of arms are simply unrelated curiosities.

Aviva Chomsky is a history professor at Salem State University and the coordinator of Latin American Studies. Chomsky has been involved in South American solidarity and immigrant rights issues for over twenty-five years and is the author of various publications.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780807055410
ISBN 10	0807055417
Title	Central Americas Forgotten History
Author	Aviva Chomsky
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Beacon Press
Year published	2022-05-10
Number of pages	304
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.