Prospects for Democratisation in a Post-Revolutionary Setting: Central America

1996 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 461-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos M. Vilas
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Central American ◽  
Structural Constraints ◽  
Structural Differentiation ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Post War

AbstractProspects for democratisation in those Central American countries that experienced revolutionary processes are discussed in the light of recurrent structural constraints – such as incipient structural differentiation, overwhelming poverty, dependence on foreign financial subsidies – and specific sociopolitical variations, i.e. uneven modernisation of traditional rule; tensions between the recent mobilisation of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ social actors, and political institutions and actors (such as parties, unions, parliaments, government and multilateral agencies) which in some cases lead to current social demobilisation and electoral apathy and in others prevent the effective uprooting of political violence; persistence of traditional authoritarian culture and its articulation to the new ingredients of the post-war political and socioeconomic setting.

The Cultural Crossroads of Colonial Central America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brianna Leavitt-Alcántara
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Central America ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Central American ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
And Gender ◽  
American Society ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Directed Research

The study of colonial Central American history, particularly its cultural history, remains in a nascent stage of development compared to that of other parts of colonial Spanish America such as Mexico and Peru. This partly reflects historical study’s “center–periphery paradigm,” which has tended to concentrate scholarly attention on powerful political and economic centers while neglecting places like Central America, deemed as peripheral. Twentieth-century civil wars and political violence impeded archival research and also directed research agendas toward modern historical topics. Over the last thirty years, a small but lively field has expanded in exciting directions including the following four: colonial religious encounters and the emergence of diverse Mayan Christianities; Afro-Central American society and culture; women, sexuality, and gender in urban society; and the images, ideas, and innovations that brought Central Americans closer together but also sparked controversies and conflicts over the long eighteenth century, here defined roughly as 1670 to 1820.

Time will mitigate post-war justice in Central America

2016 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Central America ◽  
Crime Rates ◽  
Central American ◽  
Peace Treaty ◽  
Content Type ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
Vested Interests ◽  
Post War

Significance Recent prosecutions and extraditions suggest that Central American countries are beginning to make progress in holding war criminals and human rights abusers to account. Nonetheless, prosecutions remain rare, and tend not to involve senior figures. More generally, civil war legacies have consequences for state institutions, crime rates and social cohesion. Impacts Governments will face increasing pressure to tackle corruption and improve security. Wartime loyalties will dictate public opinion on war crime cases, while strong vested interests will impede prosecutions. Issues of justice and impunity in Central America give an indication of problems that may arise in post-peace treaty Colombia.

Kissinger and Central America

2020 ◽  
pp. 152-182
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Rabe
Keyword(s):  
El Salvador ◽  
Central America ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter explores U.S. relations with Central America during the Kissinger years. In the 1980s, civil wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala frightened the Reagan administration into reasoning that the Cold War had come to the doorstep of the United States. The civil wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua erupted during Henry Kissinger's tenure (in 1972 and 1974, respectively). Wholesale political violence carried out by “death squads” continued to characterize life in Guatemala in the 1970s. Examining the U.S. response to the mounting right-wing oppression in Central America provides historical background to the crisis of the 1980s and deepens an understanding of Kissinger's worldviews. Whereas Kissinger may have been impervious to Central American violence, he acted boldly toward Panama, pushing both of his presidents to renegotiate U.S. control of the canal and the Canal Zone.

Diasporic Social Imaginaries, Transisthmian Echoes and Transfigurations of Central American Subjectivities

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Patricia Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Central American ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
Gioconda Belli ◽  
Social Violence ◽  
Claribel Alegria ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War ◽  
Literary Topography

Throughout the mid-20th and early 21st centuries, Central American writers, in and outside of the isthmus, have written in response to political and social violence and multiple forms of racial, economic, gendered, and other oppressions, while also seeking to produce alternative social imaginaries for the region and its peoples. Spanning the civil war and post-war periods and often writing from the space of prolonged and temporary diaspora as exiles, sojourners, and migrants, in their respective works, writers such as Claribel Alegría, Gioconda Belli, and Martivón Galindo have not only represented the most critical historical moments in the region but moreover transfigured the personal and collective social woundings of Central America into new signs and representations of the isthmus, often from other sites. Read together, their texts offer a gendered literary topography of war, deterritorialization, and reterritorialization and imagine other “geographies of identities” as suggested by Smadar Lavie and Ted Swedenburg for post-conflict, diasporic societies. These writers’ work is testament to the transformative and transfigurative power of women’s writing in the Central American transisthmus.

The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Central America

2019 ◽  
pp. 495-516
Author(s):  
Juan Muñoz-Portillo ◽  
Ilka Treminio
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Costa Rica ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Central America ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Political Development ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
Central American ◽  
The Political

This chapter studies presidential term limits—understood as limits on presidential re-elections and term lengths—in four Central American electoral democracies: Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Its contribution is threefold. First, it explains the evolution of these institutions as part of the political development process of these polities after independence from Spain. Second, the chapter conducts two emblematic case studies of the politics of recent term limits reforms in Latin America via constitutional reviews: Costa Rica (1999–2003) and Honduras (2009 and 2015). Finally, it examines the consequences of term limits for democracy and policymaking. In this regard, it argues that term lengths affect policymaking in Costa Rica and Honduras, and that the political institutions in these countries combined with the popularity of ex-presidents make presidential re-elections possible. In contrast, in El Salvador and Guatemala the influence of term limits is offset by formal and informal constraints.

Post-war Reconstruction in Central America

1999 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Ardón ◽  
Deborah Eade
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Post War

Marginalization, Assimilation, and Resurgence: Indigenous People in Central America since Independence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Gabbert
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Indigenous Population ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Central American ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Access To Education ◽  
Land Loss ◽  
Agricultural Export

While the end of colonial rule brought formal equality it did not end discrimination and marginalization of the indigenous population in independent Central America. Many suffered land loss and proletarianization in the emerging agricultural export economy. However, indigenous people were not mere victims of exploitation, displacement, and ladinization but played an often active role in Central American politics. Participation in the market economy and access to education fostered stratification within the indigenous population. The emergence of well-off and educated Indians and changes in international politics promoting multiculturalism contributed to the emergence of indigenous movements in recent decades. While some progress has been made concerning the recognition of cultural difference and autonomy, land rights are still a much disputed issue.

Exploring ethno-racial policy for the Garinagu in Central America: making the case for Black Indigeneity

2020 ◽  
pp. 117718012097900
Author(s):  
Sheryl Felecia Means
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Cultural Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
Central American ◽  
Language Attrition ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Collective Rights ◽  
Land And Water Rights ◽  
Racial Policy

Across the Central American region, several groups received political autonomy by the end of the 20th century. By granting autonomy to these groups, countries like Nicaragua acknowledged certain populations as members of distinct ethnic groups. This was not the case for every country or group in the region, and the lack of effective ethno-racial policy-making considerations across Central America has led to language attrition, loss of land and water rights, and commodification of historic communities. This article focuses on Honduras and Belize as unique sites of ethno-racial and socio-cultural policy making, group identity making and unmaking, and group rights for the Garinagu. Specifically, this work forwards a re-examination of national ethno-racial policy and a critical assessment of political models based on ethno-cultural collective rights intended to combat racial discrimination.

scholarly journals Solidarity of the shaken: from the experience (Erlebnis) to history

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michaela Belejkaničová
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Critical Dialogue ◽  
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin ◽  
Ex Nihilo ◽  
Post War ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Usual Pattern

AbstractIn his Heretical Essays, Jan Patočka introduces the concept of the solidarity of the shaken. He argues that it emerges in the conditions of political violence—the frontline experience (Fronterlebnis). Moreover, Patočka brings into discussion the puzzling concepts of day, night, metanoia and sacrifice, which only further problematise the idea. Researching how other thinkers have examined the phenomenon of the frontline experience, it becomes obvious that Patočka did not invent the obscure vocabulary ex nihilo. Concepts such as frontline experience, sacrifice and the metaphors of the day and night were commonly used by thinkers in the inter-war and post-war eras in their examination of community (Gemeinschaft). This study aims to reconstruct the idea of the solidarity of the shaken as contextualized within a broader scholarly debate on the concept of community (Gemeinschaft). Through the critical dialogue between Patočka’s works and the works of Ernst Jünger and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this study will portray how Patočka, in his discourse on the frontline experience, follows the usual pattern of overcoming one’s individuality, transcending and opening up to the constitution of solidarity. This paper will argue that Patočka defined the solidarity of the shaken in an attempt to revive the positive aspects of a community and break with the regressive (if not sinister) uses to which it was put in the twentieth century.

UNICEF in Central America

1960 ◽  
Vol 329 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-77
Author(s):  
Alice C. Shaffer
Keyword(s):  
United Nations ◽  
Central America ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Central American ◽  
The World ◽  
Working Together ◽  
Integrated Programs ◽  
Regional Basis ◽  
The United Nations

Central America has been one of the pioneer areas for the United Nations Children's Fund assisted pro grams. When the United Nations Children's Fund, under a broadened mandate from the United Nations, shifted the emphasis of its aid from emergency to long term and from war-torn countries to those economically less developed, Cen tral American governments immediately requested its assist ance to strengthen and extend services to children and mothers. As one of the first areas in the world to aim at the eradication of malaria and to have engaged in an inten sive campaign against malnutrition on a regional basis, the Central American experiences in these fields have become known, watched, and studied by people from many countries. Against this background, international and bilateral organi zations are working together with governments as they broaden the scope and the extent of their programs. Ten years of co-operative action have highlighted the need for train ing of personnel, both professional and auxiliary. This period has also made clear the value of more integrated programs with wider collaboration both within the ministries of government and between the international organizations.

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