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.

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.

scholarly journals Una mirada hacia el futuro

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Boyer
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Central America ◽  
Central American ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Gioconda Belli ◽  
American Novels ◽  
Fernando Contreras Castro

This paper studies three cases of Central American novels that belong to science fiction: Waslala. Memorial del futuro (1996) written by Gioconda Belli, Cantos de las guerras preventivas (2006) by Fernando Contreras Castro and Tikal Futura. Memorias para un futuro incierto (2012) by Franz Galich. The main point of this analysis is the use of myth and tradition, mostly pre-Hispanic, made by the authors in order to develop a discourse about the place of Central America in the modern world. This study demonstrates how the authors use science fiction to criticise the systematic use of myth in the construction of ideal societies.

Narco-Accumulation

2020 ◽  
pp. 107-190
Author(s):  
Gareth Williams
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Central American ◽  
The Political ◽  
Economic Relation ◽  
Social Violence ◽  
The North ◽  
The Social ◽  
The U.S ◽  
American Migration

This passage examines narco-accumulation—or illicit globalization—as a contemporary modality of war with specific existential connotations. It challenges previously sovereign national territory, which is now reconverted into the ritualized performance, living geography, and paramilitary end-game of post-katechontic force. For example, it realigns Mexico’s military-economic relation to the North, while also redefining and intensifying Mexican paramilitary force’s relation of dominance over the impoverished political spaces of, and the migrant bodies that flee from the social violence in, Central America. The national territory of Mexico becomes the new border, the tomb of the proper, the negation of space by space. The passage ends with the image of contemporary Central American migration to the U.S. as the site for an infrapolitical thinking of existence, capable of undermining the domination of the political over existence. This is the clearing promised throughout the book.

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.

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.

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.

Building States to Build Peace? A Critical Analysis

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 60-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles T. Call
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
International Peace ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
Strong State ◽  
Post Conflict ◽  
Post War ◽  
External Actors ◽  
State Functions

Agencies throughout the development, humanitarian, political and defence fields have recently endorsed the centrality of state institutions in post-war peacebuilding. But how can external actors go about peacebuilding in a way that reinforces effective and legitimate states without doing harm? Drawing on an International Peace Institute project, this article calls into question the assumption that peacebuilding can be boiled down to building state institutions. The article argues that the process of building states can actually undermine peace, postulating five tensions between peacebuilding and statebuilding even as it asserts that strong state institutions remain crucial for consolidating peace. Identifying three crucial state functions for peacebuilding, the article emphasises the complex interrelationships among legitimacy, state capacity and security in post-conflict societies.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document