scholarly journals The Power of the Imagined Community: The Settlement of Undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States

1994 ◽  
Vol 96 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo R. Chavez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Central Americans

A Brief History of Central America

2021 ◽  
pp. 173-180
Author(s):  
Rachel Gibson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Central America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Family Stories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Current Events ◽  
History Of

The history of Central America directly impacts current events, and exploring the social, political, and economic reasons why Guatemalans and other Central Americans emigrate to the United States deepens our connections to family stories and legacies. This chapter offers a brief overview of the region....

Buffering North America

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-159
Author(s):  
David Scott FitzGerald
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
North America ◽  
Central America ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Camps ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
Southern Border ◽  
The U.S

Washington and Ottawa have tried to keep out most of the Central Americans fleeing to North America beginning in the civil wars of the 1980s. Central America and Mexico buffer the United States, which in turn buffers Canada. The U.S. government has propped up client states in Central America; paid for refugee camps; and provided training, equipment, and financing for migration controls further south. Mexico has weak rights of territorial personhood, so rather than strictly controlling entry across its southern border, its entire territory has become a “vertical frontier” with the United States. Aggressive U.S. enforcement at the Mexican border traps transit migrants in Mexico and creates an incentive for the Mexican government to deport them. But harsh U.S. enforcement on its border and the fact that it targets Mexicans as well as third-country nationals impedes the bilateral cooperation that would make Mexico a more effective buffer.

The United States and the Central American Federation

1967 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 107-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Grieb
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
American Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central American ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
American Federation ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
American Union

The administration of Warren G. Harding found itself facing the issue of Central American Union when it assumed office in March, 1921. Central Americans had debated combination since independence, and the question came to the fore periodically, resulting in numerous attempts to reunite the isthmus. But the previous proposals had all faltered when governments favoring confederation were overthrown. The issue was periodically revived whenever renewed coups returned pro-union regimes to power in several of the countries. In this way the debate continued throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, ebbing and flowing with the frequent revolutions, coups, and counter coups that constituted Central American politics.

A stranger in my own home: Prolonged travel and the (re)negotiation of Otavalo identity in Carlos Arcos Cabrera’s Memorias de Andrés Chiliquinga (‘Memories of Andrés Chiliquinga’) (2013)

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Megan O’Neil
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rite Of Passage ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Indigenous Identity ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Indigenous Groups ◽  
The World ◽  
Globalized World

As one of Ecuador’s largest indigenous groups, Otavalos have become unique in their successful marketing of cultural products both nationally and internationally. The Otavalo diaspora has led to sizeable communities settling not only in larger cities within Ecuador, but around the world. Travel, especially to Europe and the United States, is now a rite of passage for young Otavalos, and these travelling merchants spread their heritage through the sale of products, from clothing and fabrics, to music and handicrafts. In turn, many spend a significant portion of the year (and their life) detached from the Otavalo community, moving through spaces in which they are labelled as ‘other’ to ones in which they are exclusive members of an ‘imagined community’. With a focus on Carlos Arcos Cabrera's 2013 novel Memorias de Andrés Chiliquinga (‘Memories of Andrés Chiliquinga’), this article explores the effects of prolonged travel on indigenous identity, and the ways in which the young Otavalos today are facing traditional and Eurocentric stereotypes in order to (re)negotiate what it means to be indigenous in a globalized world.

De-border Yourself/Desfronterízate

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 394-403
Author(s):  
Rihan Yeh
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
Labor Migrant ◽  
Border City ◽  
The Us ◽  
Mexico Border ◽  
Promotional Video ◽  
Class Distinction

AbstractIn 2018, amid US president Donald Trump’s ongoing calls to “build the wall” along the US-Mexico border, protestors in the Mexican border city of Tijuana took up his incendiary rhetoric and turned it against the caravans of Central Americans on their way to seek asylum in the United States. This essay explores the deeper logics of recent anti-migrant sentiment in Mexico by unpacking a promotional video that was popular there during Trump’s campaign. Though the video ostensibly controverts Trump’s call to “build the wall,” I argue, it ultimately reinforces an underlying distinction between the “we” it convokes and the undocumented labor migrant to the United States. The essay thus seeks the roots of contemporary Mexican xenophobia in older dynamics of class distinction within Mexico. Tijuana, finally, helps grasp how the border exacerbates these dynamics, and why US racism can make distinctions among Mexicans and among Latin Americans fiercer and more pernicious.

Preparing Sanctuary

2018 ◽  
pp. 248-306
Author(s):  
Mario T. García
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Health Services ◽  
El Salvador ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
The United States ◽  
Legal Services ◽  
Refugee Status ◽  
Central Americans ◽  
The Church

This chapter concerns the preparation of the sanctuary movement at La Placita Church in downtown Los Angeles. In 1981, Fr. Olivares was transferred by his order to this church at the same time that thousands of Central Americans entered into the United States seeking refugee status after fleeing civil wars and repression in El Salvador and Guatemala. Fr. Olivares immediately embraced them as children of God and commenced programs at La Placita to assist them. He fed and clothed the refugees, and provided health services, legal services, and other forms of assistance. The most controversial part of this outreach was allowing some of the men to sleep overnight in the church itself. All of these activities prepared the way for Fr. Olivares to formally declare his church a public sanctuary.

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