Abstract
This chapter will examine how events connected to colonialism, nation state formation, and wars laid the groundwork for a series of expulsions from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in the twentieth and in the twenty-first century. The period during and immediately following the peace accords is now acknowledged to have been a key moment in the neoliberalization of Central American economies. A renewal of coercive violence under the guise of the drug war has led hundreds of thousands to flee the region over the past decade. This chapter will connect colonialism, racism, and dispossession in Central American history with ongoing economic and coercive violence carried out under US supervision, spurring outward migration by adults and youth.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Acker, A. (1988). Honduras: The making of a Banana Republic. Toronto: Between the Lines.
Betancur, B., Figueredo Planchart, R., & Buergenthal, T. (1993). From madness to hope: The 12-year war in El Salvador: Report on the Commission for Truth in El Salvador. San Salvador: The Commission on the Truth for El Salvador.
Booth, J., Wade, C., & Walker, T. (2009). Understanding Central America: Global forces, rebellion and change (5th ed.). Boulder: Westview Press.
Brown, A., & Stepler, R. (2016). Statistical portrait of the foreign-born population in the United States|Pew Research Center. Pew Research Center. http://www.pewhispanic.org/2016/04/19/statistical-portrait-of-the-foreign-born-population-in-the-united-states-key-charts/.
Center for Justice & International Law, & Human Rights Watch – Americas. (1994). The facts speak for themselves (The Preliminary Report on Disappearances of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras). USA. https://books.google.de/books?id=GDl-bUb 4KIC&lpg=PP1&dq=facts%20speak%20for%20themselves&hl=de&pg=PP3#v=onepage&q=facts%20speak%20for%20themselves&f=false.
Ching, E. (2014). Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the origins of the military regimes, 1880–1940. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/reader.action?docID=10824135.
Dalton, R. (1984). El Salvador (monografÃa) (First). Puebla: Autonomous University of Puebla.
Gibb, T. (2002). US role in Salvador’s brutal war. BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/1891145.stm.
Gilly, A. (1981). Guerra y polÃtica en El Salvador (First). Mexico: Editorial Nueva Imagen.
Gudynas, E. (2009). Diez tesis urgentes sobre el nuevo extractivismo. Extractivismo, PolÃtica Y Sociedad.
Holden, R. H. (2004). Armies without nations: Public violence and state formation in central America, 1821–1960. New York: Oxford University Press.
Johnston, J., & Lefebvre, S. (2013). Honduras since the coup: Economic and social outcomes. Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Jonas, S. (1991). The battle for Guatemala: Rebels, death squads, and U.S. power. Boulder: Westview Press.
Kinzer, S., & Schlesinger, S. (2005). Bitter fruit: The story of the American coup in Guatemala. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
LaFeber, W. (1993). Inevitable revolutions: The US in Central America (2nd ed.). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Latin America Bureau. (1985). Honduras: State for sale. Birmingham: Latin America Bureau.
Machado Aráoz, H. (2013). Orden neocolonial, extractivismo y ecologÃa polÃtica de las emociones. Revista Brasileira de Sociologia Da Emoção, 12(34), 11–43.
Maldonado, R., & Hayem, M. (2015). Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean set a new record high in 2014. Washington, DC: Multilateral Investment Fund, Interamerican Development Bank. http://idbdocs.iadb.org/wsdocs/getDocument.aspx?DOCNUM=39619143.
Mann, G. (2013). Disassembly required. Oakland: AK Press. http://www.akpress.org/disas semblyrequired.html.
Meyer, P. J., & Seelke, C. R. (2015). Central America Regional Security Initiative: Background and Policy Issues for Congress (Congressional Research Service Report). Washington, DC.
Open Society Justice Initiative. (2013). Judging a dictator: The trial of Guatemala’s Rios Montt|Open Society Foundations (OSF). https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/publications/judgi ng-dictator-trial-guatemala-s-rios-montt. Accessed 1 Sept 2016.
Paley, D. (2014). Drug war capitalism. Oakland: AK Press.
Quinones, S. (2014). Unaccompanied kids and unintended consequences. Americas Quarterly. http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/unaccompanied-kids-and-unintended-consequences.
Rabe, S. G. (2015). The killing zone: The United States wages Cold War in Latin America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Renwick, D. (2016). Central America’s violent northern triangle. Washington, DC: Council on Foreign Relations. http://www.cfr.org/transnational-crime/central-americas-violent-northern-triangle/p37286.
Robinson, W. I. (2003). Transnational conflicts: Central America, social change and globalization. London: Verso.
RodrÃguez, A. P. (2009). Dividing the isthmus: Central American transnational histories, literatures and cultures. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Rosnick, D., Main, A., & Jung, L. (2016). An examination of LAPOP’s impact assessment of US violence prevention programs in central America. Washington, DC: Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Rothenberg, D. (2012). Memory of silence: The Guatemalan truth commission report. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Schneider, A. (2012). State-building and tax regimes in central America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, C. (1996). Resisting Regan: The U.S. central America peace movement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Steinberg, M., Height, C., Mosher, R., & Bampton, M. (2006). Mapping massacres: GIS and state terror in Guatemala. Geoforum, 37(1), 62–68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2005.02.003.
The White House. (2016). FACT SHEET: The United States and Central America: Honoring our commitments. Washington, DC. https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/15/fact-sheet-united-states-and-central-america-honoring-our-commitments.
United States Institute of Peace. (1992). Truth commission: El Salvador. http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-el-salvador.
United States Institute of Peace. (1997). Truth commission: Guatemala. http://www.usip.org/publications/truth-commission-guatemala.
United States Institute of Peace. (2012). Commission of inquiry: Honduras 1993. http://www.usip.org/publications/commission-inquiry-honduras-93.
World Bank. (2016). Poverty headcount ratio at $3.10 a day (2011 PPP) (% of population). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.2DAY.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Paley, D. (2018). Capitalism and Crisis in Central America. In: Latham, K., O'Daniel, A. (eds) Sociopolitics of Migrant Death and Repatriation. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61866-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61866-1_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61865-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61866-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)