Central America's Forgotten History cover art

Central America's Forgotten History

Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration

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Central America's Forgotten History

By: Aviva Chomsky
Narrated by: Aida Reluzco
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About this listen

 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. Americas Emigration & Immigration Freedom & Security Politics & Government Racism & Discrimination Social Sciences Latin American Thought-Provoking Central American History

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All stars
Most relevant
Brilliant, thoroughly researched and accessible. Very informative and illuminating, Chomsky attempts to rescue much of this troubling history from oblivion.

Excellent.

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It is true that very little attention has been paid in Europe to Central America. My atlas shows two countries that don’t get a plug in this book: Costa Rica and Panama, so why? The answer seems to be that they donZ🐩’t match the author’s agenda. This said, once you get past the almost 40-minute rant in the first two chapters you do actually get to some really detailed history but not enough about the Spanish colonial past or about the ngigenous pre-colonial cultures.
We all kmnow about US meddling on its ‘back door’ and all right-minded people deplore it, but this author over-complicates matters with too much preaching and shouting, and once Ihad the information I bought the book to find , I fast-forwarded to the end. The book is worth buying for that info, so best stick to the central chapters about the individual countries and skip the rants.

Avoid the rants and you have a good survey.

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I returned this this title after listening to over an hour. I was hoping for an interesting and informative listen that would tell me all about central America's history. There is no structure, one minute the author mentions stuff about the 80s, then stuff from the 1800s. It's basically the author just randomly waffling on about how bad colonialism is (I agree otherwise I wouldn't have chosen the book) whilst throwing the occasional date, person or factoid out there.

Very Disappointing

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