Central America's Forgotten History

February 15, 2021
A closely argued overview of a region long torn by war and exploitation. Historian Chomsky, coordinator of Latin American studies at Salem State University, writes that in Central America, "forgetting is layered upon forgetting." Against a backdrop of jungles, volcanoes, and agricultural fields, the people there proved victims to generation after generation of foreign resource extractors: first the Spanish, who brutally subjugated Native populations and imposed a castelike system of governance; then European companies that kept the elites in their pockets, building an export economy of coffee and fruit that expropriated land; then U.S. military intervention. The latter is scarcely known to most Americans (and indeed, in its details, to many Central Americans), but it set in motion forces that finally led to the civil wars of the 1970s and 1980s in Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador--the latter two propped up by the Reagan administration, which averred that the governments were committed to human rights along with anti-communism. The latter was surely true, but, as Chomsky notes, the flood of refugees to El Norte "gave the lie to Reagan's claims of the governments' legitimacy and right to US support." Even Jimmy Carter pledged that after the fall of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, "he would not allow another social revolution to occur in Central America." The failed policies of the Trump administration were in line with a system that imposed and promulgated neoliberal policies on what were de facto colonies, but even the wall-builders could do nothing about the resulting exodus. As Chomsky notes, in 1970 the U.S. census counted 114,000 Central American immigrants; as of 2017, there were nearly 3.5 million. Of course, "the real figures are likely higher...because immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, are notoriously undercounted"--and in keeping with her provocative thesis, forgotten as well by "almost all our political leaders, mainstream media, and educational system." A convincing case that much of Central America's violent unrest can be laid at the feet of U.S. leaders.

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Starred review from April 1, 2021

Chomsky (history, Salem State Univ.; Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal) has crafted a fiery, revelatory survey of Central America under U.S. domination. In Chomsky's telling, the region's chronicles form a grim catalogue of extractive economies, anti-Communist dirty wars, and neoliberal austerity and privatization, often at the behest or with the support of the United States. Centuries of Spanish colonialism and decades of U.S.-backed oppression and exploitation kept the region fractured and impoverished. Blowback took the form of mass migration to the United States, as mostly Indigenous peasants fled poverty and narco-violence for better lives in el Norte. Chomsky focuses on Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua; she touches also on Costa Rica and Panama, which escaped the brunt of the suffering that afflicted neighboring countries. She explores how Catholic liberation theology galvanized left-wing opposition and how Mestizo people in power sought to erase Indigenous cultures. Above all, she issues a corrective to hollow critiques of hardline U.S. immigration policies. Chomsky challenges readers to acknowledge that Donald Trump's policies were "only the most recent iteration of over a century of U.S. domination and exploitation of Central Americans." VERDICT A compelling historical synthesis, told with style and moral clarity.--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs

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