THIS IS REVOLUTION>podcast Ep. 147: The Selective Memory of Empire: The Forgotten History of Central America w/ Aviva Chomsky

In Aviva Chomsky’s latest book, “Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence and the Roots of Migration” she speaks of collective memory by saying:

“All memory is, in a sense, constructed. As individuals or as members of groups, we privilege some memories over others, and we create coherent and meaningful stories and understandings of our past and present out of fragments of memory. Forgetting is an inevitable part of memory. By highlighting-remembering certain details, events, or interpretations, we erase or forget others. We forget because our individual and collective histories overflow with detail that would form a chaotic blur if we did not form them into coherent narratives. But when we rely on one narrative, we may be suppressing others. “

 
Racist rhetoric regarding immigrants as well as draconian policy on immigration didn’t start with Donald Trump, and it doesn’t seem to be ending under the current Biden administration either. The United States intervention in Central American politics has been a long-standing affair with disastrous results for the people of the region. Weather it’s the CIA backed coups in the name of U.S private industry, Drug War Policy, or suppressing Leftist uprisings, or assassinating democratically elected leaders, the United States has been a central part of the current wave of “migrant caravans”.

 
About Aviva Chomsky:
Much of my scholarly work can be traced back to the year I spent working for the United Farm Workers union back in 1976-77. I credit that experience with sparking my interest in the Spanish language, in migrant workers and immigration, in labor history, in social movements and labor organizing, in multinationals and their workers, in how global economic forces affect individuals, and how people collectively organize for social change.
 
My recent work has been in three main areas: the Cuban revolution, northern Colombia's coal industry, and immigration and undocumentedness in the United States. Thematically, I incorporate the issues of colonialism, economic development, migration, race, labor, environment, and global inequality. My book Linked Labor Histories looks at globalization as a long historical process with labor history at its center. It examines how employers have used regional inequalities to gain access to cheaper workers through immigration, plant relocation, and by using the threat of these two tactics to discipline their workers. I focus on several interrelated case studies in New England and Colombia, including the textile industry, the banana industry, and the coal industry, to argue that local labor histories are best understood in a global context. I recently published a brief, analytical college-level text on the Cuban Revolution, two books on immigration: They Take Our Jobs! And Twenty Other Myths about Immigration, and Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal, and a book on Central America's Forgotten History. My current research weaves together labor and environmental histories, focusing on a region of Colombia where Indigenous and Afro-descended peoples have long evaded state control. Today they face an onslaught of extractivist projects and changing legal and social meanings of race and ethnicity in the context of continent-wide movements for plurinationalism and alternative visions of economic development.

 
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