Central American Studies

This chapter by John M. D. Pohl and Michael D. Mathiowetz appears in a Dumbarton Oaks volume edited by Christopher S. Beekman and Colin McEwan. Please cite the chapter and volume as follows:

Pohl, John M.D. and Michael D. Mathiowetz
2022 Our Mother the Sea: The Pacific Coastal Exchange Network of Postclassic Mexico. In Waves of Influence: Pacific Maritime Networks Connecting Mexico, Central America, and Northwestern South America, Christopher S. Beekman and Colin McEwan, eds.: 167–201. Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D. C.

Collective Photo Exhibit presented at El Museo del Barrio, oct-nov 2017

Children are key actors in processes of internal and transnational mobility across the Americas, one of the most dynamic regions in the world. In critical migration studies, children and adolescents are increasingly recognized as powerful subjects and decision-makers. Alone, as well as alongside their families and communities, they construct, shape, and transform migration processes. However, an adult-centric understanding of migration still permeates social discourse, where adult voices and points of view are predominant over children’s and adolescents’ own perspectives.

With this exhibit we aim to present a more complex and nuanced view on child migration. By highlighting children’s own knowledges, reflections and experiences we hope to contribute to build a deeper understanding of the ways they construct and shape crucial migratory processes across the continent. Aware that we are dealing with extremely complex historical processes, the focus of this exhibit explores the following dimensions: 1) child migration within Mexico; 2) migratory circulations from Mexico, South and Central America to the United States; 3) life in the communities in which they settle in the United States and the American Dream; and 4) the processes of deportation and repatriation to their (or their parents’) countries of origin.

We believe that the migration of children and adolescents across the continent should be understood as a result of growing global and regional inequalities arising from multiple forms of violence, impoverishment and dispossession. When children migrate, they are claiming a human right; they are going home to their parents after many years apart; they are looking for an income that will provide their siblings with the opportunities they didn’t have; they are resisting gangs and drug cartels’ strategies of fear and domination. But foremost, they are challenging our understanding of childhood, innocence, dependency, citizenship, and even geography and time. They are asking us to reshape our conventional perceptions to be able to create a world where borders aren’t walls that keep us apart, but spaces for new possibilities and learning.

Dreaming up North: Children on the Move Across the Americas is presented by El Museo del Barrio, in collaboration with Colectiva Infancias, and a network of social anthropologists and photographers.

Coordination and assembly: Valentina Glockner Fagetti
Script and museography: Soledad Álvarez Velasco and Valentina Glockner Fagetti Research: Ana Luz Minera Castillo, Cinthya Santos Briones, Sandra Guillot Cuéllar, Sarah Gallo, Soledad Álvarez Velasco, Tamara Segura Herrera, Valentina Glockner Fagetti
Photographic documentation: Cinthya Santos Briones, Katie Orlinsky, Luis Enrique Aguilar Pereda, Valentina Glockner Fagetti
Map design: Elvira Morán

El propósito de este informe—como insumo para el proyecto, “Fortalecimiento de espacios de diálogo sobre la reforma y la modernización de la administración pública”—es caracterizar y evaluar los diferentes tipos de descentralización que se han implementado en el sistema educativo salvadoreño desde los años 80. Fundamentalmente, los objetivos son: a) ofrecer una visión de cómo ha funcionado la descentralización, b) explicar las formas en que la descentralización ha funcionado (y no ha funcionado) y c) compartir lecciones que puedan informar a futuros esfuerzos relacionados con la descentralización. Los tipos de descentralización de la educación que se examinarán pueden resumirse de la siguiente manera: Regionalización y nuclearización, Gestión basada en la comunidad, Departamentalización, y Sistemas Integrados de Escuela Inclusiva de Tiempo Pleno (SI-EITP).

Geographers describe how social movements elaborate alternative histories in public spaces. However, few studies have examined how such alternative histories are conditioned by underlying historical narratives. We engage this topic by analyzing public art created in 2004-5 by the Guatemalan chapter of a transnational organization called Hij@s por la Identidad y la Justicia contra el Olvido y el Silencio, Sons and Daughters for Identity and Justice Against Oblivion and Silence, (H.I.J.@.S.). Composed of the sons and daughters of people whom the Guatemalan government forcefully disappeared and murdered during the Civil War (1960-1996), the group seeks to maintain a historical memory of the war and represents an important voice of the Guatemalan left. Our analysis shows how public art created by H.I.J.@.S. resists the continued effects of enforced disappearance by elaborating historical memory in which the disappeared have a place. We also document how images and texts created by the group privilege the actions of ladinos--Guatemalans who identify as non- indigenous--and their organizations and open limited space for imagining Maya agency or the possibility that Mayas were subject to enforced disappearance. We suggest that differences in the ways Mayas and ladinos are portrayed in public art created by H.I.J.@.S. in 2004-5 is an effect of the leftist historical narrative that informed the group’s work at the time. While we agree with H.I.J.@.S. that there is a battle to be waged against official histories of the war, we argue that leftist historical narratives must also be transformed to be more inclusive of indigenous knowledges.