U.S. Central American Racial Constructs and Cultural Diversity

Limited to graduate students. Exploration of indigenism, indigeneity, afro-indigeneity, Blackness, mestizaje, mulattaje, ladinization and other racial-gendered constructs in Central America by critically engaging scholarship, census data, and oral histories to understand Central American communities in U.S. Analysis on their origins and how these racial-gendered stratifications were naturalized through cultural practices. Engages cultural practices as strategies of survival for populations working against historical erasure especially enacted by nation-state. For example, why is Blackness erased in national narrative of El Salvador, why problematize Costa Rica’s claim of racial equality, why and how do Garifuna communities assert their indigeneity while also engaging multiple practices and discourses of Blackness? Examination also of how these communities face genocide, ethnocide, feminicide, and strategies of racial passing and resistance.

S/U or letter grading.