Review of "Migration, Refugee Policy, and State Building in Postcommunist Europe" by Triadafilos Triadafilopoulos. (original) (raw)

Book Chapter: Capitalism and Crisis in Central America

"Sociopolitics of Migrant Death and Repatriation" , 2018

This chapter takes a long view of the overlapping crises of economic and coercive violence in Central America, which have been activated through colonization, nation-state formation, and the wars of the twentieth century. A historical panorama helps establish a baseline of understanding that allows us to better interpret present- day events in the region. Such an approach avoids falling into a shallow and self- serving reading of the current crisis that would suggest that the reasons for mass out-migration are based on local mismanagement of politics and the economy or on rumors and misinformation. Within this historical overview of events, I integrate a series of journalistic interviews carried out in Guatemala in the spring of 2016. The combination of up-to-date information from activists, lawyers, and journalists on the ground with a historical overview of Central America aims to provide readers with a nuanced examination of issues often brushed over in mainstream media and buried in difficult to access academic literature on the region. Theoretically, this chapter shares Ana Patricia Rodríguez’s view that “the same devastating effects produced in the South by the North come to represent Central America as a natural(ized) site of decomposition and underdevelopment, which requires regeneration by outside forces. Regeneration from the North comes to Central America in the form of imperialism, (neo)colonialism and now neoliberalism” (2009: 200). Put another way, a careful, if concise, read of history in the region teaches us that often it is foreign invasion and intervention imposed under the guises of development, security, and prosperity that create the very crises they claim to be solving. Rodríguez, A. P. (2009). Dividing the isthmus: Central American transnational histories, literatures and cultures. Austin: University of Texas Press.