Building from Dr. Jennifer Cárcamo’s current book project, this talk explores the historical and ideological origins of Central America’s communist parties, specifically in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, from 1920-1940. Cárcamo chose this period precisely because it preludes the revolutionary war period of the late twentieth century in Central America (1960-1996), an era that has received exceptional attention from scholars.

While Cárcamo's book makes three central arguments regarding the development of both fascism and communism in Central America, for the purposes of this talk, she focuses on an excerpt from chapter 4, Bananas and (Wo)men: Communist Schoolteachers, Black Migrant Laborers, the Threat of Fascism in Costa Rica, which discusses the development of the first Communist Party of Costa Rica. Ultimately, in this chapter, Cárcamo argues that women, particularly schoolteachers, were influential figures in the formative and developing years of the first Communist Party of Costa Rica.

Speaker bio: Jennifer A. Cárcamo is an independent filmmaker and scholar. She is currently a University of California President’s and Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine in the Chicano/Latino Studies Department, where she is completing her book manuscript Historias Prohibidas del Istmo: Central American Communists during the Rise of Twentieth Century Fascism, 1920-1940. She holds a PhD in History from UCLA and an MA in Documentary Film and History from Syracuse University.

Sponsor(s): Latin American Institute, César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Chicano Studies Research Center, Labor and Workplace Studies