Central America Studies Section: Black and Indigenous Resistance Histories of Central America

This panel will feature recent work by emerging scholars on the histories of resistance in Black and Indigenous Central American communities. Spanning three centuries and countries, panelists address how these communities defied colonialism, mestizaje, and extractivism through various means. Papers will discuss the use of maize during eighteenth-century El Salvador to retain identity, the emergence of Garveyism in 1920s Honduras and its significance to the Garifuna community today, and grassroots and diasporic approaches to countering cultural extraction and displacement of Garifuna Guatemalan community. These papers showcase innovative methodologies in history and history adjacent disciplines and invite the audience to consider various avenues of resistance strategies.