My work deals with Central American social movements, ethnic conflicts and political violence. My first book analyzes the rise of peasant and labor movements in Somocista Nicaragua. My second book deals with the development of the myth of mestizaje in Nicaragua and the simultaneous assaults on indigenous communities in central and western Nicaragua. I then wrote a book (coauthored) on the mobilization and massacre of Indians and peasants in El Salvador. This project derives from a National Edowment for the Humanities collaborative project that I co-directed with Charles Hale and Darío Euraque. That project, which dealt with the problems of ethnic identity and violence in Central America, involved 15 Central American scholars. I also co-directed and co-produced “Scars of Memory: El Salvador, 1932.” (Icarus, 2003), a 53-minute documentary film. In 2011, I finished La Palabra en el Bosque (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2012), a 56-minute film that deals with the impact of Liberation Theology in Morazan, El Salvador and the origins of the civil war. I recently published Solidarity Under Siege: The Salvadoran Labor Movement, 1970-1990 with Cambridge University Press. I also completed Port Triumph/Puerto El Triunfo a 58-minute documentary film that also deals with the rise and decline of the labor movement in El Salvador during the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on Puerto el Triunfo, a shrimp port.
The College of Arts + Sciences