Fighting for El Salvador, from Wisconsin
In the 1980s, people from across the US used civil programs and other direct connections with Salvadorans to build opposition to El Salvador’s oligarchy.
A Private Coup: Guatemala, 1954
A 1954 coup, backed by the CIA and private citizen William Pawley, installed an authoritarian regime and touched off four decades of civil war in Guatemala.
Remembering the Mirabal Sisters
International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women honors three sisters who were murdered by the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic.
Asian South America
The migration of Asian people—from India, from China, from Japan—to South America and the Caribbean began as early as the sixteenth century.
Mexico’s First Liberated City Commemorates Its Founding
The City of Yanga was founded after a group of enslaved Africans, led by Gaspar Yanga, rebelled against colonial rule.
The Women (Real and Imagined) Resisting Caudillos
In Latin America and the Caribbean, women's groups have acted to oppose military dictatorships. In fiction, their roles are rarely that of protagonist.
How Mexican and Cuban Music Influenced the Blues
The pianist and composer Jelly Roll Morton once told an ethnomusicologist that real jazz tunes needed "tinges of Spanish."
The Mexica Didn’t Believe the Conquistadors Were Gods
The indigenous Mexica (Aztec) people were overwhelmed by a superior technological force ruthlessly used against them.
La Pelona: The Hispanic-American Flapper
Flapperismo was no more appreciated by Hispanic guardians of traditional femininity than it was by Anglo-American ones.
The Monroe Doctrine’s Checkered Past
This 1823 policy initially focused on preventing European colonization in the Americas. But different US presidents have used it to mean different things.