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In 1899, the United Fruit Company (UFCO) was officially incorporated in Boston, Massachusetts, beginning an era of economic, diplomatic, and military interventions in Central America. This event marked the inception of the struggle for economic, political, and cultural autonomy in Central America as well as an era of homegrown inequities, injustices, and impunities to which Central Americans have responded in creative and critical ways. This juncture also set the conditions for the creation of the Transisthmus—a material, cultural, and symbolic site of vast intersections of people, products, and narratives.

Taking 1899 as her point of departure, Ana Patricia Rodríguez offers a comprehensive, comparative, and meticulously researched book covering more than one hundred years, between 1899 and 2007, of modern cultural and literary production and modern empire-building in Central America. She examines the grand narratives of (anti)imperialism, revolution, subalternity, globalization, impunity, transnational migration, and diaspora, as well as other discursive, historical, and material configurations of the region beyond its geophysical and political confines.

Focusing in particular on how the material productions and symbolic tropes of cacao, coffee, indigo, bananas, canals, waste, and transmigrant labor have shaped the transisthmian cultural and literary imaginaries, Rodríguez develops new methodological approaches for studying cultural production in Central America and its diasporas.

Monumental in scope and relentlessly impassioned, this work offers new critical readings of Central American narratives and contributes to the growing field of Central American studies.

A biography of Artists Call, an influential 1980s artist group that protested US intervention in Latin America.

The 1980s saw the flourishing of neoliberalism in all realms of culture. In the fine arts, libertarian individualism, media sensationalism, and profit motive converged in million-dollar auctions—and a widespread insistence that activism had no place in the arts. Yet even some participants of this elite New York art world resisted. Dreams of a Continent tells the forgotten story of a diverse collective that defied culture-industry norms by condemning Reagan-era imperialism in Latin America while building transnational solidarity.

Drawing on fresh archival discoveries, Erina Duganne reconstructs the political imagination of Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America. A network with more than a thousand members in New York City, Artists Call produced thirty-one exhibitions in its brief life, along with poetry readings and performances that brought together US and Latin American cultural workers in support of self-determination throughout the hemisphere. This richly illustrated volume shows how the aesthetics of Artists Call emphasized historical contingency in order to envision radically alternative futures. In the process, its activism fostered a global community that overcame stark North-South power imbalances.