At the heart of the current immigration debate are Central American migrants fleeing poverty, corruption, and violence to seek refuge in the United States. In A Forgotten History of Central America, Aviva Chomsky answers the pressing question “How did we get here?” Focusing on the centuries-long intertwined history of U.S. expansion and Native and Central American struggles against inequality and oppression, Chomsky highlights the vicious cycle of political policy of colonial and neo-colonial development, promoting a culture of violence and oblivion without any accountability or restorative compensation.

Focusing on the heroic struggle for social and economic justice in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, Chomsky restores these facts and attractions to people’s consciousness. Tracing the origins of Central American settlement and migration to the Spanish conquest and bringing us to today, she concludes that the more direct origin of migrant work comes from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras were in the middle of a war and a possible US war over the 1980s and peace accords of the 1990s that set the stage for neoliberalism in Central America.

Chomsky also examines how and why history and memory are suppressed and the impact of work on historical memory loss. Only by erasing history can we appreciate the Central American countries that created their own poverty and violence, as the United States benefited and profited from bananas, coffee, mining. Their mines, clothing and weapons exports are simply unrelated curiosities.

• Central America’s Forgotten History

• By: Aviva Chomsky