Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements 1929–1983

Collects more than sixty foundational documents from student protest from the frontlines of revolution

Few people know that student protest emerged in Latin America decades before the infamous student movements of Western Europe and the U.S. in the 1960s. Even fewer people know that Central American university students authored colonial agendas and anti-colonial critiques. In fact, Central American students were key actors in shaping ideas of nation, empire, and global exchange. Bridging a half-century of student protest from 1929 to 1983, this source reader contains more than sixty texts from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Costa Rica, including editorials, speeches, manifestos, letters, and pamphlets. Available for the first time in English, these rich texts help scholars and popular audiences alike to rethink their preconceptions of student protest and revolution. The texts also illuminate key issues confronting social movements today: global capitalism, dispossession, privatization, development, and state violence.

Key Features




Makes available for the first time to English-language readers a diverse archive of more than sixty foundational documents and ephemera accompanied by an introduction, section introductions and further reading
Expands the geographic scope of anti-colonial movement scholarship by presenting anti-colonial thought in the most contentious decades of the 20th century from a region peripheral even within anti-colonial and postcolonial studies
Advances anti-colonial and postcolonial studies by taking urban students as critical actors and so recasting thematics of the peasantry, the rural/urban divide, and religion
Suggests a new social movement chronology beyond the so-called "Global 1968," or the common notion that student movements peaked in May 1968 in Paris, New York City, Berkeley, and Mexico City