This session will examine the textual cultures that emerged within the context of U.S. imperialism in Central America between 1850 and 1950. Presentations will address how textual formats both enacted and resisted U.S. authority, and their embeddedness in imperial power structures, resistance movements, and cultural expression. From popular expressions in ephemera like pamphlets, posters, and flyers, to newspapers, magazines, and additional literary manifestations, writers from both the U.S. and Central America negotiated the complex landscape of American expansionism and Central American political and cultural autonomy. This panel corresponds with the mission of the allied organization, The Society for Textual Scholarship whose work explores the ideological structures and material processes that shape the creation, transmission, reception, production, and interpretation of texts, broadly conceived.
Each of our four panelists will speak for 12 to 15 minutes, which leaves between 15-27 minutes for discussion. Panelists will also circulate their papers in advance to facilitate scholarly discussion following the presentations. Here are brief descriptions of the individual presentations:
“Román Mayorga Rivas’s Transnational Centroamericanismo in La Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York”
Gabriela Valenzuela – University of Southern California
Attending to literature and culture, and configurations of ideal Central American womanhood in these writings nuance analyses of La Revista Ilustrada de Nueva York as a U.S. Latine text in two ways: First, it highlights the centroamericanismo with which Rivas imbues the magazine, illustrating Central Americans engaging in shared notions of nineteenth-century latinidad. Second, paying attention to Rivas’ strategy renders the January 1890 issue of La Revista a transnational Central American text, widening the parameters of a nineteenth-century Central American textual culture marked by ambivalence.
“Leyendas de Guatemala: Fleeing the U.S.-Central America Nexus to Reinforce National Culture in a European Context”
Stephen Henighan – University of Guelph
This paper explores contradictions of Nobel Prize winner Miguel Ángel Asturias’s Leyendas de Guatemala as a bulwark against U.S. references and practices, and an assertion that Europe –particularly France, where writers such as Paul Valéry praised Asturias’s work—offers an alternate authorizing culture perceived (incorrectly) as non-imperialist. By publishing his texts in Madrid, promoting them in Paris (where they were translated into French by the eminent editor Valéry Larbaud), and casting them as “legends,” a form predating the reign of industrialized U.S. Anglo-Protestant cultural production, Asturias both collaborated with, and resisted, European romanticization of Mayan culture as part of the project of consolidating the Guatemalan nation against potential U.S. suzerainty.
“A New Modernista Nation?: Literary Nationalism as Anti-Imperialism in Panama’s El heraldo del istmo.”
Andrew Reynolds – Texas Tech University
El heraldo del istmo, a literary magazine directed by Guillermo Andreve directly following Panamanian independence from 1904 to 1906, combined literary expression from Rubén Darío’s Latin American Modernista movement, patriotic news, and advertisements stemming from the new Panamanian nation as well as its U.S. colonizers. In this presentation Reynolds argues that El heraldo del istmo is a representation of a new national literature in Panama that is a manifestation of Modernismo with an intense new nationalism that balanced an American presence on the isthmus with new literary voices that critiqued the neocolonialism while existing within a regional literary movement focusing on cosmopolitanism, literary renovation, and a strong transnational network of artists, diplomatic leaders, poets, and intellectuals.
“Anti-imperialist writings and women’s rights”
Patricia Arroyo Calderón – UCLA
Arroyo Calderón’s paper examines some of the ways in which Central American women writers and activists engaged with anti-imperialist discourses during the decades of the 1910s-1930s, focusing on the cases of Salvadoran Prudencia Ayala and Costa Rican known by her pen name of Carmen Lyra. Through the analysis of the short writings of these two authors, this presentation aims to highlight how Central American women were central figures in anti-imperialist writing and organizing during the early 20th century. Many of them took advantage of the new cultural and literary spaces opened up by unionista and antiimperialist projects (as well as by the burgeoning anarchist and communist movements) in order to center conversations related to women’s roles.
These panelists represent both junior and advanced scholars. Two of our panelists are Hispanic academics, including one who is from Central America. We consider this group to be an effective representation of a diversity of scholarly perspectives, ethnic-based voices, academic levels, and diversity of genders.