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9780299360405 Academic Inspection Copy

Receiving States

Refugee Policy in Central America During the Salvadoran Civil War
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From the outbreak of civil war in El Salvador in 1979 through its conclusion in 1992, some 1.5 million Salvadorans fled the violence. This book focuses on the displaced Salvadorans who remained in Central America, seeking refuge in Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Their story has been almost entirely overshadowed by the greater numbers who fled farther north to the United States; however, as Rachael De La Cruz shows, the Central American history of Salvadoran refugees is rich, complex, and instructive for scholars of refugee studies, international relations, and human rights. The isthmus nations that received Salvadoran refugees did not react consistently, and the arriving Salvadorans themselves were not passive participants. National mythologies, perceptions of economic contributions and burdens, regional militarization, state violence, and varying capacities for refugee activism, compounded by the fraught and variable circumstances of the Cold War, together shaped the multitude of government attitudes and policies toward the refugee communities within these countries' borders. Rarely were refugees simply "a problem to solve"; rather, they represented and acted as catalysts for economic, social, and geopolitical change.
Rachael De La Cruz is an assistant professor of modern Latin American history at Montana State University Billings. Her work has been published in The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, Journal of Caribbean History, and elsewhere.
List of Illustrations List of Abbreviations Introduction 1 National Myth and Self-Image Making 2 Refugee Settlements and Economic Contributions to the Nation 3 Refugees as Threats to the Nation 4 Militarization and State-Sponsored Violence at the Border 5 Refugee Decision-Making and Collective Action Conclusion Acknowledgments Notes Selected Bibliography Index
"A much-needed contribution to the growing literature on refugee migration in the Global South." - Yen Le Espiritu, author of Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es)
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