Vrana - Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements 1929âe 1983

Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements 19291983

Key Texts in Anti-Colonial Thought

Series Editor: David Johnson, The Open University

Available titles

The Revolutionary and Anti-Imperialist Writings of James Connolly 18931916

Edited by Conor McCarthy

African American Anti-Colonial Thought 19171937

Edited by Cathy Bergin

Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements 19291983

Edited by Heather Vrana

Anti-Colonial Texts from Central American Student Movements 19291983

Edited by Heather Vrana

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editorial matter and organisation Heather Vrana, 2017
the chapters their several authors, 2017

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ISBN 978 1 4744 0371 9

The right of Heather Vrana to be identified as the editor of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498).

Published with the support of the Edinburgh University Scholarly Publishing Initiatives Fund.

Key Texts in Anti-Colonial Thought re-publishes selections of anti-colonial texts and locates them in their colonial/neo-colonial contexts. Leading scholars in Postcolonial Studies introduce a wide variety of hitherto hard-to-access anti-colonial writings. Each volume opens with a substantial introduction contextualising the selected texts, setting out the specific forms of colonial governance, economic exploitation, and cultural imperialism they wrote against, as well as the communities of resistance, the solidarities and the distinctive political cultures that sustained them. In addition, the volumes provide extensive explanatory notes, annotated guides to further reading, and concluding discussions of the texts relevance today. The series aims to counter the dependency of Postcolonial Studies on a narrow range of theorists and literary texts, and to provoke reflection on the connections between anti-colonial thought and contemporary resistance to global inequalities.

David Johnson

To edit a source reader is to become indebted to many people. First, I must thank David Johnson. As a new friend and editor, David has been kind, generous, funny, persuasive, and provocative, by turns. His subtle encouragement has shaped this volume and my thinking in many ways that I am still coming to appreciate. At Edinburgh University Press, Adela Rauchova, Jackie Jones, and Rebecca Mackenzie have been so very helpful and enthusiastic in their support of the project.

In Guatemala, I am forever thankful for the generosity of Thelma Porres Morfn and the excellent team of archivists at the Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamrica (CIRMA). Likewise in Nicaragua, Margarita Vannini and Lissette P. Ruiz at the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y Centroamrica (IHNCA) gave generously of their time and expertise, providing a most welcoming intellectual community in Managua. Yale Universitys library staff, especially in Microfilm collections and Interlibrary Loan, were key to the success of this volume. Many thanks to the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) for decades of important advocacy and for the use of many texts. The university presses of the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Honduras, Universidad de El Salvador, Universidad de Costa Rica, Universidad de San Carlos, and Universidad Autnoma Nacional de Nicaragua also continue to provide inimitable intellectual resources. My thanks to David Daz Arias for the La Tribuna article. Thanks, too, to the families of Manuel Mora Valverde and to Daisy Zamora, who kindly permitted the inclusion of their texts in the volume. Kevin Coleman enthusiastically granted permission for the use of the photograph that appears on the cover.

Along the way, the generosity of Vikki Bell, Kevin Coleman, David Daz Arias, Anne Eller, Jeff Gould, Peter Guardino, David Kazanjian, Ellen Moodie, Claudio Prez Cruz, Alexandra Puerto, Christy Thornton, and J. T. Way shaped this project in ways for which I am very grateful. Many of these kind scholars I met through the Tepoztln Institute for the Transnational History of the Americas, which has become my intellectual home.

Without the hard work of Rachel Nolan, Allessandra Paglia, Jorge Cullar, Claudia Rueda, and Vikram Tamboli, this project would have been impossible.

As ever, thank you to my mother and father, Mary and Jon Vrana, and to my sister, Anna Vrana. Thanks to kidd, whom I blame for this. This book has taken shape in New Haven, Seward, London, Managua, Antigua, Guatemala City, Bloomington, New York City, and Brighton. In each of these places, the friendship of Alex Abbotts, Siobhan Carter-David, E. Cram, Taylor Dean, Brie Gettleson, Julie Gibbings, Laura Grover, David Kazanjian, Lauren Lederman, lvaro Len, Devi Mays, Fabian Menges, Cassi Meyerhoffer, Chris Sloan, Chris Sullivan, and Mike Tallon has enlivened the solitary process of curating this text.

All of the texts below (except those by Daisy Zamora) were originally published in Spanish and carefully translated by a team of translators: Rachel Nolan, Jorge Cullar, Allessandra Paglia, Vikram Tamboli, and Claudia Rueda. These translators gave generously of their time and attention tremendous scholars, they are also excellent translators. When necessary, I have edited the translations and added explanatory footnotes. Occasionally, when a text was especially difficult to translate and required a more involved process of editing, I have noted dual authorship. The poems by Daisy Zamora were translated by Margaret Randall and Elinor Randall, and published in Clean Slate: New and Selected Poems, Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1993. Translators are noted below each text.

This project presented a curatorial challenge. Only a fraction of the nearly two hundred texts that I initially considered for the volume are included here. Ultimately, the principle of selection was based on two criteria: authorship and exemplary or unique expression of anti-colonial thought. Most of the texts below were written by students. Occasionally, texts written by faculty or administrators were included when they represented an important moment or conversation at the university about students or students roles in society. Sources that reflected exemplary or unique perspectives were often chosen over manifestos that were, generally, the most common type of student-authored anti-colonial text. After all, a book of only manifestos would soon become a tedious read. The sources reflect a variety of genres, including manifesto, memoir, legislative decree, interview, and poetry. In order to capture a range of understandings and deployments of anti-colonial theory, I also selected texts that pursued anti-colonial perspectives in unique ways. Given the scope of the series, documents that outlined global solidarities and affinities between Central American student movements were especially important.