The thwarted Central American revolutions during the latter half of the twentieth century marked a watershed in what had become a global anti-imperialist movement striving for a more egalitarian future. Examining a range of documentary, literary, and artistic works, including Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Héctor Tobar, Jennifer Harbury, and Horacio Castellanos Moya, States of Defeat looks at how left-wing intellectuals in the United States reckoned with the fallout from these defeats through wide-ranging creative expressions of indignation, cynicism, and grief. Here, author Eric A. Vázquez is joined in conversation with Maritza E. Cardenas and Jason Ruiz.

Eric A. Vázquez is assistant professor in American studies and Latina/o/x studies at the University of Iowa and author of States of Defeat: US Imaginaries of Revolutionary Central America.

Jason Ruiz is director of institute for latino studies and professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is author of Americans in the Treasure House: Travel to Porfirian Mexico and the Cultural Politics of Empire and Narcomedia: Latinidad, Popular Culture, and America’s War on Drugs.

Maritza E. Cardenas is director of global studies and associate professor of English at the University of Arizona. She is author of Constituting Central American-Americans: Transnational Identities and the Politics of Dislocation.

EPISODE REFERENCES:

Blood on the Border / Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Empire’s Workshop / Greg Grandin

The Ruse of Repair / Patricia Stuelke

Las Sandinistas! / film

Jesse Alemán

Jennifer Harbury

Jean Donovan

Rigoberta Menchú

The Tattooed Soldier / Héctor Tobar

Horacio Castellanos Moya

David Stoll

María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo
Don White Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador archive at California State University Northridge

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:
"Insightful and brilliant, States of Defeat uses the defeat of the Central American revolutionaries by US–backed, brutal right-wing militaries to analyze the meaning of revolutionary failure for the United States."
—María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, author of Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States

"Eric A. Vázquez asks hard questions about what is at stake, who benefits, and what matters in the making of alliances across borders. Every chapter is rich with a nuanced account of anti-imperialist creativity and commitment."
—Melani McAlister, author of Promises, Then the Storm: Notes on Memory, Protest, and the Israel–Gaza War

The book States of Defeat: US Imaginaries of Revolutionary Central America by Eric A. Vázquez is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.