Central America is an imaginary archipelago,

a fractured, unknown, diverse, contradictory whole,

thrown between two seas, as if before two mirrors

~enchantment and disenchantment~, where anything can happen

And it's all happening.

Are you interested in the irregular, the marginal, the overlooked,

where stupidity and fear converge,

intelligence and passion,

astonishment and wonder, which is neither North nor South,

that seems to rot and yet survives?

Then this region interests you.

(Miguel Huezo-Mixco, Salvadoran poet)

Central America is painful, shocking, and challenging. It is this sensitivity to the region's evolution that makes it possible for people in different countries, in places far apart within and beyond the American continent, from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and theoretical frameworks, with different occupations and interests, and with distinct trajectories, ideological affiliations, and visions of the isthmus, to converge on the common project "O Istmo" (The Isthmus). This Working Group emerges from the network of Central American and Central Americanist researchers, intellectuals, and activists "O Istmo," founded in 2013 in Brazil.

“Isthmicity” (Guevara Berger, 2017) is one of the main characteristics of Central America that has shaped both its cultural and historical development and its current place as a region within the “world-system,” where it is often considered a strategic location by global geoeconomics. As a “bridge” or “transit point,” it is conceived as part of the spaces of the globe reserved for the functioning of that system. A necessary, yet marginal, part. An obligatory passage that, nevertheless, occupies a peripheral position.

From the outside, Central America is seen as a territorially, culturally, and historically homogeneous region. It is “the” isthmus. Its geography, destiny, and curse simultaneously determine how its people are viewed from abroad. This is the condition upon which the enduring perception of it as a “geostrategic area” arises, a perception that has historically fueled the ambitions and interference of colonial powers seeking control of interoceanic trade and other forms of extractivism.

From within, however, the asymmetries and ethnic, ideological, and sociopolitical plurality among peoples and territories call into question their supposed unity and “obvious” identity, based on their isthmian location. Are we “the” isthmus or are we Central America? What does it mean to be Central America? How much does the isthmian condition matter in shaping our Central American identities, even though they are fragmented?

The uncritical acceptance of this Westernized and self-serving way of perceiving Central America entails a deliberate myopia that naturalizes its supposed marginality and omits its complexities, its links with the “outside” and the socio-historical specificities so that, in its situation of invisibility —a desirable and necessary condition for the centers of the system— the “region” serves the expected fulfillment of its systemic role.

In “O Istmo” we seek to confront the naturalization of such a view, as well as to investigate its dense epistemological consequences for the social sciences and humanities exercised from and on the region.

Situations of the magnitude and gravity of migrant exoduses, the violently repressed social protests in Honduras, the pact of the ultraconservative powers in Guatemala with the United States, the electoral debacle of the left in El Salvador, the attack on the secularism of the State in Costa Rica and the painful Nicaraguan crisis, with its hundreds of deaths, are recent examples of the upheavals that are shaking the region at the present time.

The dawn of the 21st century compels us to recall the cycles of political and neocolonial domination that have shaped the still-existing regimes of exploitation, without forgetting the mechanisms for perpetuating oligarchic privileges and consolidating the power of vested interests that determine the course of the region's fragile democracies. As a result, military coups like the one in 1954, which ended a decade of popular government in Guatemala, prevented further progress on strategic issues such as agrarian reform.

In more recent chapters of Central American politics, the cycles of time have once again placed the Honduran army at the epicenter of another political crisis. In 2009, Manuel Zelaya's removal from power demonstrated that, despite the active participation of the military, contemporary coups are relatively milder than those that marked the second half of the previous century. But the aims remain the same: to hinder the development of a more participatory democracy and prevent popular sectors from accessing resources and decision-making power.

Meanwhile, throughout the region, alliances between local elites and transnational corporations continue to consolidate their power projects, stifling autonomous and sustainable developments, leaving our recent history marked by deep scars on the bodies of those who dare to dream of fairer and more balanced societal projects.

In rural areas, Indigenous and peasant communities witness the progressive and systematic plundering of their territories, finding themselves invaded and displaced from their common resources: forests, woodlands, and waters. The expansion of the extractive development model, inaugurated with the atrocities of the colonial regime, persists in the collective memory. This forces us to relive tragedies such as the murder of 15 Indigenous leaders in Central America in the last 10 months. The vulnerability of human rights defenders calls into question the institutional framework of the region.

Belligerently neoconservative policies and practices operate in the isthmus, promoting various forms of social and institutional violence that attempt to silence voices demanding more and better public policies without any kind of discrimination. This results in human rights violations, such as the criminalization of abortion in all its forms, leading to prison sentences of 30 to 40 years for thousands of women, even those who experienced obstetric complications during their pregnancies; the normalization of pregnancies in girls and adolescents between the ages of 10 and 12; sexual violence against Indigenous women; attempts to constitutionally prohibit same-sex marriage and civil unions; and, despite the existence of basic legislation on sexual and reproductive rights, its proper and timely implementation remains one of the major challenges at the regional level.

The intensity of the isthmus contrasts sharply with the lack of awareness surrounding it in other regions of the Americas and the rest of the world. It is surprising not only how little Central America is known in Latin America, but also how little Central Americans themselves know about it. The contribution of the "O Istmo" initiative and this Working Group is to offer a comprehensive, integrated, and organic perspective, without losing sight of the specificities of this territory that was once the Central American Federation, the noble dream of Francisco Morazán, betrayed in favor of a fictitious and spurious balkanization.

Central America is, therefore, an open wound, home and escape for Central Americans, a pending issue for a large part of academia and international public opinion, which is often astonished by the news that occurs daily in places that they could hardly locate on a map.

Seismic, volcanic, incendiary—none of us who have left our isthmus have ceased to be shaken by it. Its tragic nature and its splendor dwell within us. Through “O Istmo” we travel across the isthmus. In the “open veins” of the network we circulate, think, debate, suffer the pains, and celebrate the beauties of the region. We overcome nostalgia. We never cease to be surprised, bewildered, and to learn. Because Central America is bewilderment, paradox, perpetual deconstruction, decentering.

Three distinctive features characterize this group: 1) multi- and interdisciplinarity; 2) the search for new epistemological paradigms to understand Central America as a region; and 3) the intention to give visibility to the Central American region within the context of the social sciences and humanities in Latin America and the world. Diversity, the many questions raised by Central American realities, and the need for ongoing dialogue about them define us.

Rather than adhering to a single theoretical framework or a specific approach, this group embraces its heterogeneity as an epistemological strength. Our theoretical framework is still under construction and is part of our ongoing exploration. We are committed to a pluralistic and complex theoretical production. Rather than a single lens, it is more accurate to speak of a kaleidoscope capable of encompassing nuances, perspectives, and multiple understandings.

The isthmus, as a space of transit, has historically revealed itself as a propitious place from which to reposition and rethink the peripheral, making transience the focal point from which to observe and be observed. It is about reclaiming transit as both the axis and the space for rethinking centers and delocalizing their centrality. The name of our Working Group alludes to this, and that is why we retain it: the Central American isthmus compels us to rethink centers. Geographic, geopolitical, and geoeconomic centers, as well as theoretical, epistemological, cultural, and symbolic centers, must be rethought.

Continuing the work of the previous three-year period, the Working Group adopts three central themes to structure its diverse composition: 1) Geopolitics; 2) Narratives; and 3) Subjectivities. Beyond its work on Central America, it aims to be a point of South-South connections among intellectuals, with a concrete proposal for critical thinking: identifying structural conditions, contemporary changes, and how these are experienced by a wide variety of social and cultural actors and groups.

We are part of the process of forming research networks at the Latin American level that seek to create points of contact between “other” epistemic experiences, critically positioned in relation to centers of knowledge production. We affirm the need to establish horizontal relationships and strategic links between the intellectual sphere and concrete sociopolitical struggles in order to be part of the continuum of resistance, transgression and new epistemologies in different Central American spaces.

Central America has been the scene of a diversity of competing geopolitical interests and a set of unresolved structural problems that have given rise to processes such as the bloody internal wars that took place in the 1980s. During the last few decades, the isthmus has been the focus of attention for a generation of academics concentrated on problems mainly related to the causes and consequences of armed conflicts, the particularities of peace agreements and the challenges of the transition to democracy.

Today, new interests are at play that intersect with old challenges and give new nuances to phenomena such as migration, violence, profound gender inequality, drug trafficking, organized crime, inequality, marginalization, dispossession, the struggle for sovereignty, the defense of territories, the difficulties for the development of art and culture, and the eternally pending regional integration, to mention the most pressing ones.

The neoconservative and heteronormative patriarchal context that permeates institutional discourses and practices imposes a limitation when delving into issues of sexuality, bodies, and sexual diversity, becoming a challenge for the social sciences and research. Achieving a balance between addressing subjectivities and narratives becomes imperative, since the focus is often on geopolitics, macropolitical and macrosocial processes, forgetting that the body, as the territory of micropolitics (Foucault, 1993; Palevi, 2017), is the origin and end of any political or social process of national or regional scope.

The axes of geopolitics, narratives and subjectivities as articulators of spaces for dialogue, plurality of voices and perspectives and the search for new views towards the region operate based on three premises:

1) The priority of reality over theory. It is worth mentioning here the category of Historical Reality contributed by the Basque-Salvadoran philosopher Ignacio Ellacuría. It is the turbulent and unsettling regional reality that summons and motivates us to understand it. To approach this understanding with a priori Theoretical approaches prove futile and sterile.

2) The commitment to the region as a whole, with the conviction that, just as there is no complete understanding of Latin America without Central America, there is also no understanding of each Central American nation without an integrated vision of the realities of the isthmus. The work of the Guatemalan sociologist Edelberto Torres Rivas faithfully demonstrates this.

3) The critical spirit that starts from the very notion of “isthmus” as a whole and from the tendency to “homogenize” and “marginalize” the region, hiding the voracious interests of the geo-economic centers, to the denunciation of the reactionary character of elites still colonial in the ultra-conservative, racist, sexist and exclusionary sense of the popular majorities, passing through the visibility and denunciation of heteronormative and patriarchal devices dominant even in sectors considered progressive and present in our collective unconscious as peoples.

Regarding the social sciences produced in the region, Central America is caught between the uncritical adoption of foreign theoretical paradigms and the disruption that its realities pose to any paradigm. Central America shatters certainties, deconstructs assumptions, and unsettles preconceived notions. Just as with its unique geography, the region is radically intertwined with and dependent on the rest of the continent, yet its particularities lead it down unstable, challenging, and difficult-to-grasp paths. It is impossible to remain detached from current Latin American and global debates, and at the same time, it is incomplete to limit oneself solely to them. Ideas produced outside the region fail to account for its specific regional characteristics.

In this regard, one of the purposes of this Working Group is to promote, strengthen, and generate more and better spaces for encounter and dialogue within Central American academia itself. Our website, www.oistmo.com, has been, is, and will continue to be a privileged venue for this exchange, now with the vision of becoming an observatory for the region. Our digital books also reflect this commitment. The knowledge produced in and about Central America needs and deserves to be known, debated, disseminated, and studied.

The CLACSO virtual seminar “The Recent History of Central America Through Its Literature,” held in 2018 during the first three-year period of the Working Group, aimed to situate Central American literature within a dynamic dialogue with the social sciences and with Latin American literary production. And we hope, in this new phase, to continue providing a space for discussion around the fertile connections between history, memory, and literature, because this relationship is particularly evident in Central America. The novel, poetry, theater, and short stories reflect the political and social tensions of their time; they offer the possibility of imagining society and delving into the historical voids, the festering wounds, the degradations, and the conflicts of the region.

Trauma, passion, wounding, questioning, demands, and creation… Through these lens, we observe our region and its unsettling realities. How can we think about Central America better and more creatively? How can we recover the isthmus's traditions of thought and humanism to contribute to understanding its complexity? How do narratives help to make visible the paradoxes and the collective unconscious of the region? What social sciences and what research does contemporary Central America demand? These are some of the questions that emerge from our reflections.