Chomsky, A. (2021). Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration. Beacon Press.
Abstract
At the center of the current immigration debate are migrants from Central America fleeing poverty, corruption, and violence in search of refuge in the United States. In Central America’s Forgotten History, Aviva Chomsky answers the urgent question “How did we get here?” Centering the centuries-long intertwined histories of US expansion and Indigenous and Central American struggles against inequality and oppression, Chomsky highlights the pernicious cycle of colonial and neocolonial development policies that promote cultures of violence and forgetting without any accountability or restorative reparations.
Focusing on the valiant struggles for social and economic justice in Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras, Chomsky restores these vivid and gripping events to popular consciousness. Tracing the roots of displacement and migration in Central America to the Spanish conquest and bringing us to the present day, she concludes that the more immediate roots of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras lie in the wars and in the US interventions of the 1980s and the peace accords of the 1990s that set the stage for neoliberalism in Central America.
Chomsky also examines how and why histories and memories are suppressed, and the impact of losing historical memory. Only by erasing history can we claim that Central American countries created their own poverty and violence, while the United States’ enjoyment and profit from their bananas, coffee, mining, clothing, and export of arms are simply unrelated curiosities.
Chomsky, A., & Striffler, S. (Eds.). (2021). Organizing for Power: Building a Twenty-First Century Labor Movement in Boston. Haymarket Books.
Chomsky, A. (2021). A tangle of exclusion: Boston’s black working class and the struggle for racial and economic justice. Organizing for Power: Building a Twenty-First Century Labor Movement in Boston. Haymarket Books.
Chomsky, A. (2021). Immigrants and worker centers in Boston in the shadow of Trump.” Organizing for Power Building a Twenty-First Century Labor Movement in Boston. Haymarket Books.
Abstract
Boston 's economy has become defined by a disconcerting trend that has intensified throughout much of the United States since the 2008 recession. Economic growth now delivers remarkably few benefits to large sectors of the working class -- a phenomenon that is particularly severe for immigrants, people of color, and women. Organizing for Power explores this nation-wide phenomenon of "unshared growth" by focusing on Boston, a city that is famously liberal, relatively wealthy, and increasingly difficult for working people (who service the city 's needs) to actually live in.
Organizing for Power is the only comprehensive analysis of labor and popular mobilizing in Boston today, the volume contributes to a growing body of academic and popular literature that examines urban America, racial and economic inequality, labor and immigration, and the right-wing assault on working people.
Chomsky, A. (2021). Film review of Jeffrey L. Gould, Puerto El Triunfo (Port Triumph). American Historical Review 126:1.
Chomsky, A. (2021, March 20). Will Biden’s Central America plan slow migration, or speed it up? TomDispatch. https://tomdispatch.com/will-bidens-central-american-plan-slow-migration-or-speed-it-up
Chomsky, A. (2021, June 22). Deconstructing the US’s privilege of forgetting its role in Central American crises. Beacon Broadside. https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2021/06/deconstructing-the-uss-privilege-of-forgetting-its-role-in-central-american-crises.html
Chomsky, A. (2021, July 8). The root cause of Central American migration? The United States. Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/08/root-cause-central-american-migration-united-states
Chomsky, A. (2021, July 18). Migration Is not the crisis. TomDispatch. https://tomdispatch.com/migration-is-not-the-crisis
Chomsky, A. (2021, August 22). Using Cuba’s protests as a chance to denounce the left. NACLA. https://nacla.org/news/2021/08/17/cuba-protests-left