Learning Lists

The monthly learning lists are a compilation of books, articles, literature, podcasts, videos, and other recommended resources

Bolded hyperlinks indicate a link to a free article or file

Winter 2023/2024

A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians

From one of the foremost historians of and from Palestine, and told through pivotal events and family history

read here

Books and Book Chapters

Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible by Arturo Escobar

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi 

Media Articles

Criminalizing Resistance by Charlotte Kates at Jacobin

FBI Informant owned gun at center of Standing Rock case by Will Parrish at Intercept 

FBI sent several informants to Standing Rock protests, court documents show by Alleen Brown at Grist

Israel in Central America by Margo Gutierrez and Milton Jamail at Middle East Research and Information Project

Israeli ministry drafted 'concept' proposal for transfer of Gaza civilians to Egypt at France 24

‘Moral evil, economic good’: Whitewashing the sins of colonialism by Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni at Al Jazeera

New Israeli border inspection point for Gaza aid won’t solve Rafah backlog at Al Jazeera

STOP COP CITY from Atlanta to Palestine: A Syllabus at Writers Against the War on Gaza

The Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing explained: ‘It is not a normal border’ by Lara Bullens at France 24

Why Does Biden Keep Making the Same Dangerous Comment About Jews? By Sophie Hurwitz at The Nation

Podcasts

The Beginning: Monroe Doctrine and Migration at Under the Shadow

Films

Amreeka directed by Cherien Dabis

Battle of Algiers directed by Gillo Pontecorvo

Salt of this Sea directed by Annemarie Jacir

“Reflecting on the experience, philosophy, and practice of indigenous and Afro-descendant activist-intellectuals and on current Latin American theoretical-political debates, Escobar chronicles the social movements mobilizing to defend their territories from large-scale extractive operations in the region. He shows how these movements engage in an ontological politics aimed at bringing about the pluriverse—a world consisting of many worlds, each with its own ontological and epistemic grounding. Such a politics, Escobar contends, is key to crafting myriad world-making stories telling of different possible futures that could bring about the profound social transformations that are needed to address planetary crises.”

Maya K’iche’ leader Rigoberta Menchú was there; she tells the story.  

The story of how the Guatemalan people came to take up arms attempting to overthrow a brutal military dictatorship and regain their democracy.

March and April 2023

Books and Book Chapters

Chakrabarty (2000) Introduction of Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and historical difference

de León (2015) Introduction and Chapter 6 of The land of open graves: living and dying on the migrant trail

Escobar (2020) Introduction of Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible

Holmes (2023) Introduction, Chapter 2, and Chapter 4 of Fresh fruit, broken bodies: migrant farmworkers in the United States

Pécoud (2015) Introduction and Chapter 3 of Depoliticising migration: Global governance and international migration narratives

Wekker (2016) Introduction and Chapter 4 of White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race

Journal Articles

Raghuram (2009) Which migration, what development? Unsettling the edifice of migration and development

February 2023

Books and Book Chapters

Pleasure Activism by adrienne mariee brown

Introduction of From Threatening Guerrillas to Forever Illegals: US Central Americans and the Cultural Politics of Non-Belonging by Yajaira M. Padilla

Videos

Primer restaurante Hondureño en Londres at Una Hondureña por el mundo

News Articles

El Salvador Arrests Prominent Anti-Mining Activists at NACLA 

The Hashtag That Helped Us Survive the War on Migrants by Freddy Jesse Izaguirre

Matan a defensor de tierra garífuna en Tela at La Prensa

Journal Articles

Aguilar-Støen (2016) Beyond Transnational Corporations, Food and Biofuels: The Role of Extractivism and Agribusiness in Land Grabbing in Central America

Ahmed (2011) The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society

Castillo (1996) Migration, Development and Peace in Central America

November 2022

Books

Caña de azúcar y palma Africana: Combustibles para un nuevo ciclo de acumulación y dominio en Guatemala by Alberto Alonso-Fradejas, Fernando Alonzo, and Jochen Dürr

Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown

Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail by Jason De Leon

Videos

Sanchez (2014) País errante: un documental que presenta la cara humana del desplazamiento en Colombia

News Articles

Etnia garífuna de Honduras denuncia desalojo violento de asentamiento por parte de Policía at El Pais CR

Guatemala’s growing palm oil industry fuels Indigenous land fight at Al Jazeera 

How the world got hooked on palm oil by The Guardian 

How Colombia became Latin America’s palm oil powerhouse at Mongabay

“No Sabemos Ni Siquiera Donde Están Los Restos de Nuestros Seres Queridos” at NACLA

Journal Articles (Free pdfs available)

Achiume (2019) Migration as decolonization

Araya (2019) The politics of dispossession in the Honduran palm oil industry: A case study of the Bajo Aguán

Dürr (2017) Sugar-Cane and Oil Palm Expansion in Guatemala and its Consequences for the Regional Economy

Edelman and Leon (2013) Cycles of Land Grabbing in Central America: an argument for history and a case study in the Bajo Aguán, Honduras

Granovsky-Larsen (2013) Between the Bullet and the Bank: Agrarian Conflict and Access to Land in Neoliberal Guatemala

Harvey (2003) “Accumulation by Dispossession” (Chapter) in The New Imperialism

Hervas (2021) Mapping oil palm-related land use change in Guatemala, 2003–2019: Implications for food security

Kotef (2020) “Introduction” (Chapter) in The Colonizing Self

Pietilainen and Otero (2018) Power and dispossession in the neoliberal food regime: oil palm expansion in Guatemala

Solano (2013) Development and/as Dispossession: Elite Networks and Extractive Industry in the Franja Transversal del Norte” (Chapter) In War by Other Means: Aftermath in Post-Genocide Guatemala

Torpey (1998) Coming and Going: On the State Monopolization of the Legitimate "Means of Movement"

September 2022

Books

Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown

August 2022

Books

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown

Written during the cold war,

“Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.”

May 2022

Books

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

Recorded Events

History of (Irregular) Adoption in Guatemala by Next Generation Guatemala

Lessons from Central American Resistance & Diasporic Solidarity by SOA Watch

Articles

Members of Congress join Solidarity Organizations on a Fact-Finding Mission to Central America at SOA Watch

Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America Delegation: Report at InterReligious Task Force on Central America

One Hundred Days of the New Government of Honduras at WFP Solidarity Collective

La migración centroamericana se feminiza at La Republica.Net

El Salvador extends state of emergency amid gang crackdown at Al Jazeera News

Bitcoin Is Costing El Salvador But President Bukele Isn't Stressed at Bloomberg News

Trans Queer Migrations and Border-Making: Central American LGBTQ+ Caravans as Life-Making Projects at QT Voices at University of Texas at Austin

Indian Creek Villagers Reject the Royals’ Visit to their Community at Love FM

Los creyentes en bitcoin buscan un nuevo paraíso en Atitlán at El Faro

Biden is expanding the US govt’s brutal anti-immigrant machine at Multipolarista

Crossing the Various Borders as a Central American LGBT at El Nuevol Sol

Imprisoning children: How El Salvador’s adults fail young people involved in gangs at Global Voices

The Emerging Gang State in El Salvador at Global Americans

Estado de excepción en El Salvador: la política de "mano dura" de Bukele contra las pandillas at France24

‘I Can’t Be Myself Here’: At the Border, Transgender Women Navigate 2 Worlds at New York Times

El Salvador extends state of emergency amid gang crackdown at Al Jazeera

El Salvador’s Bukele warns gangs lead to ‘prison or death’ at Al Jazeera