A Central American Genocide

Rubber, Slavery, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Guatusos-Malekus

Bibliographic Data

ID2109433
AuthorsM Edelman (0000-0001-7359-1858, City University of New York, corresponding author)
Year1998
Volume40
Issue2
Pages356-390
Publication date1998-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s001041759800111x
OpenAlexW2078923399
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited14

In 1919, when Carlos Gagini penned this two-sentence definition of hulero for a dictionary of 'Costa Rican-isms,' he matter of factly specified murderousness, slaving, terrorism, and Nicaraguan nationality as intrinsic characteristics of rubber tappers. Few other entries in Gagini's compilation reveal so tellingly a key implicit objective of the country lexicons that Central American intellectuals (for example, Membreño 1982 [1895]) began to publish in the late nineteenth century: the specification, through Spanish dialectology, of a still emergent national identity vis-è-vis neighbors who-until recently-had not been clearly distinct Others but simply fellow subjects first of one or another province of the Spanish Captaincy General of Guatemala and later, briefly, of the Mexican Empire (1821-23) and the independent Central American Federation (1823-38). And none of the other generally concise entries in Gagini's dictionary hints so directly at the links between processes of commodity creation, physical and cultural death, and the construction of nations

Ancient history · Archaeology · Central asia · Empire · Ethnology · Genocide · Immigration · Linguistics · Nationalism · Nationality · Political science · Politics · Sentence · Cuban History and Society · Historical Studies in Central America · Historical Studies in Latin America · History · Law · Philosophy

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