Cultural memory and making by US Central Americans

Abstract

This article centralizes the work of Central American US diasporic writers and artists within memory studies while expanding on the emergent ways of seeing and being for US-born or raised Central Americans. I posit that the three cultural makers portrayed in this essay—William Archila (poet), Dalila Paola Mendez (artist), and Cristina Henriquez (novelist)—represent a tendency of writers and artists to embark on projects that signify directly onto Central America through a lens of the imagined from within the United States. Archila’s The Art of Exile (2009) explores the persistence of generational trauma and the deep ambivalence carried within migrant Salvadorans who arrived in the United States as youths during the Salvadoran Civil War. Mendez’s painting of Tayte Feliciano Ama, painted in the style of La Palma, reimagines Los Angeles to recuperate the indigenous leader of the 1930s and the Salvadoran folk art movement. Henriquez’ novel The World in Half (2009) focuses on Panama; the protagonist must work through erasures and denials to recuperate the memories of her North American mother and Panamanian father to reconcile with her own Panamanian American identity. The cultural memory work of these artists and writers contributes to diverse constructions of Latinidad in the United States through counterpoetics, countervisuals, and counternarratives.