Historias Prohibidas del Istmo: Central American Communists during the Rise of Twentieth Century Fascism, 1920-1940
Building on a chapter from their current book project, Historias Prohibidas del Istmo: Central American Communists during the Rise of Twentieth-Century Fascism, 1920-1940, Dr. Cárcamo’s talk explores the development of the first Communist Party of Costa Rica. In it, she argues that women, particularly schoolteachers, were influential figures during the party’s formative years. Moreover, she discusses how these schoolteachers heavily influenced the party’s political platform on women’s and children’s rights, making it one of the first political parties in Central America to develop a program around these issues. The schoolteachers did this by challenging and critiquing traditionally “taboo” issues around gender, sexuality, and reproductive rights, including engaging in debates about prostitution, child labor, gender roles, abortion, traditional bourgeois family structures and dynamics, education, and women’s suffrage. The groundbreaking organizing of these women, inspired by their socialist-feminist values, was fundamental to the party’s trajectory, including its struggle against fascism.
Presenter Biography
Jennifer A. Cárcamo is an independent filmmaker and scholar. She is currently a University of California President’s and Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine in the Chicano/Latino Studies Department, where she is completing her book manuscript Historias Prohibidas del Istmo: Central American Communists during the Rise of Twentieth Century Fascism, 1920-1940. She holds a PhD in History from UCLA and an MA in Documentary Film and History from Syracuse University. Her research has been published in the Latin American Law Review, Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos, Race and Class, and Feminist Formations, where her article was awarded “Best Paper” by the National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) in 2024. She is best known for her documentaries Children of the Diaspora: For Peace and Democracy (2013) and Eternos Indocumentados: Central American Refugees in the United States (2018). She is a social movement historian specializing in the contemporary transnational history of mass organizations and political movements within, across, and outside Central America/Mesoamerica. Professional Website: https://jennifercarcamo.com