States of Defeat

US Imaginaries of Revolutionary Central America

Eric A. Vázquez

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English

University of Minnesota Press
18 November 2025

Social & cultural history; Ethnic studies; Hispanic & Latino studies; Political science & theory

The cultural reverberations of Central America's failed revolutions on US intellectual thought

The thwarted Central American revolutions during the latter half of the twentieth century marked a watershed in what had become a global anti-imperialist movement striving for a more egalitarian future. Examining a range of documentary, literary, and artistic works, States of Defeat looks at how left-wing intellectuals in the United States reckoned with the fallout from these defeats through wide-ranging creative expressions of indignation, cynicism, and grief.

As he argues for the historical significance of Central America in the transition out of the Cold War, Eric A. Vzquez shows how the unfulfilled revolutionary ambitions in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala prompted intellectuals in the United States to reexamine their desires for radical transformation. Analyzing novels, memoirs, anthropological writings, documentary film, and archival materials from the 1980s and 1990s, he demonstrates how these texts prefigured later anxieties about secrecy and securitization, the rise of nongovernmental organizational forms, and state failure.

Examining the legacies of unfulfilled anti-imperialist political ideals and their implications for the global left in the twenty-first century, States of Defeat offers a renewed perspective on the function of Central America in the US imagination. Amid a resurgence of crackdowns on public protest and a rise in virulent anti-immigrant campaigns throughout the United States and globally, Vzquez presents urgent and valuable insights into the viability of political solidarity and state power.

By: Eric A. Vázquez
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 19mm
Weight: 340g
ISBN: 9781517919900
ISBN 10: 1517919908
Pages: 256
Publication Date: 18 November 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Contents Abbreviations Introduction: States of Agitation, States of Defeat 1. Uprising, Pacification, and the Depopulated Imaginary: HÉctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier 2. On the Refusal of Finite Perceptions: Liberation Theology, Documentary Mourning, and the Catholic Martyrs of El Salvador’s Civil War 3. On the Magnitudes of Solidarity: Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Analogical Thinking, and the Miskitu Question 4. Love’s Proxy: Jennifer Harbury’s Searching for Everardo and the Limits of the Law 5. Outrages and Relinquished Attachments: David Stoll Demystifies Me llamo Rigoberta MenchÚ 6. Cynical Reason in the Northern Triangle: Horacio Castellanos Moya and the Aesthetics of Terror Coda: Roberto Lovato’s Unforgetting, Biopolitics, and the State Fragility Paradigm Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Eric A. Vzquez is assistant professor in American studies and Latina/o/x studies at the University of Iowa.

Reviews for States of Defeat: US Imaginaries of Revolutionary Central America

""Insightful and brilliant, States of Defeat uses the defeat of the Central American revolutionaries by US–backed, brutal right-wing militaries to analyze the meaning of revolutionary failure for the United States. Eric A. Vázquez expertly uses these failed revolutions to explore the contiguity between Central American and US politics: the rise of the surveillance state, incarceration, and the radical right."" - María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, author of Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States ""This riveting and carefully argued book analyzes the complex politics of US solidarity with Central America in the 1980s. Centering people in the Central American diaspora for their work as artists and activists, Eric A. Vázquez asks hard questions about what is at stake, who benefits, and what matters in the making of alliances across borders. Every chapter is rich with a nuanced account of anti-imperialist creativity and commitment."" - Melani McAlister, author of Promises, Then the Storm: Notes on Memory, Protest, and the Israel–Gaza War