Central American-Americans in the Second Decade of the Twenty-First Century: Old Scars, New Traumas, Disempowering Travails

This paper analyzes the changing effects of the Central American migration in the first decade of the 21st century. It argues that after 9/11, security conditions at the border gradually became tighter. Despite this, immigrants continued to enter the US in massive numbers, because the Central American post-war period became marked by attacks, robberies, and kidnappings for ransom, regardless of social status. Thus, illegal immigrants kept crossing the Mexico and US borders, despite the fact that safety conditions for passage through Mexico became harrower, until repressive measures against them were implemented in the US with the launching of the Postville Raid in 2008. The article proceeds to analyze three key components that marked the 2000s for Central American immigrants: 1) “the crossing” of the 3,000-mile long journey from the isthmus to the US border; 2) military service in the Middle East for those with legal resident status; and, 3) the daily risk of living without legal papers in the US in an increasingly hostile environment. Ultimately the paper places these experiences within what Aníbal Quijano has called the “coloniality of power” deployed to move thinking beyond Western and Eurocentric conceptualizations, to provide a new way of dealing critically with the Central American-American diasporic experience.