Class Visit: Exploring Central America’s Authoritarian Past and Feminist Organizing

On April 16, 2025, students from LAS 240 / ANT 242, Ethnographies of Authoritarianism: A Feminist Reading from Contemporary Central America, taught by Dr. Grazzia Grimaldi, Postdoctoral Research Associate and Lecturer in the Program in Latin American Studies (PLAS), visited Special Collections at Firestone Library for a hands-on exploration of Central America’s complex sociopolitical history.

The visit was guided by Fernando Acosta Rodríguez, Librarian for Latin American, Iberian, and Latino Studies, who curated a special archival exhibition for the class. The display featured a range of rare and compelling materials drawn from the Latin American Ephemera Collection, the Women in Central America: 1960–2004 Collection (digitally available here), the Guatemala News and Information Bureau Archive (large portions digitally available here), and private collections of Salvadoran guerrilla movements.

Students engaged with an array of primary sources—including correspondence, photographs, propaganda, clippings, bulletins, reports, action alerts, pamphlets, posters, and other ephemera—showing the everyday lives, political activities, and key roles of revolutionary groups, women’s rights organizations, NGOs, and feminist collectives in shaping the history and politics of the region. Key topics across the archives included U.S. imperialism, civil wars, guerrillas’ everyday life, the gendered politics of democratic transition, as well as feminist activism around reproductive justice, land and territorial defense, and incarceration in Central America.

During the visit, students moved eagerly between collections, particularly drawn to the candid war photography in private archives and feminist organizing. These arresting images added visceral, embodied dimensions to the revolutionary movements and feminist organizing explored in class, revealing the political aesthetics and affective landscapes of resistance under authoritarianism. The archival experience powerfully complemented classroom readings, offering a rare opportunity to ground theoretical discussions in historical documentation. Engaging with these rich, multi-layered materials brought depth, texture, and immediacy to the ethnographies studied throughout the semester, offering new insights into the region’s contested histories and ongoing fights for justice and liberation.