Receiving States: Refugee Policy in Central America During the Salvadoran Civil War (Critical Human Rights)

From the outbreak of civil war in El Salvador in 1979 through its conclusion in 1992, some 1.5 million Salvadorans fled the violence.This book focuses on the displaced Salvadorans who remained in Central America, seeking refuge in Belize, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.Their story has been almost entirely overshadowed by the greater numbers who fled farther north to the United States; however, as Rachael De La Cruz shows, the Central American history of Salvadoran refugees is rich, complex, and instructive for scholars of refugee studies, international relations, and human rights. The isthmus nations that received Salvadoran refugees did not react consistently, and the arriving Salvadorans themselves were not passive participants.National mythologies, perceptions of economic contributions and burdens, regional militarization, state violence, and varying capacities for refugee activism, compounded by the fraught and variable circumstances of the Cold War, togethe