Professor Dario A. Euraque, History Department Chair and Professor of History and International Studies, published his fifth book in Spanish this past August. He co-authored the book with Honduran historian Yesenia Martínez, former Director of the Historical Research Division of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, and former Director of the Honduran Center for Research and Documentation at the National Archive of Honduras.

The book is titled La Diáspora Africana en los Programas Educativos de Centroamérica (Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras, 2013); in English, The African Diaspora in Educational Programs in Central America.

The photo on the book’s cover is by Professor Pablo Delano, of Trinity College’s Studio Arts Program. Trinity International Studies and English major Carolina Galdiz ’14 is currently translating the Spanish edition into English thanks to a Trinity College Faculty Research Completion Grant. The book features several additional photos from Professor Delano’s collection, which he took during his last trip to Honduras in April of 2009.

During the last ten years, the historiography of Central America has registered new contributions to the study of colonialism and the presence and ethnohistory of Africans and people of African descent in this region of the Americas. This has been especially the case in Costa Rica and Panama, followed by Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and lastly El Salvador.

Some of the most interesting studies have articulated their arguments and problematics with questions and debates associated with the literature on the African Diaspora in the Americas, in general, and with the older traditions of studying slavery in the region, including comparative perspectives with the United States.

La Diáspora Africana en los Programas Educativos de Centroamérica addresses the following question: To what extent has the new research and publications in the historiography of the African Diaspora in Central America affected the ways that the school curriculums present the history of the afro-descendant populations in the countries of the region?

The documentary base of the book originated with a 2009 research grant from UNESCO; various versions of the chapters were presented in conferences in Honduras, Canada, France and Mexico between 2010 and 2012.

 

Professor Euraque presented the book with Ms. Martínez in Honduras and in Costa Rica this last October, traveling to those Central American countries to lecture and meet with officials from the Honduran and Costa Rican Ministries of Education in an effort distribute the book more widely in the region given that it focuses on comparative historical processes.

This publication is the culmination of many years of research and public service work by Professor Euraque on the African Diaspora in his native Honduras, including when he served as the country’s Director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History between 2006 and 2009. He published an earlier version of Chapter One in the Spanish edition late last year in The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery: New Directions in Teaching and Learning, edited by Paul Lovejoy and Benjamin P. Bowser (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2012).

Congratulations to Professor Euraque and Ms. Martínez on this notable accomplishment.