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Aviva Chomsky

Aviva Chomsky Biography

Historian

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“For intellectuals and elites, invisibilizing and forgetting are a way of creating blissful ignorance that allows them to enjoy their privilege without acknowledging its basis in exploitation. Forgetting allows them to avoid the shame that would come from seeing.”

PoliticsHistoryShameExploitationCentral AmericaPriviledge
Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
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“The church wanted souls; the government wanted subjects and taxes; the conquistadors wanted gold. In each case, they needed people, and they needed people identified as Indian. But they each sought to remake Indigenous peoples to fit their own desires. The church claimed rights to evangelize Indigenous peoples, the Crown to tax them, and the conquistadors to enslave them. As they jostled for control, they subjected Indigenous forms of religion, governance, and labor to their sometimes-competing objectives.”

HistoryIndigenousColonizationCentral America
Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
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“Large-scale Central American migration to the United States dates to the civil wars of the 1980s and came primarily from El Salvador and Guatemala. Most came fleeing political violence, and their presence became politically very inconvenient for the Reagan administration, which was seeking to justify its support for these countries’ governments. Others were economic refugees. Either way, the refugees gave the lie to Reagan’s claims of the governments’ legitimacy and right to US support.”

HistoryImmigrationCentral America
Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
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“Very few US Americans can name a single political leader in Central America. We have the privilege of “forgetting” about these countries. Yet US political leaders, parties, and policies are the stuff of everyday conversation in Central America. People there don’t have the luxury of ignoring or forgetting what is going on in the United States, because they know that US presidential elections, policy decisions, and economic developments are likely to deeply affect them.”

PoliticsForeign PolicyCentral AmericaPriviledge
Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
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“One of the conceits of forgetting in the United States is the idea that colonialism ended in 1776 when the new country declared independence. Central American countries, too, celebrate their independence heroes and wars as historical milestones. But in both regions, the colonial roots ran deep and profoundly shaped the new countries. In the United States, independence meant a surge of settler colonial expansion that incorporated Central America into its sights. In Central America, colonial racial hierarchies shaped the new nations even as the United States imposed new forms of neocolonial rule.”

HistoryUnited StatesColonialismCentral America
Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
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“Like other discriminatory legislation in our country's history, immigration laws define and differentiate legal status on the basis of arbitrary attributes. Immigration laws create unequal rights. People who break immigration laws don't cause harm or even potential harm (unlike, for example, drunk driving, which creates the potential for harm even if no accident occurs). Rather, people who break immigration laws do things that are perfectly legal for others, but denied to them--like crossing a border or, even more commonly, simply exist.”

PeopleIfsCountryLawCausesBreakRightsExampleBasesHarmAccidentsDrivingImmigrationOur CountryDrunkBordersAttributesDeniedLegislationArbitraryEqual RightsCrossingsDifferentiateImmigration LawsDrunk Driving
Book:They Take Our Jobs!: And 20 Other Myths about Immigration
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“It’s notable that the countries that most pride themselves on their commitment to equality, human rights, and democracy (like the United States and the western European countries) are precisely those that, in the late twentieth century, invented a new status (‘illegal’) in order to deprive some of their residents of access to equality, human rights, and democracy.I am honored to lend my name to PICUM’s campaign to end the use of the term ‘illegal’ and to challenge the whole concept of illegality as a status.”

HumansEndsCountryStatesWholeUseOrderNamesTermChallengesUnitedUnited StatesDemocracyRightsCenturyPrideLateConceptsCommitmentWesternHuman RightsAccessCampaignsIllegalHonoredTwentieth CenturyNotableResidentsEuropean Countries
Author:Aviva Chomsky
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