Date of Award

Fall 1-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

History

First Advisor

Grandin, Greg

Abstract

This dissertation argues that Afro-Caribbean and Garífuna radicals in 20th-century Honduras forged, at different times, radical, race-conscious, and sometimes anti-imperialist and nationalist politics that contested both U.S. corporate domination and the racialized exclusions of the U.S and Honduran nation-state. Focusing on the period between 1920 and 1963, it traces struggles across the Caribbean coastal cities of La Ceiba, Trujillo, Puerto Cortés, and Tela. By foregrounding Black and Indigenous working-class actors, like Centeno García and Alfonso Lacayo, it highlights how racial capitalism, labor radicalism, and anti-Black state and corporate repression intersected in Honduras’ banana economy. The stories of individuals like Centeno García and Dr. Alfonso Lacayo and the broader movements and processes they took part in or were surrounded by—Garveyism, communism, Black internationalism, to name a few—are only glimpses into the rich yet still unexplored historical repertoire of Black consciousness, Indigenous sovereignty, and popular upheaval across the Central American and Caribbean region. Drawing on multilingual and multi-sited archival materials and oral histories, the dissertation employs a national and transnational framework and contributes to Central American history, Black radical thought, and Atlantic Studies by centering voices often erased from national and transnational narratives.

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