Through the Gyre of Americanity: Central American and Californian Print Networks in the 1850s

Jazmín Delgado Flores“Through the Gyre of Americanity: Central American and Californian Print Networks in the 1850s”In this presentation I juxtapose the coverage of US-Central American tensions in Francisco P.... [ view full abstract ]

Jazmín Delgado Flores

“Through the Gyre of Americanity: Central American and Californian Print Networks in the 1850s”

In this presentation I juxtapose the coverage of US-Central American tensions in Francisco P. Ramírez’s Californian newspaper El Clamor Público with contemporaneous commentaries by Central American elites on Mexican Cession in order to reveal racial occlusions at work in these underexplored Latin@ identifications, meaning between dispossessed Californios and the besieged Central American elite. Ultimately, I argue that the direct critical encounter between the US and Central America that occurred in the aftermath of the Mexican American War and the onset of the California Gold Rush forces scholars to reconceptualise the category of Latinidad itself in a crucial moment of its articulation.