Join us for a discussion of Eternos Indocumentados: Central American Refugees in the United States (2018), followed by a Q&A with Director Jennifer Cárcamo and Professor Leisy Abrego (UCLA Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies).
In July 2014, mainstream US media became flooded with images of what they termed “unaccompanied Central American children.” Most of these children—many coming with their parents—were fleeing from the violent consequences of U.S. intervention in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Once in the United States, they were detained in what migrants have come to label “hieleras” (ice boxes) in makeshift detention centers around the country. Rather than providing asylum to these refugees, the Obama Administration used this “humanitarian crisis” to expand the previously defunct practice of family detention. By the spring of 2015, more than 3,000 refugee women, children, and members of the LGBTQI community were illegally detained. Based on interviews with recently arrived Central Americans as well as interviews with organizers leading the struggle on the ground in Central America, this film captures the stories of Central American refugees and explores the root causes of forced migration.
This event is organized in conjunction with Prof. Jennifer Chun’s IDS 110 course: Culture, Power, and Development.
Speaker bios:
Jennifer A. Cárcamo is an independent filmmaker and scholar. She is currently a University of California President’s and Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Irvine in the Chicano/Latino Studies Department, where she is completing her book manuscript Historias Prohibidas del Istmo: Central American Communists during the Rise of Twentieth Century Fascism, 1920-1940. She holds a PhD in History from UCLA and an MA in Documentary Film and History from Syracuse University.
Leisy J. Abrego is Professor in Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Trained in sociology, she is a law & society scholar who studies the intimate consequences of U.S. foreign and immigration policies for Central American migrants and Latinx families in the United States.
