Professor Paul Almeida and Ph. D. candidate Luis Rubén González Márquez published "Interpreting Repressive and Economic Threats: Música contestataria and Collective Resistance in Central America" in Latin American Perspectives.
"Repressive and economic threats drive much of the popular mobilization in Central America, but those conditions need to be articulated to publics in a manner that emphasizes the need for collective action to ameliorate worsening harms. Examination of protest songs in both periods of heightened state repression (1970–1990) and heightened economic threats (1990–present) in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua demonstrates that musicians and cultural producers actively construct lyrics and musical styles that resonate with subaltern populations and encourage social movement participation in the face of state repression and neoliberal policy implementation. " Read the full article here.
