Illuminating the entangled histories of the people and commodities that circulated across the Atlantic, Sharika D. Crawford's The Last Turtlemen of the Caribbean (University of North Carolina Press, 2020) assesses the Caribbean as a waterscape where imperial and national governments vied to control the profitability of the sea. Crawford places the green and hawksbill sea turtles and the Caymanian turtlemen who hunted them at the center of this waterscape. The story of the humble turtle and its hunter, she argues, came to play a significant role in shaping the maritime boundaries of the modern Caribbean.
Maya Doig-Acuña's "The Most Caribbean of Stories" (Southern Cultures, 2020) traces her great-grandmother’s life—born on a United Fruit plantation in Puerto Limón, Costa Rica in 1900—as an entry point into broader histories of Black migration, imperialism, and diasporic identity across the Caribbean and Central America. Through intimate family memory and archival reflection, Doig-Acuña examines how West Indian migrations to Costa Rica, Panama, and later the United States are part of a hemispheric story of Black labor, displacement, and resistance. The essay weaves together narrative, scholarship, and intergenerational reflection to show how diaspora is shaped not only by movement and empire, but also by memory, kinship, and survival.
Museum of Belize preserves and showcases the country’s rich multicultural history, with a focus on the diverse cultural and historical contributions of its Indigenous, African, and Afro-Caribbean populations. Housed in the former colonial prison in Belize City, the museum offers exhibitions on archaeology, colonialism, resistance, and everyday life, highlighting Belize’s complex past and vibrant heritage. Through educational programs and public history initiatives, the museum serves as a key space for cultural preservation, national memory, and community engagement.
This article traces the cultural and political history of Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, highlighting its distinct development shaped by colonialism, African and Indigenous presence, and isolation from the Hispanic Pacific region. Long marginalized in national narratives, the region gained partial recognition through the creation of two autonomous zones in the 1980s. Focusing on poetry as a vehicle of self-definition, the article examines its evolution from exoticized depictions to affirmations of Black pride, autonomy, and multiethnic identity, emphasizing the Coast’s assertion of belonging as both Nicaraguan and culturally distinct.
Lestel Downs Sealy, The Richness of Our Identity and Tradition: Oral History of Corn Island (Corn Island: Programa Conjunto de Revitalización Cultural y Desarrollo Creativo en la Costa Caribe de Nicaragua, 2012) is a community-based oral history that documents the cultural memory, identity, and traditions of Corn Island’s Afro-descendant population. Through interviews and personal narratives, the book captures local histories, language, customs, and values passed down across generations. It offers a vital record of life on the island, emphasizing the importance of preserving Creole heritage and amplifying the voices of those who have shaped its history.
The Silver Women (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023) shifts the focus of this monumental endeavor to the West Indian women who travelled to Panama, inviting readers to place women’s intimate lives, choices, grief, and ambition at the center of the economic and geopolitical transformation created by the construction of the Panama Canal and U.S. imperial expansion.
The Times and Life of Bluefields: An Intergenerational Dialogue by Deborah Robb Taylor (Academia de Geografía e Historia de Nicaragua, 2005) explores the social history, everyday life, and leading figures of Bluefields, Nicaragua. Featuring intergenerational reflections, short biographies, archival documents, and a wealth of black-and-white and color photographs, the book offers a vivid portrait of the city’s cultural and historical fabric. With over 470 pages and extensive appendices, notes, and a bibliography, it serves as both a local history and a celebration of Bluefields’ diverse community life.
The Unity Archives – Moravian Archives Herrnhut, located in Herrnhut, Germany, is the central historical repository of the worldwide Moravian Church (Unitas Fratrum). Founded in the 18th century, the archives hold extensive records documenting the Church’s global missionary activities, including detailed correspondence, diaries, and reports from missions in the Caribbean, Central America, southern Africa, and among Indigenous peoples in North America. A vital resource for scholars of colonialism, religion, and transnational history, the Unity Archives offers unparalleled insight into the Moravian Church’s role in shaping cross-cultural encounters and recording the lives of Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities during the colonial period.
In The West Indians of Costa Rica (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), Ronald Harpelle examines the ways in which people of African descent reacted to key issues of community and cultural survival from 1900 to 1950. He shows that the men and women who ventured to Costa Rica in search of opportunities in the banana industry arrived as West Indian sojourners but became Afro-Costa Ricans. The West Indians of Costa Rica is a story about choices: who made them, when, how, and what the consequences were.
To Defend This Sunrise (Rutgers University Press, 2023) examines how black women on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua engage in regional, national, and transnational modes of activism to remap the nation’s racial order under conditions of increasing economic precarity and autocracy. The book considers how, since the 19th century, black women activists have resisted historical and contemporary patterns of racialized state violence, economic exclusion, territorial dispossession, and political repression.
