Washington, D.C. Metro Area

Here are resources on the D.C. metro area, one of the regions in the U.S. with a large population of people with Central American heritage. 

“Becoming ‘Wachintonians:’ Salvadorans in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area” by Ana Patricia Rodriguez. Washington History 28:2 (2016)

“‘The Bombs That Drop in El Salvador Explode in Mount Pleasant:’ From Cold War Conflagration to Immigrant Struggles in Washington, DC, 1970-1995” by Patrick Scallen. Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University (2019) 

Mount Pleasant Riot Oral History Project (DC Public Library digital archives) Collective memories (transcripts and audio files) of the protests that followed the shooting of a Salvadoran man by a police officer in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC in May of 1991. These oral histories were conducted as part of the DC Oral History Collaborative in 2017.  

“Remembering the 1991 Disturbances in Mount Pleasant,” Smithsonian Latino Center. Roundtable discussion (2011).

Out My Window by Nancy Shia. For 40 years photographer Nancy Shia took countless photos of a D.C. community not only in transition, but on the verge of being completely forgotten and erased. Her photos document the renaming of Rabaut Park to "Parque Farabundo Marti," the growing Afro- Latinx community, and are an invaluable historical archive of Central American, Latinx, Afro-Latinx, and African-American communities that deserve to be remembered and honored. 

La Manplesa: An Uprising Remembered Through testimony, song, poetry, and street theatre, La Manplesa weaves together the collective memory of one of D.C.’s first barrios and dives into the roots of the ‘91 rebellion. As people across the world take to the streets to demand an end to police brutality, the film honors the largely untold stories that have come before us, and explores how artists prompt us to remember what we still have to fight for. 52 minutes. Streaming on PBS, America Reframed.