Little Central America, 1984

Little Central America, 1984 is a live performance that explores the origin story of the “Little Central Americas” established across the United States as a result of the civil wars of the 1980s. The performance brings together poetry, live music and testimonials recreating the era when the conflicts in Guatemala and El Salvador displaced over one million people and spawned transnational solidarity through the Sanctuary Movement.

Co-presented by DiverseWorks and Circuit Network, Little Central America, 1984 will be performed at one of Houston’s own sanctuaries, the First Unitarian Universalist Church. Alongside writer-performers Elia Arce and Rubén Martínez, the cast includes a local Central American poet, a father and his four daughters from Houston’s Salvadoran community, and local Latinx musicians. The show culminates with a ceremony honoring local Central American activists and their allies who played a role in the original Sanctuary movement or who have responded to the ongoing contemporary refugee crisis. The work presents this American and Central American story to make visible a forgotten chapter in our history and to shed light on the deep context of violence and trauma that today’s refugee crisis stems from – violence that Little Central America, 1984 approaches with the healing salve of art.