Jeffrey L. Gould

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Distinguished Professor and James H. Rudy Professor, Department of History

Distinguished Visiting Professor, School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Study

Distinguished Professor and James H. Rudy Professor, [Dept. of History] (https://history.indiana.edu/faculty_staff/faculty/gould_jeffrey.html), emiritus

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Dawn to Despair Trailer (2023)

Watch the trailer for our new historical fiction, Dawn to Despair

Entre el Bosque y los Arboles (2021)

Read Entre el Bosque y los Arboles

Puerto el Triunfo (Port Triumph) (2019)

Durante la década de 1970, El Salvador contaba con una vasta industria del camarón, y casi todas las 3700 toneladas que exportaba cada año llegaron a los Estados Unidos. A medida que los camarones se alejaban del estado de lujo, es probable que pocos estadounidenses piensen mucho en cómo los camarones llegaron a sus platos. Menos aún habrían oído hablar de la historia de Puerto el Triunfo (Port Triumph en inglés) y del drama del auge y caída de la industria del camarón. Sin embargo, ahora, con la conciencia de los alimentos en su punto más alto de todos los tiempos, y las preocupaciones sobre el comercio justo y la sostenibilidad en la mente del público, es hora de contar esta notable historia. Puerto el Triunfo es un microcosmos que pone de relieve algunas de las fuerzas más poderosas que dan forma a Centroamérica y, en general, los obstáculos que enfrenta el trabajo organizado en todo el mundo.

During the 1970s, El Salvador boasted a vast shrimp industry, and nearly all of the 3700 tons that it exported each year made its way to the United States. As shrimp was transitioning away from luxury status, few Americans were likely to give much thought to how the shrimp reached their plates. Fewer still would ever have heard of the story of Puerto el Triunfo – Port Triumph in English – and the drama of the shrimp industry’s rise and fall. Yet now, with consciousness of food at an all-time high, and concerns about fair trade and sustainability much on the public mind, it is time to tell this remarkable story. Puerto el Triunfo is a microcosm that throws into sharp relief some of the most powerful forces shaping Central America, and more broadly, the obstacles facing organized labor world-wide.

Solidarity Under Siege (2019)

El Salvador’s long civil war had its origins in the state repression against one of the most militant labor movements in Latin American history. Solidarity under Siege vividly documents the port workers and shrimp fishermen who struggled yet prospered under extremely adverse conditions during the 1970s only to suffer discord, deprivation and, eventually, the demise of their industry and unions over the following decades. Featuring material uncovered in previously inaccessible union and court archives and extensive interviews conducted with former plant workers and fishermen in Puerto el Triunfo and in Los Angeles, Jeffrey L. Gould presents the history of the labor movement before and during the country’s civil war, its key activists, and its victims into sharp relief, shedding new and valuable light on the relationships between rank and file labor movements and the organized left in twentieth-century Latin and Central America.

La Palabra en el Bosque (The Word in the Woods) (2012)

During the early 1970s, hundreds of impoverished people living in remote Morazán, El Salvador, decided to emulate the early Christian communities. Inspired by liberation theology, they worked the land together, studied the Bible, and built villages based on solidarity. But as their numbers grew into the thousands, they came to be seen as a threat by the Salvadoran government. By the late ’70s the faithful organized to resist the repressive tactics of the National Guard, and during the ’80s they fought what would become a 12-year civil war as the military engaged in scorched-earth operations against them. Emphasizing the utopian aspects of Christian base communities, La Palabra en el Bosque (The Word in the Woods) examines these events through the narratives of surviving witnesses.

To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920–1932 (2008)

To Rise in Darkness offers a new perspective on a defining moment in modern Central American history. In January 1932 thousands of indigenous and ladino (non-Indian) rural laborers, provoked by electoral fraud and the repression of strikes, rose up and took control of several municipalities in central and western El Salvador.

1932, Cicatriz de la Memoria (Scars of Memory) (2002)

Documental sobre la insurrección indígena que sacudió a El Salvador en 1932, con un gran impacto en lo cultural, político y social, cuya represión gubernamental dejó miles de fusilados. Luego de décadas de silencio, los sobrevivientes cuentan la historia.

In 1932 the army and “citizen militias” in El Salvador brutally crushed an uprising of peasants in western El Salvador, killing 10,000 people. Survivors share their harrowing memories, many for the first time. The trauma resonated through six decades of military rule, until the 1992 peace accords ended a brutal, 12-year civil war. This documentary is based on 200 interviews with survivors and on archival research in El Salvador, Great Britain and the United States.

To Die in this Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880-1965 (1998)

Challenging the widely held belief that Nicaragua has been ethnically homogeneous since the nineteenth century, To Die in This Way reveals the continued existence and importance of an officially “forgotten” indigenous culture. Jeffrey L. Gould argues that mestizaje—a cultural homogeneity that has been hailed as a cornerstone of Nicaraguan national identity—involved a decades-long process of myth building.

To Lead As Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912-1979 (1990)

This book is a carefully argued study of peasants and labor during the Somoza regime, focusing on popular movements in the economically strategic department of Chinandega in western Nicaragua.

Thanks to Professor Kalani Craig, from the IUB Department of History and Institute for Digital Arts & Humanities, for her valuable help in getting this website off the ground.