LASA/EANLAS: Rethinking Trans-Pacific Ties: Asia and Latin America

Transpacific Assemblages: Deconstructing Chinese Development in Central America

• In Event: Chinese presence in Central America & the Caribbean

Abstract

This paper explores how shifting transpacific assemblages of people, practices, knowledge and commodities have constructed the meaning of Central American development and the role of Chineseness within it. In particular, I illustrate the constitutive role that multiple Chinas and diverse forms of Chineseness--as both a force behind local infrastructure and a foil for white-mestizo national identities--have played in regional development. Locally, persistent hemispheric Orientalisms have obscured the differences among these diverse Chinese actors, situating them instead as homogeneous, racialized subjects who are simultaneously essential for and a threat to regional development. Globally, diplomatic battles between Taiwan and the Peoples’ Republic of China, as well as changing hegemonic forms of Chineseness have reshaped Chinese migration routes and commercial connections, continually reconfiguring transpacific relations. I track how these contingent assemblages come together to both bolster and upset contemporary efforts to build Central American development and sovereignty through China.

Author

• Monica C. DeHart, University of Puget Sound