Jeffrey L. Gould is Distinguished Professor of History at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912–1979 (1990), To Die in This Way: Nicaraguan Indians and the Myth of Mestizaje, 1880–1965 (1998), and with Aldo Santiago, To Rise in Darkness: Revolution, Repression, and Memory in El Salvador, 1920–1932 (2008). He has also directed and codirected three documentary films, Port Triumph, which documents many of the events and people in Solidarity under Siege, La Palabra en el Bosque, and Scars of Memory: El Salvador, 1932.
'Solidarity under Siege tells the story of Puerto El Triunfo, the harrowing politics and perils of Latin America's longest running labor strike there, and the disappearance of the whole regional economy at the hands of foreign investors' complicity with the military. Gould has made Central America's tragic neoliberal turn and the ravaging of hope for state-led economic development understandable, painful and palpable.' Lillian Guerra, University of Florida 'With the empathy and insight that characterizes all of his pathbreaking work on Central America, Jeffrey L. Gould recuperates the remarkable and sobering story of the shrimp workers in El Salvador's Puerto El Triunfo. Their early victories, achieved amidst violent repression, could have set the stage for a nostalgic tale about a lost world of labor militancy and the wages of neoliberalism. Yet, Gould explores the divergent understandings and gender-based tensions that undermined solidarity and left the workers vulnerable to neoliberal plunder. This book illuminates the experiences of women and men whose struggles need to be remembered so that they will not have been in vain.' Barbara Weinstein, New York University `Solidarity under Siege tells the story of Puerto El Triunfo, the harrowing politics and perils of Latin America's longest running labor strike there, and the disappearance of the whole regional economy at the hands of foreign investors' complicity with the military. Gould has made Central America's tragic neoliberal turn and the ravaging of hope for state-led economic development understandable, painful and palpable.' Lillian Guerra, University of Florida `With the empathy and insight that characterizes all of his pathbreaking work on Central America, Jeffrey L. Gould recuperates the remarkable and sobering story of the shrimp workers in El Salvador's Puerto El Triunfo. Their early victories, achieved amidst violent repression, could have set the stage for a nostalgic tale about a lost world of labor militancy and the wages of neoliberalism. Yet, Gould explores the divergent understandings and gender-based tensions that undermined solidarity and left the workers vulnerable to neoliberal plunder. This book illuminates the experiences of women and men whose struggles need to be remembered so that they will not have been in vain.' Barbara Weinstein, New York University