Contemporary Central America fiction writers offer realistic scenarios that often
concentrate on the effects of globalization, the inevitable forces of transnational
corporations, the global media, and government policy in the region. These
writers show how racism and tensions between the social classes perpetuates
division and alienates union between unique ethnic groups of the underprivileged
majority. The dominant class in Central America, in collaboration with the United
States threatens diverse cultures and causes their autonomous identities to become
diluted and their very existence to become endangered. The Central American
short story has a tendency to express various inequalities. It shows how privileged
minorities of Central America enjoy an unequal distribution of wealth. Their
children, for example, study abroad while the disenfranchised majority suffers
inadequate education that fuels a kind of racism (“Hero”). It shows how the
imposition of an asymmetrical exchange of culture by dominant Anglo values is
integrated into Central America in an alliance between corrupt regional officials
(“The Sniper”) and conservative, right-wing death squads (“The Crying
Children”) and (“Paternity”). It reveals the actual cost to overthrow Manuel
Noriega in 1989 (“A Scream in the Night”). The translated tales told in this
project, illustrate this unequal multi-national cultural exchange. In this thesis I
present to English-speaking readers these perspectives of Central America.