UC Irvine

Beginning in 1979, Salvadorans began crossing international borders. Throughout the following decade approximately 1.5 million Salvadorans sought refuge throughout Central America, Mexico, the United States, and Canada. This purported “bomba migratoria” (migration bomb) marked a major shift in regional migration and forced each country to contend with the demands of a new refugee population. This dissertation traces the histories of how and why the governments of Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize responded to the hundreds of thousands of Salvadoran refugees that entered their national territories during these years. Government documents, international organizational reports, newspaper articles, and refugee accounts reveal that for the states in the region Salvadoran refugees presented more than just a problem to solve. Rather, in the context of the late Cold War, Central American governments found the crisis potentially advantageous. Guided by pragmatism as much as humanitarianism, Central American governments sought to convert Salvadoran refugees into tools of the nation-state.