ving Central American photographers or organiza-
tions. The large photo colloquia and their accom-
panying exhibitions in the 1970s and 1980s, starting
withPrimer Coloquio Latinoamericano de Fotogra-
fı ́aheld in Mexico City in 1978, united hundreds of
photographers from Latin America, but few exhi-
biting artists were from Central American coun-
tries. Thirdly, available information comes from
two principal sources, either the work of an indi-
genous researcher with more intimate knowledge of
the subject but perhaps with relatively limited
research tools, or the visiting researcher from Eur-
ope or the United States working with a variety of
resources but through foreign eyes. Fidel Castro
once commented that non-Latin American cura-
tors have enjoyed the luxury of traveling around
from country to country for a first-hand look.
Many European and US writers on photography
make a critical distinction between art photogra-
phy and social or political works. This distinction
may be too arbitrary to impose on Central Amer-
ican photography. Finally, authors on Central
American photography describe a plethora of per-
spectives that fail to blend into one coherent regio-
nal identity. Robert Levine inWindows on Latin
American writes that ‘‘the rise of photographic
reportage to document social injustice in Europe
and the US in the 1880s did not happen in Latin
America,’’ whereas Cuban author and photogra-
pher Maria Eugenia Haya (Marucha) describes
early Latin American work that does demonstrate
photography as a tool for social witness.
Even if the literature were more complete, defin-
ing a single Central American photographic iden-
tity would be a dubious undertaking. For one
thing, there is a diversity of cultures and histories
in the region. Some countries have relatively small
indigenous populations, like Costa Rica; in others
the majority is indigenous, like Guatemala.
Despite the relative geographical proximity, cer-
tain activities and movements are contained and
not dispersed in the region. Moreover, some exam-
ples of photography from Central America reflect
universal, not regional, aspects of photography. In
his introduction to the exhibition catalogueImages
of Silence, Joa ̃o Clemente Baena Soares describes
Latin American photography: ‘‘The fusion of ele-
ments of fantasy and reality has produced a tan-
gible, at times magical, presence in the printed
image that the artist-photographer presents to the
onlooker.’’ The sentence is both direct and poetic,
but it describes photography from around the
world. Author and curator Belgica Rodriguez
writes, ‘‘In Latin America, no one aesthetic or
stylistic line predominates.’’
Many writers are emphatic about the myth of a
single homogenous Latin American identity. Rela-
tive scarcity of information results in limited con-
clusions that may reflect research more than
reality. Yet there are many commonalties among
these neighboring countries, such as historical links
to European colonialism; political, social, and eco-
nomic influences from the United States; the pre-
dominance of Spanish as an official language; or
the struggles for political stability and indepen-
dence. Some authors cite the presence of political
and social themes as specific to Central American
twentieth-century photography, although these
themes are also richly explored in other parts of
the world. Other authors refer to specific aesthetics,
such as high contrast, but again these aesthetics are
also found elsewhere in much photography.
Much of the current literature has exposed the
mythical interpretations of Latin American photo-
graphy, a myth summarized by Jorge Gutierrez as
‘‘a continent laden with exoticism...between mis-
ery, the machete and the gun, filled with lovely
but dangerous romanticism.’’ This new awareness
follows several events. Although some factors held
photographic exploration back in the region
(including unstable political regimes, sporadic eco-
nomic performances, and cultural attitudes about
photography’s role in society), by the 1990s, situa-
tions had progressed to the point that ideas and
modes in Central American photography were
similar to those in Europe or the United States.
The available information makes it clear that the
quality and intensity of exploration in photography
in Central America keeps pace with other regions
of the world. In 1981, El Consejo Mexicana de
Fotografia publishedLibros Fotograficos de Auto-
res Latinoamericanos, listing over two thousand
titles of photography books by Latin American
authors since 1961.
By the end of the century, this exploration was
not contained to the world of photojournalism or
social and political documentation. A gradual
decline over the twentieth century in labor and
art agency sponsorship of documentary photogra-
phy lessened the presence of such photojournalism.
The art world sometimes exhibited work pre-
viously destined for the media and did so through
the end of the century, but with a concurrent
increase in art photography.
In the last decades of the twentieth century, more
unified photography projects took root, providing
context and structure for a look at photography in
the region. In Mexico City in 1977, Pedro Meyer
guided the Consejo Mexicano de Fotografia,
undertaking numerous exhibitions and publica-CENTRAL AMERICA, PHOTOGRAPHY IN