Cristian Padilla Romero

Cristian Padilla Romero is a child of campesino parents from Honduras who migrated to the U.S. as a child. His dissertation research explores the silenced and marginalized history of Black and Indigenous Garífuna and Afro-Caribbean radical organizing in Caribbean Honduras during the early and mid-twentieth century. Since the early 1900s, the Honduran state, U.S. empire, and corporate power exacerbated poverty, exploitation, and anti-Black violence. In response, Black radical activists organized, at different times and for various reasons, for a fairer society. He examines the rise and fall of Garifuna and Afro-Caribbean Garveyite organizing the Caribbean coast in the 1920s and early 1930s. He then follows the period of the 1950s when Black organizers mobilized through communist and liberal circles to demand an end to racial discrimination and class oppression. He examines how Black organizing and activism collided with the Honduran government’s counterrevolutionary policies and U.S. interventions. The violent and racist suppression continues to harm survivors and silence their robust history of activism. By recovering the radical progressive actions and ideas of Black Hondurans, he places them squarely within the rich and proud history of global Black radicalism and, therefore, contributes new perspectives to the histories of Central America, the African Diaspora, and U.S. empire.