About this Event
"The Mosquito Confederation: The Overlooked, Afro-Indigenous Empire of Central America's Caribbean Borderlands"
This talk unpacks the key arguments in Daniel Mendiola's 2025 book, The Mosquito Confederation: A Borderlands History of Central America. Drawing from a large body of previously uncited sources, this book is the first to offer a thorough, chronological narrative of the 18th-century rise and decline of the Mosquito Kingdom: a powerful alliance of African and Amerindian-descended peoples who came to dominate much of Central America's Caribbean coast.
About the Speaker:
Daniel was born and raised in East Texas, and he completed his B.A. at the University of Houston in 2009. Daniel also went on to obtain his PhD from the University of Houston in 2018, and after serving as a Faculty Fellow with the NYU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, he arrived at Vassar College in 2021. Daniel’s dissertation research examined the history of Central America’s Caribbean borderlands where a powerful indigenous confederation known as the Mosquito Kingdom emerged in the eighteenth century to challenge Spanish and English colonizers. He has published several articles on the topic in both English and Spanish language journals, including the Anuario de Estudios Centroamericanos and the Hispanic American Historical Review. His Book, The Mosquito Confederation, was published in 2025 with the University of Georgia Press. More recently, Daniel has also expanded his research to include borders and migration, exploring border formation in early Central American nations and arguing that asylum law was fundamental to Central American nation-making. Additionally, Daniel uses oral history to write about current issues related to migration in Central America, and a recent article on the topic, “La feminización de los derechos migratorios,” was published with the University of Costa Rica.
This free event is hosted by the Department of Africana Studies with support from the Department of History and the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience.
Event venue & nearby stays
Paul Robeson Campus Center, Bergen Room (255-257), Newark, United States
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