Aviva Chomsky

Who is Aviva Chomsky?

Aviva Chomsky is an American historian, author, and activist. She teaches at Salem State University in Massachusetts, where she is also the coordinator of the Latin American studies program. She previously taught at Bates College in Maine, and was a research associate at Harvard University, where she specialized in Caribbean and Latin American history. She is the eldest daughter of linguists Noam and Carol Chomsky. Her paternal grandfather, William Chomsky, was a Hebrew scholar at, and principal of, Gratz College for many years.

Her book West Indian Workers and the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica 1870–1940 relates the history of the U.S.-based companies which built railroads and cultivated bananas on the Atlantic Coast of Costa Rica and merged to form United Fruit in 1899. It also describes how the workers, including many Jamaicans, originally of African descent, developed their own parallel socio-economic system. The book was awarded the 1997 Best Book Prize by the New England Council of Latin American Studies.

She has also co-edited books, including The People Behind the Coal, Identity and Struggle at the Margins of the Nation-State, and The Cuba Reader: History, Culture, Politics.