The world’s biggest art fair spotlighting work from Latin America returns to Miami this week. Arteamericas, now in its ninth year, opens at the Miami Beach Convention Center March 25.

Many of the booths will ring familiar: Virginia Miller Galleries, Pan American Art Projects, Cernuda and Nina Torres.

In one booth, Miami curator and El Nuevo writer Janet Batet will be showing some of the most intriguing works on display, “Central America: Civism and Violence.” Batet will be showcasing work from smaller countries more accustomed to war and violence than they should be. As Batet summarizes: “Its [Central America] recent history is plagued by aborted revolutions, liberalism and political opportunism that have devastated the region, plunged it into a cycle of wars, widespread poverty, chronic unemployment, and human trafficking between South America and the United States.” Who better to express such tensions, to pull back the veil on a region too forgotten, than visual artists? Fifteen contemporary artists from Central America have been selected to illustrate this reality.

One of the most striking works comes from Walterio Iraheta, an artist from war-torn El Salvador.  Iraheta’s image of a wide variety of shoes, each emptied of its owner, is haunting. Anyone who has seen the terrible Auschwitz memorial of piled shoes knows the power of this particular image, as Iraheta clearly does: Footwear from children, men, women, all of whom have lost their lives to senseless murder (which in El Salvador includes include civil, gang, drug and turf wars). These works are visceral, with depictions of guns and skulls and bodies that are neither abstract, nor meant to be.

In fact, most of the pieces are photography, installation, and video — as Batet writes, media is about documentation as much as anything, about making sure that parts of history, no matter how disturbing, are never forgotten. Iraheta will be also be a part of the Latin American Pavilion in the 54th Venice Biennale this summer.

“Central America: Civism and Violence”  at the Arteamericas Fair, Miami Beach Convention Center, March 25 to 28; www.arteamericas.com.