Esperanto League for North America
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| Founded | 1952 Sacramento, California |
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| Type | Educational |
| Focus | International language, communication |
| Location | |
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Area served
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United States |
| Website | Esperanto-USA.org |
Esperanto-USA (E-USA) is the largest organization for speakers and supporters of Esperanto in the United States. It was founded in 1952 as the Esperanto League for North America (ELNA) in Sacramento, California. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Esperanto-USA is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and the U.S. affiliate of the Universal Esperanto Association. Phil Dorcas is President of E-USA, and Ben Speakmon is Vice-President.
Esperanto-USA administers the largest Esperanto-language book service in the Americas. It publishes a bimonthly bulletin Usona Esperantisto. It also publishes reference works about Esperanto. The organization's leadership consists of a president, vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and nine directors; it also has many commissioners responsible for Esperanto-USA's activity in various connections (e.g. audio-visual service; cooperation with libraries; relations with local Esperanto clubs; etc.) Membership is about 650.
The youth section of E-USA is USEJ (Usona Esperantista Junularo).
During the first half of the 20th century, the chief Esperanto organization for the U.S. was the Esperanto Association of North America (EANA). In the early 1950s, the early days of the Cold War, EANA's president, George Allen Connor, a fierce anti-Communist, had begun his own McCarthyist attacks against leaders of the Esperanto movement in Europe and Asia.
The Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) began debating whether to expel Connor, who also held a position in UEA's leadership, and also to break off relations with EANA, which was UEA's US national association. In protest against EANA, American Esperantists founded the Esperanto League for North America. Three years later, UEA recognized ELNA as its American section, and subsequently severed ties with EANA. By then, most EANA members had gone over to ELNA. EANA was quickly rendered insignificant, and had disappeared by the 1970s.
In 2007, the members of the organization voted to adopt the name Esperanto-USA as an alias, while retaining the formal, official name Esperanto League for North America (Esperanto-Ligo por Norda Ameriko in Esperanto). Among other reasons, the change was made because the organization's scope is limited to the U.S., despite the North America in its original title. E-USA still uses its original acronym, ELNA, but only occasionally.
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