Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'History, Latin American (0336)'

Though alphabetic script had become a prevailing communicative form for keeping records and recounting histories in New Spain by the turn of the seventeenth century, pre-Columbian and early colonial artistic and scribal traditions, including pictorial, oral, and performative discourses still held great currency for indigenous communities during the later colonial period. The pages of a corpus of indigenous documents created during the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries known as the Techialoyan manuscripts abound with vibrantly painted watercolor depictions, alphabetic inscriptions, and vivid invocations of community elders’ speeches and embodied experiences. Designed in response to challenging viceregal policies that threatened land and autonomy, the Techialoyans sought to protect and preserve indigenous ways of life by fashioning community members as the noble descendants of illustrious rulers from the pre-Columbian past. The documents register significant events in the histories of communities, often creating a sense of continuity between the colonial present and that of antiquity. What is more, they provide the limits of the territory within a depicted landscape using a reflexive, ambulatory model. Representations of place evoke ritual practices of walking the boundaries from the perspective of the ground, enabling readers to acquire different forms of knowledge as they move through the pages of the book and the envisioned landscape to which it points. The different communicative forms evident in the Techialoyans, including pictorial, alphabetic, oral, and performative modes contribute to understandings of indigenous literacies of the later colonial period by demonstrating the diverse resources and methods upon which indigenous leaders drew to preserve community histories and territories.

The Techialoyans present an innovative artistic and scribal tradition that drew upon pre-Columbian, early colonial, and European conventions, as well as the contemporary late-colonial pictorial climate. The artists consciously juxtaposed traditional indigenous materials and conventions with those of the contemporary colonial moment to simultaneously create a sense of both old and new. Not only did the documents recount indigenous communities’ histories and affirm their noble heritages, they also proclaimed possession of an artistic and scribal tradition that was on par with that of their revered ancestors, thereby strengthening corporate identity and demonstrating their legitimacy and autonomy within the colonial regime.

The speeches given by Pedro Segundo and Getulio Vargas during wartime not only reveals their orientation of leadership but in turn provides something else. These discourses gives one a unique window into not only how these leaders chose to perceive the challenges of wartime but how to address them to the national populace. The rhetoric they used had to transform for purposes of mobilization while adapting to shifting political environments. Among one of the features of this adaptation was the choice of which aspects of the national consciousness to stress at pivotal moments. By examining the public speeches of Pedro Segundo and Getulio Vargas one can see the political orientation of both leaders, understand the political climate of both periods, and witness how much Brazil had changed in the eighty-one years between the beginning of the Paraguayan War and the end of WWII.

This thesis seeks to recover historical memory during El Salvador’s devastating anticommunist campaigns from 1932 to 1963. With El Salvador’s long history of repression against social movements, fear and even shame have silenced stories about the movement and its participants. In line with the current projects dedicated to social memory, this projects reconstructs the untold story of Felix Panameño, a local shoemaker and member of the Communist Party in the 1930s through his family’s memories. Shoemakers were key to the growing political consciousness of the time, as documented by Roque Dalton through the testimonial of shoemaker and survivor of the 1932 revolt, Miguel Mármol. Much of Panameño’s life and struggle transpired within key political moments from the persecutions of political activists that followed the 1932 revolt, known as “ La Matanza”, through the wave of repressive military dictatorships that conspired against political activist and democracy. These dictators imposed a tyranny that ultimately drove large numbers of Salvadorans to migrate to the U.S. beginning in the 1960s. Many of these immigrants, in turn, silenced their memories and depoliticized in exchange for a new beginning. Today, some of these memories are being rebuilt, giving insight to better understanding El Salvador’s past, as well as the present peoples’ struggle for democracy at home and those participating from abroad.

The primary objectives of this thesis are to research the Conquest of Mexico and to integrate research to expand upon Mexica, a 125 page historical fiction screenplay that was started in 2008 about the 16th century invasion of Mexico by Hernán Cortés. Through quantifying and writing commentary on the revisions to reflect the integration of new research, the enhanced work is accompanied by a critical introduction essay that simultaneously serves as a literature review to determine how sources contributed to the dramatization. The critical introduction is in Spanish, the research was conducted in Spanish and English, and Mexica is in English, to better reach the target, mainstream American audience. The essay addresses schools of thought and theoretical frameworks on the conquest and how they have been accepted, rejected, dramatized and/or incorporated in the screenplay. By analyzing chronicles, literature, film and television relevant to the conquest, narrating experiences and creative license are demonstrated. The essay exhibits a historiographical review by examining myths, misconceptions and consensus on several themes relevant to this era of initial contact in the New World. The critical introduction of Mexica explains how the enhanced script better integrates the indigenous perspective through analysis of a variety of sources, with a non Euro-centric emphasis, to reflect compelling and multidimensional characters in the historical fiction genre.

This dissertation is a social history regarding moviegoing and film audiences in Cali, Colombia, from the 1940s through the 1970s that aims to explore the meaning of movies in relation to the broader historical context and field of social forces in which they existed. This analysis of the intersection of the actual material conditions of existence of film-related practices and social imaginaries about movies is developed taking into account three main elements. The first one is the definition of film audiences by their film preferences, moviegoing practices, and socio-demographic characteristics. The second aspect is the role that moviegoing and moviegoing-related activities had within the broader cultural and political positioning of the filmgoers in relation to personal and collective, urban identities as demarcated by social class, age, and gender. The third element has to do with the geopolitical positioning of Cali, which poses very specific inquiries into the context of a non-capital city of a so-called underdeveloped country in Latin America. The analysis of these three aspects permit us to acknowledge and understand how moviegoing, the activities related to it, and the ways in which people thought of themselves as film spectators intertwined with urban, cultural, and political dynamics in modes that defined the diverse yet connected ways in which people identified themselves as urbanites, dealing with the conflicts between tradition and modernity in the historically and geographically situated context of an "underdeveloped" country and its struggles to reach the much desired and elusive modernity.

Neighborhood Politics investigates the role of commoners in the social production of an ancient city. Traditional archaeological approaches examine cities primarily through the lens of elite power and agency. Recent approaches have taken a bottom-up approach to research. Neighborhood Politics explores the ancient city as a product of both commoner and elite agencies, power, and practices. Neighborhood Politics proposes a novel methodology: 'neighborhood archaeology.' Neighborhood archaeology emerges out of household archaeology and community archaeology. In order to fully understand urbanism, neighborhood archaeology examines commoner houses, related buildings, and their inhabitants as complex socio-spatial contexts. Consequently, neighborhood archaeology here highlights the multiple contours and tensions of authority, identity, and space that characterized an ancient neighborhood. Investigations in El Purgatorio's residential district focused on architecture, domestic assemblages, and urban planning in order to understand the diverse social identities, shared practices, and built environment of El Purgatorio's commoners. Investigations examined the social history of the Casma Polity's capital city, the configuration of community there, and local-regional linkages from the perspective of commoners' everyday lives. For El Purgatorio's commoners, social diversity was configured around household composition and labor output. Diversity was materialized in unequal access to space, building materials, and construction labor. Urban hierarchies were concretized during neighborhood feasts that simultaneously created neighborhood solidarity. Elites provided raw materials for the neighborhood economy; but commoners prepared food and chicha for ritual and quotidian consumption, some of which was returned to elites in tribute. Diverse residence and circulation patterns show that the neighborhood was a negotiated landscape created through both commoner authority and the extended authority of elites from the monumental district. Neighborhood Politics highlights the complexity of urban identities, the significance of everyday activities, and the tensions in the built environment of the residential district at El Purgatorio.

This dissertation argues that in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands over the turn of the twentieth century, two curanderos, Teresa Urrea (1873-1906) and Pedro Jaramillo (1829-1907), created alternative projects of nation that did not come from above – from the state, the church, or professional medicine – but from below, from a distinct cultural practice that revitalized sick, racially oppressed, and subaltern bodies. The medicine that Urrea and Jaramillo practiced, curanderismo, was, and remains, a hybrid system of healing practiced throughout Mexico and Latin America and in places where ethnic Mexicans have a strong presence, such as the U.S-Mexico borderlands. Through curanderismo Urrea and Jaramillo provided culturally resonant healing and spiritual sustenance to ethnic Mexicans, Indians, Tejanos, and others in the borderlands who faced increasingly oppressive forms of state power deployed by both nations. This dissertation also shows that through their curanderismo practices and politics, Urrea and Jaramillo helped shape national ideologies as well as spiritual and medical practices. They participated in the creation and maintenance of transnational ethnic Mexican communities and identities in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

The chapters examine how Teresa Urrea and Pedro Jaramillo crossed the border from Mexico into the United States during the late nineteenth century and practiced what I call the “the politics of curanderismo ” in different regions of the borderlands. Chapter one examines Teresa Urrea’s identity as Juana de Arco Mexicana and how she was a threat to the Mexican government because of her work as a healer and advocate for Yaqui and Mayo Indians of northern Mexico in late nineteenth century. Chapter two utilizes a quantitative and qualitative analysis of Don Pedrito’s cures from 1890-1907, as well as an examination of South Texas demographics, to demonstrate that Jaramillo’s curanderismo drew upon available medical ideologies and strengthened his borderlands community while, at the same time, threatening professional medicine. The third chapter returns to Teresa Urrea and her residence in the city of Los Angeles, California from 1902-1903 and examines the transatlantic world of Spiritism and Spiritualism that she participated in. The fourth and final chapter explores the ways in which curanderismo and corresponding ideas about modernity, science, and spirituality figured into the power dynamics and construction of national identity on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border into the twentieth century.

This study helps to broaden a growing body of literature by examining the growth of an urban Jamaican community in the southeastern port of Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.

Background: When the British colony of Jamaica abolished slavery in 1838, the upper classes attempted to tie free workers to sugar plantations; ex–slaves attempted to move away from the estates as soon as possible. Despite an increase in internal migration after abolition, the majority of the black population remained in rural areas, and dedicated their labor to the land. The Jamaican elite successfully argued for the introduction of contract laborers from Asia as a replacement for the slavery system. It brought the planters some limited economic success as export crops—particularly sugar—had the chance to rebound, but planters used immigrants to drive down wages. Increasing population pressure on the land, a series of natural disasters, few economic opportunities, and ineligibility for political participation prompted Jamaicans to look outside of their homeland for socioeconomic improvement by the late 1800s. Travelers emigrated in significant numbers to Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua with the hope of earning higher wages, sending remittances to family members, and returning home with enough money to live independently. As work on the Panama Canal ended by the 1910s, Jamaicans turned their sights back to the Caribbean. During the second half of the 19th century, Cuba was one of Spain's two remaining Caribbean colonies despite attempting several wars of independence. At the end of the final effort in 1898, the United States intervened against the metropolis; the two powers reached an agreement giving possession of Cuba to the US, who would help to establish political order and assist the islanders in ruling themselves. US investment in Cuban industry, especially in sugar, allowed foreigners to purchase enormous tracts of land and to influence the restructuring of the island's political, social, and economic landscape. The seasonal sugar cane harvest attracted foreign workers from Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean seeking better wages than what they could find at home; between 1912 and 1920, thousands of British West Indians traveled to Cuba to labor in the agricultural industry or to occupy niches in the service industry.

However, Cubans scrutinized and discriminated against them for being black, for being foreign, for driving down wages, or some combination thereof. Though Cubans claimed to live in a color-blind society, racial discrimination persisted and the white elite supported a policy of “whitening” the island through selective immigration from Spain and miscegenation; these racial and cultural prejudices were particularly divisive given that a significant percentage of Cubans were of African descent. Furthermore, the general population was frustrated by the lack of Cuban sovereignty and saw foreign workers as complicit in the US intervention. As a result, calls for nationalism tended to veer into xenophobia and racism during economic downturns in the early 1920s and 1930s.

Methods/Sources: Due to limited access to archival sources in Cuba, the bulk of the data is from the British National Archives: the consular reports summarized political and social upheaval in Cuba, collected publications from the Cuban government, and gave a perspective of the migration from the viewpoint of the British government. Similar information came from the U.S. National Archives at College Park, Maryland. The provincial archive of Santiago de Cuba provided information on migrant activities: marriage and citizenship documents; and social, cultural, and political organizations. It also yielded the Cuban government's responses to West Indian immigration. Correspondence between colonial officials and international organizations came from the Jamaican National Archives; the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute for Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, held interviews of Jamaicans who lived during the period under study. Cuban and Jamaican newspaper reports detailed economic and political conditions in the two islands from journalists' investigations, letters from migrants, and governmental decrees.

Findings: I relate how different groups in Cuba reacted to Jamaican migration: the support for and against it, how this support changed over time, and how it differed by geography. I also attempt to give a fuller description of who these migrants were. I discuss their relationships with other West Indians and Cubans, their marriages, and the paths that they took to Cuban citizenship. How gender influenced and differentiated Jamaicans' experiences when they went abroad—how they were perceived and treated, and how they fared—receives special attention.

The work concludes by examining the reaction of the British officials who represented British West Indians in Cuba. It also puts the migration into a broader context by examining black British subjects who traveled to other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean during this era. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

The 2006 student movement, termed the Penguin Revolution for the black and white uniforms worn by high school students, and the 2011 student movement, called the Chilean Winter, a reference to the "Arab Spring," have captivated the attention of the media and scholars alike. However, little work has been done to place these student movements into a broader historical context. Historically, Chilean students have had a long record of both general political activism and specific activism over educational matters dating back over 100 years. Even the most recent student protests, which developed into a broader movement against the neoliberal policies implemented under the dictator General Augusto Pinochet, were preceded by demonstrations with similar demands dating back to at least 2000. However, these precedents do not explain why the movements developed between 2000 and 2011, rather than immediately after the fall of the dictatorship in 1990. I argue that part of the reason is because that the students in the twenty-first century were the first ones to attend high school and college who were not raised under the dictatorship and for that reason they did not fear the repression and violence their predecessors, who grew up predominantly under the dictatorship, experienced. Thus, an analysis of the history of student political activism in Chile, the history of Chilean politics, the history of the Chilean education system, and the neoliberal reforms, especially in education, is necessary to provide a historical, political, and social context for the recent student movements.

During the early years of the 19th century Spanish colonies in the Americas went through dramatic political changes as new structures of governance emerged worldwide. Monarchical power throughout the world declined as representational democracy and the nation state became the new norm. This thesis focuses on two Spanish colonies and their transition to nation states, New Spain into Mexico and the Río de la Plata into Argentina. An analysis of this transition reveals that the period was much more than just a revolutionary or Independence era, rather, it was demarcated by intense class warfare. Whereas the lower classes of the colonies vied for dramatic changes in political, social, and economic structures, elites had sought to keep intact as much as possible colonial mechanisms of power whilst separating from the Spanish monarchy. This thesis uses constitutions, decrees, laws, and personal letters written by actors from both sides to highlight the intensity of class warfare during this period.