Latin American History Commons^™

Emerging Cold War Ideologies During The Populist Era In Latin America And The Us Media Response, Katherine D. Prince

History Theses

This thesis aims to identify the characteristics of populism and how those characteristics directly affected the politics and helped set the stage for later military dictatorships in Latin America. This text aims to look at how military regimes in Latin America placed blame on populist leaders and used their inefficiencies as a justification for taking power and establishing military rule. In many instances in Latin America, populist leader’s time in office was characterized by inflation and concern over foreign investment.

The concern over foreign investment and possible foreign takeover of local industries provides the background for another concern, that of …

The Exile Of Assata Shakur: Marronage And American Borders, Joe Kaplan

History Theses

Former Black Panther, Assata Shakur, now living in exile in Cuba after breaking out of a U.S. prison, is a self-described escaped slave, or maroon. Shakur has adopted this identity to underscore how practices and ideologies developed under slavery continue to structure Black life in the Americas, and how resistance strategies produced by this historical milieu remain salient in critiques of modern U.S. state power. The transnational nature of Shakur’s flight points to the use of borders as a highly effective, yet overlooked, tactic of Black resistance that has both historical and contemporary relevance. For maroons, borders mark hard distinctions …

Incomplete Conversions: Intentions Of Indigenous Idolatry In Early Colonial Latin America, Amanda Boos

History Theses

After the Spanish conquest of Latin America different religious groups set up missions to convert the Indians to Catholicism. In the 1530s and 1560s overzealous officials started punishing the indigenous people for idolatry because they saw it as a rejection of Catholic and Spanish rule. This thesis examines why indigenous people continued their religious practices after their supposed conversion to Catholicism. The author argues that indigenous traditions of incorporating new deities into their pantheon led them to believe that the Catholic god was another to be included in their worship, not one to replace their belief system. Additionally, the Spanish …

Fidel Castro’S Cultural Armament Of Cold War Cuba: Developing Education, 1960 – 1969, Maya Steinborn

History Theses

Through Castro’s speeches and secondary educational scholarship, this research explores the following question: In what ways was Cuban education constructed in the 1960s to promote a revolutionary cultural consciousness, and how did that education grow over time to support the Cuban position in the Cold War? This question rose from the educational policy studies of Rolland G. Paulston, whereby he declared post-revolutionary Cuba successful in its educational reform because Castro created “new social institutions and a basic social and cultural realignment [using a] ‘societalcentric’ [model] that morally rewards [the working masses].” Grounded in seminal definitions of the revolution as an …