Latin American History Commons^™

Spain's Vision Of Empire Through Conquest, Ideology, And Law In The Sixteenth Century, Penelope Yau-Wen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines how the process of exploration, discovery, conquest and colonization of the Americas by Spain developed along with a vision of empire that involved the formulation of political theories, laws and policies by the governing elites, while responding to the actions by the conquistadors on the field. Although events on both sides of the Atlantic were not necessarily coordinated, the interests of the Court and the conquistadors intersected and were justified through a discourse that had been shaped by Humanist intellectual currents.

The thesis intends to show how the Castilian imperial vision was an experiment that began to …

Review Of The Book Denial Of Genocides In The Twenty-First Century, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Bedross Der Matossian.

Jus Soli And Jus Sanguinis: Politics, Race, Culture, And Citizenship In The Dominican Republic And Haiti, Guido A. Proano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The promulgation of laws such as the Dominican Republic’s Constitutional Court’s Judgment TC-168-13 serves as a basis upon which to argue the major impediments presented by the Dominican government to deny Haitians and Dominicans of Haitians descent citizenship. The right to citizenship is based on legal principles of jus soli and jus sanguinis and is recognized in a series of international legal documents. Following a Marxist framework, this research demonstrates the uncounted possible relationships between modern social forces and politics that have been working closely following European productions of knowledge for decades against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent in …

Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao

Theses and Dissertations

Jordany's paper congregates their archival research into an art practice that examines the decolonial impulse to excavate the self and produce autonomy. Using ceramics to reference and re-animate Taino ritual objects found in museums, resulting in alternative museology, their work seeks to honor Caribbean ancestors by subverting colonial history.

The Final Straw: The Battle For Puerto Rico, Samantha N. Marrero

Theses

The Common Wealth of Puerto Rico has undergone tremendous amounts of oppression. The capstone will evaluate the policies imposed on the commonwealth by the United States, and the actions revolutionaries or independentistas took to have a liberated Puerto Rico

Review Of "The American 'Amigo' Nelson Rockefeller And Brazil" By Antonio Pedro Tota, Lorena B. Ellis

Publications and Research

Book review of "The American 'Amigo', Nelson Rockefeller and Brazil" by Antonio Pedro Tota, translated from Portuguese into English with a brief summary of all chapters and reviewers' comments. It is a great source for students of U.S. relations with Brazil, during and after World War II. Starting in 1945, Nelson Rockefeller used private and public efforts to stimulate Brazilian economic, promote political, and social change, always with idealism, love of art, and humanitarian concerns, especially preventing any Brazilian pursuits of Communism.

A Parar Para Avanzar: To Stop/To Stand/To Strike To Advance, Christina N. Barrera

Theses and Dissertations

This paper presents the first fragments of a political framework outlining how I situate my work, which lives between “craft” and “art” models of making and between colonized and colonizing traditions. My writing proposes ways of making and being informed by practices, strategies, and organizing that work towards greater autonomy and liberation under these conditions.

“She Too ‘Omanish’”: Young Black Women’S Sexuality And Reproductive Justice In Bluefields, Nicaragua, Ishan Elizabeth Gordon-Ugarte

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Most never-married young “Creole” (Afro-Caribbean) women in Bluefields, Nicaragua are raised in fundamentalist Protestant families and institutions that emphasize sexual abstinence before marriage. In this context, abstinence is required to maintain social standing and “respectability.” Nevertheless, women in Bluefields, the administrative center of Caribbean Nicaragua, exhibit what Creoles themselves understand to be high rates of sexuality and pregnancy among post-menarche unmarried teenaged women (USAID, 2012; Mitchell et al. 2015). Such young women’s pregnancies occur at an important developmental stage of their lives and have long been associated by social scientists with adverse social, emotional, and health situations. These scholars have …

Keywords In Caribbean Studies: A Project Statement, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario, Ryan Cecil Jobson

Publications and Research

Responding to a call for a renewed and reinvigorated project of Caribbean criticism, the Keywords in Caribbean Studies project proposes an examination of the critical vocabulary that shapes our field of study. A genuinely regional Caribbean criticism—one that necessarily encompasses the entirety of the Caribbean Sea and its archipelago, its coastal territories of the South and Central Americas, and their global circuits of migration and diaspora—demands concerted attention to the critical vocabulary with which we engage the region.

The Tancredo Martínez Assassination Attempt: Frances Grant And Communistic Discourses, Nelson Santana

Publications and Research

The Trujillato (1930-1961) spanned almost four decades, in part, due to a series of tools and mechanisms centered around Trujillo’s influences and networks outside of the Dominican Republic. Trujillo’s international network of spies made it possible for the Trujillato to identify and keep tabs on anyone who threatened Trujillo’s reign. Thus, Trujillo’s tentacles extended beyond the Dominican Republic and into nations and territories such as Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the United States. In order to combat Trujillo’s network, Dominican exiles embraced non-Dominican allies to combat Trujillo’s tentacles.

This essay is part of a larger project that aims …

El Intento De Asesinato A Tancredo Martínez: Frances Grant Y Los Discursos Comunistas, Nelson Santana

Publications and Research

El Trujillato (1930-1961) abarcó casi cuatro décadas, en parte gracias a una serie de herramientas y mecanismos centrados en las influencias y redes de la dictadura fuera de la República Dominicana. La red internacional de espías de Trujillo hizo posible que el Trujillato identificara y vigilara a cualquiera que amenazara el régimen. Así, los tentáculos del dictador se extendieron más allá de República Dominicana hacia naciones y territorios como Costa Rica, Cuba, México, Puerto Rico y Estados Unidos. Para combatir estas redes, los exiliados dominicanos colaboraron con aliados no dominicanos residentes en países extranjeros.

Este ensayo es parte de un …

"Cultura Gamer: Esteriotipos De América Latina"., Roberto Bolanos Pinela Mr.

Capstones

La intención de “Cultura Gamer: Estereotipos de América Latina”, es presentar dos diferentes aspectos de representación que se tiene la hora de hablar de América Latina; Por un lado, los videojuegos hechos en Estados Unidos, nos estereotipan como países llenos de conflictos armados, donde manda el desorden y el caos, como lo vemos en juegos de Far Cry 6, y Tom Clancy. Pero por otro lado, estamos viendo un aumento en desarrolladores de videojuegos en América Latina, que intentan acabar con estos estereotipos; y están creando juego con la intención de dar a conocer nuestra cultura, mitos e ideología, acabando …

Afterlives Of Discovery: Speculative Geographies In The Colombian Political Landscape, Heidi A. Rhodes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation considers how the temporal remains of the Age of Discovery and its doctrine persist in a racial-geographical ranking of human and non-human, terrestrial and planetary life and worth. Across this work, I interpret a series of historical moments and their objects of speculative geographic cultural production: a state mapping program, a painting, a biomedical project, a de-monumenting protest action. As repositories of codified belief and repertoires of Discovery’s political and affective modes of racialized domination, I read these materials from the Colombian archives of coloniality and liberalism to illuminate their implications for Colombia’s national becoming as a liberal …

The U.S.–Mexican War: Visualizing Contested Spaces From Parlor To Battlefield, Erika Pazian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The U.S.-Mexican War[1] (1846-1848) was a watershed event that transformed the North American continent politically, socially, and ideologically. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico lost approximately half of its national territory in the north, and the United States acquired the modern states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Both nations were plagued by internal conflicts after the war, and each was plunged into civil war within fifteen years of its conclusion.

During this time of turmoil, Mexican and U.S. artists created and recreated myriad images …

The Tale Of Two Countrysides: The Shaping Of Landscapes In Hispania And Spanish Latin America, Andrew R. Abrams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The way that culture expands and transforms in a colonial context has often been viewed in a top-down approach. This thesis focuses on the spread of culture in the Roman conquest of Spain and the Spanish conquest of Latin America. By framing the argument with a discussion on Romanization, this paper shows the presence of the ideas surrounding Romanization in a new context. By investigating what material culture shows, this thesis looks to the countryside to find examples of cultural change. It argues that the villa landscape should be seen as the indicator of the Romanization of Hispania. The structure …

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

Monumentality, Fortification, And Movement: Preclassic Maya Developments As Seen At Muralla De León, Petén, Guatemala, Justin D. Bracken

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Analysis of settlement patterning in relation to natural and constructed defensive elements expands understanding of the impact of warfare well beyond the relatively brief period of active battle. Advance preparation in advance of conflict, including reshaping the landscape for defensibility and conscription of labor toward that end, alters patterns of movement, social interaction, and physical settlement, effects that can extend for generations beyond the cessation of hostilities. This project investigates the role played by warfare in shaping the physical and social landscape of the Maya of the central Petén during the Late Preclassic period (400 B.C. – A.D. 150), as …

Yankee Go Home: Roci In Latin America, Vitoria Hadba

Theses and Dissertations

In 1984, at an event hosted by the United Nations, American artist Robert Rauschenberg announced his most ambitious and controversial project to date: the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange—or ROCI. Blending primary source documents with social art history, I retrace the artist’s steps—and missteps—during the first leg of his tour through Mexico, Chile, and Venezuela. This thesis investigates the convoluted political implications of ROCI in Latin America during the transitional period in which binary Cold War politics were ebbing amidst the rise of a global free-market economy.

Varieties Of Transnational Life: Brazilian Nikkeis’ Changing Cross-Border Ties With Two Homelands, Hiroyuki Shibata

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the varieties of Brazilian Nikkei’s – Japanese emigrants to Brazil and their descendants – transnational lives throughout a century of their migration history. I propose an interactive process approach to migrant transnationalism to understand the divergence of Brazilian Nikkeis’ transnational lives between their two homelands, Japan and Brazil. First, I focus on the four macro-institutional contexts: 1) positions and development patterns of sending and receiving states within the international state system; the infrastructural power of states, more concretely 2) the diasporic bureaucracy of sending states and 3) the incorporative power of receiving states; and 4) the mobilizing …

Us, Abundantly: From Africa To The Americas, Karisma Jay

Theses and Dissertations

"Us, AbunDantly," a Live theatrical dance performance and film, delves into the African Diaspora and its influences. An artistic and academic project built upon the amplification of Black excellence and Black pride, this paper contextualizes a work within the oral histories and contemporary dance studies of a powerfully ancestral community.

Bomba And The Evolution Of Puerto Rican Activism In New York, Katherine Smith

Capstones

While Bomba, a traditional dance style that originated in Puerto Rico, has recently become more visible to a mainstream national audience, local activists in New York City have been working for years to promote the art and elevate the history of their community. For dance leaders like Milteri Tucker, Bomba dancing is not only a celebration of Puerto Rico’s African heritage, but an effective way to address social issues within the city’s local and Latino community. She is one of many activists in the city’s history that has used art and community try to uplift the culture and work on …

Los Cuerpos En Conflicto Del Chavismo: Cuatro Obras Venezolanas En La Era De La Revolución Bolivariana, Rebeca Pineda Burgos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my dissertation, I study the novels Tiempos del incendio (2014) by José Roberto Duque, and Patria o muerte (2015) by Alberto Barrera Tyszka, the film Pelo malo (2013) by Mariana Rondón, and the performance El beso emancipador (2013) by Deborah Castillo. These works were created in a period of intense political and social transformations in Venezuela, in the context of the sickness and death of the president and leader of the Bolivarian Revolution Hugo Chávez (1999-2013). Because they contemplate nationalist symbols, historical events recovered by power, spaces taken by the State, and traditional claims in the country now exercised …

An Empire Among Empires: America's Relationship To "The Other" In The Historiography Of Empire, Lynne C. Goldhammer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper outlines two different threads in the historiography of empires regarding their treatment of “the other.” The first thread begins with the early Chinese empires, the Qin and Han, which used diplomacy and tributes as well as repression to incorporate “others” under their imperial umbrellas. This thread was then picked up and modified later by the Mongols and Mughals, both of which showed a fair amount of flexibility and openness towards cultural difference. The second thread begins with the Romans (the Republic and Empire), who were largely flexible and inclusive towards “others” until the late Empire, when Christianity took …

Black Catholicism: The Formation Of Local Religion In Colonial Mexico, Krystle F. Sweda

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Black Catholicism: The Formation of Local Religion in Colonial Mexico” examines the emergence of Catholicism and its local expressions among Africans and their descendants in seventeenth-century New Spain. In that century, New Spain (the Spanish term for colonial Mexico) was home to the second largest enslaved population and the largest free black population in the Western Hemisphere. My research studies the intricate, generational process of Catholic conversion among Mexico’s black population and how that process affected the formation of local religion. Previous scholars have largely overlooked early Catholic efforts of African conversion in Latin America and presented Afro-Christianity as a …

The Borders Of Dominicanidad—Interview With Lorgia Garcia Peña, Nelson Santana, Amaury Rodríguez

Publications and Research

Dr. Lorgia García Peña is associate professor of Latinx Studies at Harvard University and the author of The Borders of Dominicanidad: Race, Nations and Archives of Contradictions (Duke, Fall 2016). Lorgia García Peña’s book delves deep into Dominican society and history by dissecting foundational myths and state-sponsored propaganda. Lorgia García Peña also looks at Dominican alternative cultural production and the socio-political resistance found in performance art and Afro-Dominican popular religions. In the most recent roundtable installment from the Ethnic Studies Rise initiative that celebrates the work and legacy of García Peña's scholarship, translator and scholar Kaiama Glover argued that [Lorgia …

Book Review: Hatians, The People That Will Not Go Away, François Pierre-Louis Jr.

Publications and Research

Reviews three books:

• Matthew J. Smith. Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica after Emancipation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014.

• Toni Pressley-Sanon. Istwa across the Water: Haitian History, Memory, and the Cultural Imagination. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017.

• Victor Figueroa. Prophetic Visions of the Past: Pan-Caribbean Representations of the Haitian Revolution. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015.

Exhibit Curriculum For Fighting For Democracy: Unit One, Sarah Aponte, Martin Toomajian

Open Educational Resources

Exhibit curriculum for the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute exhibit, Fighting for Democracy: Dominican Veterans from World War II.

Students in Global History and U.S. History courses often spend extensive class time studying World War II. Dominicans were involved in virtually every facet of the U.S. war effort. The Dominican Studies Institute's exhibit highlights Dominican veterans who served in both the European and Pacific theaters, in multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces. These same veterans, like other people of color, faced discrimination as soldiers in the U.S. An exploration of these veterans' experiences would be memorable and valuable for secondary …

African Heritage And The Caribbean-Brazilian Experience, Michelle D. Thompson

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus reflects having students do self-guided research over a semester that doesn't require textbooks.

The Heritage Of The Spanish Antilles, Daniel Nieves

Open Educational Resources

This course seeks to explore the heritage of the Spanish Caribbean—primarily Cuba, Dominican Republic/Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. We will place particular emphasis on the historical, cultural and ethnic forces that have shaped the character of the people of these islands. As well we will explore the variety of societies and cultures of the Spanish Caribbean in their historical and contemporary setting up to and including the (im)migration experience of Spanish Caribbean people to urban North America.

Claiming The Remains Of The Past: The Return Of Cultural Heritage Objects To Colombia, Mexico, And Peru, Pierre Losson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

My research explores the reasons why three Latin American states (Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) claim the return of cultural heritage objects from holding institutions in the Western World, such as museums and universities. The literature on returns and restitutions, which focuses on questions of ownership and possession of objects, opposes two conceptions of cultural heritage: on the one hand, the internationalists argue that the location of a cultural object must be decided according to the interests of science and education, for the benefit and in the name of humankind; on the other hand, the nationalists consider that cultural heritage is …