Latin American History Commons^™

The El Mozote Massacre Of 1981: Central American Human Rights And United States Cold War Policy, Abbey Botko

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

This research explores the motivations behind the denial of the 1981 El Mozote Massacre in El Salvador. In this event, the US-backed Atlácatl battalion of the Salvadoran Army brutally killed over 500 Indigenous peoples in the department of Morazán. Despite multiple eyewitness accounts of the massacre, both the United States and Salvadoran governments repeatedly denied responsibility for the event.

This project is based on official US governmental documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, Department of State, and Congress. These documents illuminate conversations within the government concerning knowledge about the massacre, plans for continuing foreign aid, and further …

Wak'as, Mallkis, And The Inca Afterlife: The Hydrological Connection Between The Incan Empirical And Nonempirical Worlds, Marius C. Vold

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

The ruling elite amongst the indigenous groups of the Andes region, often referred to as the Incas, were, before European contact, a non-literal society. Therefore, our understanding of their religious beliefs pertaining to the relationship between life and death, and the intricate relationship between this belief system and the environment surrounding the Inca is heavily influenced by post-European contact, often clouded by European propaganda and a lack of cultural relativism. This project aims at exploring the relationship between the hydrological cycle and the Incan empirical and nonempirical worlds by comparing and synthesizing post-European contact written records, ethnohistorical records, archeological evidence, …

Donde Las Nubes Se Unen Al Mar = Where The Clouds Meet The Water, Kimberly E. Contag

MSU Authors Collection

Donde las nubes se unen al mar (2021) es la traducción de la narrativa histórica Where the Clouds Meet the Water (2004), un libro que explica la saga de Ernesto Contag Ziehe y su familia durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Ernesto y su familia fueron deportados de su patria ecuatoriana a la Alemania de los Nazis en 1942. La narrativa histórica que se lee casi como novela se basa en la investigación en bibliotecas, hemerotecas y archivos en tres continentes y en los documentos originales de los sobrevivientes de este canje político internacional de inocentes.

Donde las nubes se unen …

Redefiniendo La Protesta Indígena En Los Andes: Representaciones En (Y A Través De) La Literatura Y Los Medios Audiovisuales, Adriana Milena Rojas Castro

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The following thesis is a study of the Andean Region and the representation of Indigenous protest movements in novels and audiovisual productions from the twentieth century. Mainly, I focus on Indigenista novels (Raza de Bronce, El Mundo es Ancho y Ajeno, Huasipungo, and José Tombé), Oralitura (Oral literature traditions) from Indigenous authors like Fredy Chikangana and Elvira Espejo, and audiovisual productions from white/mestizos with collaboration and guide of Indigenous communities. This thesis discusses how audiovisual productions from white mestizos reinforce stereotypes about Indigenous protest movements established in Indigenista novels. In contrast, decolonization and redefinition of Indigenous protest movements occur in …

La Identidad Ecuatoriana A Través Del Humor De Miguel Antonio Chávez, Luis Enrique Yanez

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis project provides a close reading of the literary work of Ecuadorian author Miguel Antonio Chávez. The analysis in this work discuses how the author use humor to criticize the discourses that have been produced in order to represent indigenous and Afro-descendants in the country, as well as the fragility of social and political institutions such as the church, the state, and the country's educational system in the pieces La puta madre patria, La kriptonita del Sinaí, and El electroshock nuestro de cada día. This thesis analyses humor as a narrative tool with its function to reproduce and criticize …

Literacy And Its Thresholds: Review Of Thresholds Of Iliteracy: Theory, Latin America, And The Crisis Of Resistance By Abraham Acosta, Alfredo Duplat

World Languages & Cultures Department Publications

Review of Thresholds of Illiteracy: Theory, Latin America, and the Crisis of Resistance by Abraham Acosta.

Las Etapas De Transformación De La Figura Femenina En El Exilio En Primavera Con Una Esquina Rota, "Geografías" Y "Como Greenwich" De Mario Benedetti, Maria Liliana Labrador Morales

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

During the decade of the 1970's in South America, people saw the governments become overrun by dictatorships. These dictatorships destroyed the fabric of democracy. The horror of these new politics brought destroyed men and women in many different ways. These policies included such things as torture, censorship, impositions of patriarchal ideas, exile, and even included imprisonment and disappearance.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the importance of the stages of transformation of women in the works of Mario Benedetti and how these stages reflect on the process of adaptation to exile. This analysis centers on four characters who …

The Intercontinental Railway Project, Jeremy Joseph Kaler

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The Intercontinental Railway project was one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the history of inter-American relations. Advocates hoped to link the major cities and economic centers of North, Central, and South America together via a ten thousand mile long railroad system that would stretch from New York City to Buenos Aires in South America. In the process, the Intercontinental Railway project, along with other Pan-American initiatives, was to bring order and stability to a region marked by internal warfare, as well as increase communication and commercial ties between the three regions of the Western Hemisphere, solve U.S. socio-economic …

Where The Clouds Meet The Water, Kimberly E. Contag, James A. (Jim) Grabowska

MSU Authors Collection

Where the Clouds Meet the Water follows the historical journey of the German Ecuadorian widower, Ernst Contag, and his four young children from their home in the South American Andes to Nazi Germany in 1942. Blacklisted as an enemy alien, Ernst Contag and his children are forcibly repatriated to the country of Ernst's grandparents as part of a diplomatic exchange arranged by the United States' State Department and cooperating countries. In Nazi Germany, Ernst and his children must deny their Ecuadorian past and learn to live as Germans. The Contag family strives to keep the ray of hope in their …

The Response Of The United States To Fascism In Latin America 1933-1943, Robert C. Rasmussen

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

The conflict between the totalitarian forces of fascism and the democracies was not confined to just the battlefields of Western Europe or the beaches of the South Pacific. Between 1933 and 1943 the forces of these two conflicting ideologies were engaged in a struggle to win the confidence of the people of Latin America. The suc­cess that the United States ultimately had in winning the trust and support of the Latin America nations bolstered the morale of America while at the same time denying the Nazis an important strategic and propaganda triumph.

In this study the activities of the Nazis …