Latin American History Commons^™

A Monastery For The Revolution: Ernesto Cardenal, Thomas Merton, And The Paradox Of Violence In Nicaragua, 1957-1979, Brendan Jordan

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

In 1957, a young Nicaraguan poet named Ernesto Cardenal, recently graduated from Columbia University, entered the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani, located outside Louisville, Kentucky. There he met a prominent Catholic thinker and pacifist, Thomas Merton, who soon mentored young Cardenal. Though Cardenal departed Gethsemani in 1959, Merton continued to counsel him in spirituality, poetry, and social activism until Merton’s death in 1968. While Cardenal during these earlier years was a committed pacifist, his experiences after returning to Nicaragua in 1965 radically altered his view of social action. Cardenal established a semi-monastic community in the Solentiname islands in southern Nicaragua, and …

Women’S Involvement In The Sandinistas And The Farc, Derek Comba

Undergraduate Research Journal

Historically, women have been constantly excluded from combat in war except in times of dire need. Even today women are not allowed in the overwhelming majority of armies from around the world, and the ones that do allow women do not allow them on the front lines. Women have always been seen as not capable of war or as not needing to fight since the men can fight for them. Yet, time and time again it appears that guerrilla, insurgent, and terrorist groups have let women into their ranks. While large numbers of women fought in both the Sandinista National …

Free And Not So Much: Black Slavery In The Spanish Colonial World, Taylor Ritz

Undergraduate Research Journal

Although started by the Portuguese and used widely in Brazil, the slave trade and the use of slaves were quickly adopted by the Spanish in the Western World.1 Not much is known about the black slavery that happened in Latin America or how it was different from the common idea of slavery in the United States. This paper’s objective is to open the reader’s eyes and inform them about what black slavery was like in colonial Spanish America.

In theory, it was assumed that slavery in the southern United States had the same principles, and was the same, as Latin …

Historicity, Achronicity, And The Materiality Of Cultures In Colonial Brazil, Amy J. Buono

Art Faculty Articles and Research

"In this essay, I use three nontraditional forms from the visual culture of colonial Brazil—Tupinambá featherwork, Portuguese Atlantic mandinga pouches, and azulejos (tilework)— in order to meditate upon materiality and temporality as methodological problems with which our discipline should engage. Each of these art forms has historical trajectories that span cultures, continents, and centuries, a circumstance that raises questions as to how such diverse and stubbornly nonhistoricizable genres can be melded into a coherent historical narrative of the visual and material cultures specific to 'Brazil,' especially when two of them — the mandinga bags and azulejos — are not intrinsically …

"For The Good Of The King's Vassals" Francisco Xavier De Mendonca Furtado And The Portuguese Amazon, 1751-1759, Lucas Richardson

Theses and Dissertations--History

In the middle of the eighteenth century the Portuguese crown, under the influence of the Marquis of Pombal, sought to reform the political administration of its vast set of imperial holdings. As part of these reforms, in 1751 Pombal sent his brother, Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furtado, to the Portuguese Amazon to serve as governor of the state of Grão Pará and Maranhão. This study explores Furtado’s tenure as governor of the Amazon from his perspective, in an attempt to understand how and why he arrived at a set of policies known as the “Directorate,” which overhauled the region’s mission …

Roads To Progress: Public Perceptions Of Highway Construction In Peru, 1920–30, Mark Rice

Publications and Research

This paper, presented at the AHA/CLAH Annual Meeting in 2015 examines how Peruvians viewed the ongoing construction of roads in the early twentieth century. I argue that public support for road construction stemmed from the perception that such infrastructure would economically and culturally modernize Peru.

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 Butterflies That Saved The Dominican Republic, Rachel A. Bodenschatz

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Analysis of the Dominican Republic during Trujillo’s regime and the effect of the Mirabal sisters. This paper is the culmination of the research and analytical skills I learned throughout my four years as a history student. I choose the topic because the Massillon Museum wrote a grant for the 2016 Big Read and chose Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of the Butterflies, as the book the community would read. In the Time of the Butterflies follows the Mirabal sisters on their quest to save their country from an evil dictator.

The Fall Of Teotihuacan, Elizabeth P. Ale

UROP Posters

In this project I present a survey of multiple theories regarding the dissolution of the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan. This complex city-state was established around 100 BCE and became one of the largest and most powerful sites in Mesoamerica. Located about 25 miles northeast of what is today known as Mexico City, Teotihuacan was home to many advanced technological and social structures, including a pyramid called The Pyramid of the Sun that boasted a base as large as the Great Pyramid of Giza’s. At some time between the 7^th and 8^th century CE, Teotihuacan went into decline. …

Anarchist Strategy And Visual Rhetoric In Brazil, 1970: The Living Theatre As “The People In The Street”, Chelsea R. Roberts

All Master's Theses

The dominant narrative of the Living Theatre, an anarchist-pacifist, activist performance group, situates the company within a historical framework of the "New Left". Implications of this strategy are identified and critiqued. Both due to the simplification of historical time periods between the fields of theatre and politics, or "periodization" (Postlewait), and because of the ways in which the "New Left" is identified as overtly American in much theatre scholarship, historicizing the Living Theatre as "in-line" with the New Left has resulted in the erasure of the Living Theatre's founding philosophies of anarchism and pacifism. The visual implications of these findings …

Rethinking The Conquest : An Exploration Of The Similarities Between Pre-Contact Spanish And Mexica Society, Culture, And Royalty, Samantha Billing

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The Spanish Conquest has been historically marked by the year 1521 and is popularly thought of as an absolute and complete process of indigenous subjugation in the New World. Alongside this idea comes the widespread narrative that describes a barbaric, uncivilized group of indigenous people being conquered and subjugated by a more sophisticated and superior group of Europeans. There is also a common misconception that the Conquest resulted in a dominance of European culture and a loss of the indigenous heritage that had prevailed in the New World up until that point.

This manuscript explores the period known as the …

“El No Murio, El Se Multiplico!” Hugo Chávez : The Leadership And The Legacy On Race, Cynthia Ann Mckinney

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

“Chávez, Chávez, Chávez: Chávez no murio, se multiplico!” was the chant outside the National Assembly building after several days of mourning the death of the first President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. This study investigates the leadership of Hugo Chávez and his legacy on race as seen through the eyes and experiences of selected interviewees and his legacy on race. The interviewees were selected based on familiarity with the person and policies of the leadership of Hugo Chávez and his legacy on race. Unfortunately, not much has been written about this aspect of Hugo Chávez despite the myriad attempts …

Las Madres De Plaza De Mayo, Then And Now: A Comparative Analysis Of Its Fractured Factions And Lasting Sybolism In Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sondra Anton

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

I conducted research on three different factions of the original Madres de Plaza de Mayo cause in Buenos Aires, Argentina: Asociación Madres de Plaza de Mayo, Madres de Plaza de Mayo Línea Fundadora, and Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Through interviews and archival research, I have completed a comparison of the three groups. I have concluded that although their original cause of demanding the whereabouts of their disappeared children united them, they are now deeply fragmented among one another due to their differing opinions of how to achieve justice in post-Dirty War Argentina. Furthermore, it is interesting to note the …

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2015

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Water, Bison, And Horses: Natural Resources And Their Impacts On Native Raids And Relations In Late, Spanish Colonial New Mexico, Dori L. Gorczyca

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

During the Spanish colonial period in New Mexico’s history, the area became a place where cultural, social, and economic mixing of various Native American groups and Spanish settlers frequently occurred. Certain peoples, such as the Pueblo, lived in an agrarian society and worked in close proximity to the Spanish. Other peoples, such as the Comanche, Apache, and Navajo, developed hostile relationships with these foreigners, and their raids on the Spanish, Pueblo, and each other changed the dynamic of their settlements. Sources from Spanish and Church officials, along with travel logs, discuss the effects of natural resources, such as water and …

“God Will Deliver Us” : Human Rights Abuses From Guatemala To Iowa And Back, 1980-2014, Raeann Lillian Swanson

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Guatemala’s long internal conflict, the lack of justice, the general poverty, and continued violence since the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords prompt many people to migrate to the United States in search of jobs and opportunities for their family. Since the 1980s, Guatemalans have settled in Postville, Iowa, a small town that is nationally recognized for the ethnically diverse populations that live and work there. In 2008, it was also the site of the largest Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) worksite raid to date and the following criminal trials were unprecedented. Because of the tragedy in Postville, sources that detail …

Memory, State Violence, And Revolution: Mexico's Dirty War In Ciudad Juárez, Vanessa Claire Johnson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

After the uprising that took place in Madera, Chihuahua on September 23, 1965, the first armed challenge to the state since the Mexican Revolution, the north became a region of historical significance for understanding the subsequent "Dirty War" that spanned from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Ciudad Juárez was a key locale in which a wide variety of revolutionary groups conducted both open and clandestine activities. Attempting to rouse the masses, a dedicated few organized protests, counter-meetings, popular assemblies, and launched a prepa popular to reorganize and democratize education. The Mexican state responded to these events with repression, …

Zapatistas: Vida Cotidiana Durante La Revolución Mexicana, Alejandro Rodriguez-Mayoral

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

"Zapatistas: Vida cotidiana durante la Revolución Mexicana" consiste en una historia social y cultural que abarca desde 1910 hasta 1920. Esta historia reconstruye la vida cotidiana de hombres y mujeres que vivieron de cerca la revolución zapatista en Morelos, el Estado de México y el Distrito Federal. De esta manera, aquí se inspecciona a revolucionarios zapatistas, soldados zapatistas de "medio tiempo" y pacíficos. La preocupación principal que atiende la presente pesquisa es responder a la interrogante ¿cuándo, cómo y de qué manera la vida cotidiana cambió para la gente común y corriente, y rebelde, a raíz de la revolución? A …