Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Colombian Women’S Experiences Of The Canadian Refugee And Asylum Adjudication Process, Camila N. Parra Carrillo

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The present thesis “Colombian women’s experiences of the Canadian refugee and asylum adjudication process” is an ethnographic description and analysis of the experiences of Colombian refugee women as they move through the refugee and asylum adjudication system in Ontario, Canada. Using concepts such as liminality, politics of waiting, hermeneutics of suspicion and arbitrariness, the refugee and asylum adjudication system is shown to be a site of power and domination that creates negative emotions in the people who face it, especially in the oral hearing as a central event in the process. Centering Colombian refugee women’s voices, their experiences and emotions …

Life In Between: Prehispanic Settlement Patterns Of The Carabamba Valley, Northern Peru, Amedeo Sghinolfi

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This dissertation is an archaeological study of the Carabamba Valley (ca. 150 - 3,500 m.a.s.l.) in Northern Peru, which aims to reconstruct settlement patterns through the longue durée (ca. 1800 B.C. - A.D. 1532). This study also documents the relations occupants of this frontier zone maintained with neighboring polities on the Peruvian North Coast (Virú Valley) and in the Northern Highlands. The valley features the resource-rich ecological niche called chaupiyunga, fed by rainwater that flows towards the Pacific Ocean and by a number of springs, where crops like coca, fruits, and vegetables can be easily grown. The Carabamba Valley also …

The Other Neighbour Of El Otro Lado, Anahi Gonzalez Teran

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This written thesis is in support of a Master’s of Fine Arts degree at Western University. The thesis dossier explores themes of Mexican migration in Canada engaging with ideas of human labour and various indexes of Mexican culture, trade, and economic exchange. The thesis also consists of documentation of public exhibitions and other various creative production components including videos, photography and multi-media installations. This thesis is separated into three major sections. The first is an extended artist statement which outlines my artistic research and my creative process as an artist. The second is a portfolio of photographic documentation of artworks …

La Ficción Revelada. La Poética De La Autoficción En La Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, Alba Devo Colis

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Esta disertación investiga el estatuto genérico de la autoficción, el cual se ha entendido como un género híbrido entre autobiografía y novela o como un producto derivado de la autobiografía posmoderna. Mientras que teóricamente se ha defendido la ambigüedad genérica a partir de la identidad nominal y los elementos autobiográficos compartidos entre autor, narrador y protagonista, el presente trabajo sigue la perspectiva que sitúa a la autoficción como un género ficcional y no como un género híbrido. Por ello, se busca identificar las estrategias utilizadas por los autores para erigir la obra como una ficción que no depende de gradientes …

The Language Vitality Of Nahuatl In Santiago Tlaxco, Mexico, Grace Gomashie

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This thesis assesses the language vitality of Nahuatl (also known as Mexicano) in Santiago Tlaxco, a rural bilingual community in the municipality of Chiconcuautla, located in Puebla, Mexico, in the face of the growing trend of language endangerment for many Indigenous languages. It explores the linguistic use and attitudes of community members, and how they contribute to language maintenance and language shift of Nahuatl. The main research questions are: a) what are the language use patterns of the community? and b) what are the prevailing language attitudes of this Nahuatl-speaking community towards its Indigenous language? Data on the language practices …

El Ritmo Y La Palabra O Para Una Poética De La Salsa Y La Presalsa, Witton Becerra

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Salsa has been widely developed as a musical style, as well as part of Spanish American culture, specifically from the Spanish Caribbean. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the poetics of salsa music produced in New York City, and “presalsa” in particular, which is the name coined to the Cuban and Puerto Rican rhythms preceding and establishing the musical and poetic patterns of salsa music.

The main issue elucidated here is how salsa and presalsa music take their poetic forms from the “décima espinela”, a 17^th century Spanish poetic style, coupled with sounds from Bantu languages called …

Vitality Of Damana, The Language Of The Wiwa Indigenous Community, Tatiana L. Fernandez Fernandez

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The Wiwa are Indigenous[1] people who live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia. This project examines the vitality of Damana [ISO 693-3: mbp], their language, in two communities that offer bilingual high school education in Damana and Spanish. Its aim is to measure the level of endangerment of Damana according to the factors used in the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected through a questionnaire that gathered demographic and background language information, self-reported proficiency and use of Spanish and Damana [n=56]. Besides the questionnaire, interviews with teachers and …

La Voz De Violeta Parra: Una Aproximación A Las Voces Como Materialización Del Vínculo Entre Cuerpo, Identidad Y Cultura, Martha L. Rojas Castaneda

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Violeta Parra (1917-1967) fue una artista multidisciplinaria chilena. A partir de su muerte, su obra adquirió mayor reconocimiento y, consecuentemente, su voz y su legado han trascendido el tiempo y las fronteras. El presente trabajo surge desde los estudios culturales de género sobre la voz como materialización de la unicidad de cada persona y su vínculo con la comunidad. Por lo que la voz de Violeta Parra, audible y discursiva, resultaría una huella de su identidad. Así, esta tesis es una aproximación a la voz de Parra, cuyo fin es comprender qué revela su voz escritural en Décimas: autobiografía en …

Aproximación Al Modelo De Adquisición Del Habla De Un Segundo Dialecto: La Producción De La Variante [S] Por Hablantes De Tres Variedades Del Español Colombiano En Contacto En Ciudad Bolívar, Bogotá, Cenaida Gomez

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El presente estudio es un análisis de la adquisición de rasgos del habla de un segundo dialecto (D2). Específicamente, analiza la adquisición de la producción del sonido predorso-alveolar sordo [s] en posición coda en tres grupos de hablantes de tres variedades D1 del español colombiano (andina oriental, costeña y andina occidental) que han habitado en contacto en la localidad de Ciudad Bolívar en Bogotá, Colombia.

El estudio tiene tres objetivos. El primero es analizar el rol de la distancia fonética entre las variantes de /s/ más frecuentes en el habla de las variedades D1 y la variante más frecuente de …

Narrativa Multiterritorial Hispanoamericana, Ana Maria Gonzalez

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Esta disertación examina dos manifiestos literarios y dos novelas producidas por escritores de origen y formación hispanoamericana durante finales del siglo XX e inicios del siglo XXI. Los manifiestos son los presentados por los grupos McOndo y Crack en el año de 1996. Por otra parte, las dos novelas que se examinan son El sueño del celta (2010), escrita por Mario Vargas Llosa, y En busca de Klingsor (1999) cuyo autor es Jorge Volpi. En el primer capítulo se presenta el marco conceptual e histórico alrededor de nociones como nacionalismo y nación, globalización, ciudadanía global, e hibridez cultural. En el …

An Interventionist Approach To Language Study Abroad: Exploring Metalinguistic Awareness In The Acquisition Of Spanish Through Digital Portfolio Documentation And Expert Mentorship, Meredith Mcgregor

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Language study abroad offers the possibility of acquiring a multitude of competencies, linguistic and otherwise. While historically study abroad research has emphasized linguistic gains in isolation, it has gradually moved towards a more sociocultural approach whereby individual factors and intercultural competencies are seen as integral to the process of acquiring knowledge of a language. With remaining gaps in the literature, and as new instruments emerge, so too do new opportunities for tracking and measuring learning outcomes in innovative ways. The present study, framed by the intervention hypothesis and sociocultural theory, utilizes the social media platform Google+ as a space to …

Cultural Diversity In Artificial Societies: Case Studies Of The Maya Peoples, Roberto Ulloa

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The existence of cultural diversity in a connected world is paradoxical given that all individuals constantly interact and share information, and that individuals are all part of one giant network of connections. In the long term, it seems logical to assume that everybody should hold the same cultural information and, therefore, the same culture. Yet cultural diversity is still manifest around the globe. Cultural diversity as a phenomenon becomes even more puzzling when we take into account how it survives catastrophic events which regularly befall societies, such as invasions, natural disasters, and civil wars. In this thesis, agent-based computer simulations …

Elusive Peace, Security, And Justice In Post-Conflict Guatemala: An Exploration Of Transitional Justice And The International Commission Against Impunity In Guatemala (Cicig), Daniel W. Schloss

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Guatemala has, until today, struggled to achieve security and justice following the end of nearly half a century of civil war in 1996. One specific institution, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), has been implemented to rectify many of the Guatemalan state’s difficulties in establishing and maintaining the rule of law. In this thesis, I look to better explain CICIG’s role in Guatemala relative to security and justice in a post-conflict setting: I define CICIG as an institution potentially capable of building societal trust, and I explain how the inclusion of procedural justice within transitional justice can help …

Casta Painting And The Characterization Of Colonial Mexican Identities, Natalia Caldas

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This thesis will examine the emergence of the casta painting genre in eighteenth century New Spain and elements of identity formation in the characterization of colonial subjects. Through the use of a database and close reading of paintings, a corpus of 370 paintings were studied and analyzed. A total of 1471 casta characters were extracted from said paintings and the relationship between actions performed, objects, and to each other was analyzed. In using this methodology results point to the significant historical division between the social communities and colonial society. By focusing on the study of particular characters fractures in imposed …

Nativos Migrantes: Poesía En La Encrucijada, Juan Sanchez

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Aquí ofrezco un encuentro entre saberes a partir de siete autores contemporáneos cuyas obras han sido fraguadas en las cinco direcciones de América: Humberto Ak’abal, Jaime Luis Huenún, Odi Gonzales, David Aniñir, Hugo Jamioy, Vito Apüshana y Rayen Kvyeh. Este corpus responde a dos razones: la conexión entre las migraciones (físicas o literarias) de los poetas y la forma en que sus libros modelan poéticas con un alto grado de experimentación; y la posibilidad de construir con estas obras un diálogo transfronterizo.

En contraposición a la idea de la literatura como objeto de estudio, propongo que la poesía …

Entre El Juego Y La Memoria: El Detective Y La Ciudad En La Narrativa Neo Policiaca De Paco Ignacio Taibo Ii Y Leonardo Padura Fuentes., Carlos Pardo

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This dissertation examines the development of the characters in the detective series of Paco Ignacio Taibo II (Mexico) and Leonardo Padura Fuentes (Cuba) and their relationship with their Hispanic-American cities: Mexico D.F. and Havana. To accomplish it, this dissertation initially deals with the connection between the “neo policiaco” and the narrative tradition that precedes it: the classical detective story or whodunit and the American hardboiled crime story, as well as its link with Spanish contemporary detective fiction. As a result, the Hispanic-American “neo policiaco” explores new possibilities of detective narratives in which complex characters and the Hispanic American city as …

Magic(Infra)Realism: Jetztzeiten Of Believability And Latin American History In García Márquez’S Cien Años De Soledad And Otoño Del Patriarca., Katarzyna Jasinski

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This thesis examines the idea of Colombian history as ‘random coincidence’ in Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien años de soledad and El otoño del patriarca. Walter Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History and Michel Foucault’s Nietzsche, Genealogy, History provide the theoretical framework for the research. This thesis examines magic realism as a way of representing the true invisible past of Latin America. The combination of Foucault’s concept of genealogy, Walter Benjamin’s ‘messianic historical materialism’ and García Márquez’s ‘magic realism’ demonstrates that the combination of living and telling produce a Jetztzeit of believability that redeems Latin American history from historicism. …

El Espacio Torcido En La Narrativa Mexicana De Temática Homosexual: 1977-1997, Juan Carlos Rocha Osornio

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This thesis examines how the narratives of Raúl Rodríguez Cetina, Luis Zapata, Mario Bellatin, and Gerardo Guiza Lemus recreate what I call Espacio Torcido (Queer Space) in which they aim (some more than others) at questioning and deconstructing the values of the heteronormative system: ambiguity, pleasure, rupture, and the quest for legitimacy compose this space. While each author takes a different approach, it can be said that they all participate in the construction of the history of the gay community in Mexico as seen in the latter part of the XX century: 1977-1997. In particular, this study looks at how …

Play In The Land Of Footnotes: Hipótesis De Un Diálogo (In)Estable Con El Pasado, Miharu Miyasaka

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En un panorama contemporáneo (posmoderno o posestructuralista) en el que se enfatiza la diferencia y la desconfianza hacia las certidumbres —generalizaciones de sospechosa estabilidad y noción de un “sentido común”—, cada vez es más legítima la competencia entre diferentes (grupos) productores de conocimiento para representar el pasado históricamente. Exploro niveles en los que estabilizar, provisionalmente, el “diálogo” entre unos horizontes de infinitas posibilidades y unos, más definidos, horizontes de sentido (histórico, cultural, teórico, institucional, disciplinario, normativo o profesional). En el análisis utilizo perspectivas teóricas sobre la producción cultural, la historiografía, la adaptación fílmica, la crítica deconstructivista, la transdiciplinariedad, la experimentación …

Mobilizing Insurgent Pasts Toward Decolonial Futures, Patrick Crowley

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This project is an inquiry into modes of decolonial resistance that mobilize alternative relationships to the past against the modern/colonial writing of history from a Eurocentric perspective taken as universal. I contend that knowledges and memories rooted in non-Western cultural traditions have formed the epistemological basis for ongoing opposition to the hegemonic conception of history as the unfolding of global structural transformations on a single, homogenous timescale. I examine works by Frantz Fanon, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Zapatista videomakers that expressly reject a Eurocentric, monotopic perspective of history. My objective is to demonstrate the decolonial efforts of intellectuals and ordinary people …

Antropofagia And Constructive Universalism: A Diptych, Aarnoud Rommens

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This study proposes a rethinking of the word-image relation through an examination of Joaquin Torres-García’s Constructive Universalism (ca.1934-1949) and the Brazilian Modernist movement of Antropofagia (1928-ca.1934). By placing both in the close relation of a ‘diptych,’ I argue for a new reading of Torres-García’s visual work as well as a different understanding of Antropofagia.

In the first part of this work, I argue, through a close reading and viewing of Torres-García’s work, that the constitutive instability between word/image has been overlooked in favour of, on the one hand, an appropriation in terms of a ‘deviation’ from the canon of Geometric …

Temporalidades Múltiples En La Encrucijada: Representaciones Artísticas De Lo Afro En Latinoamérica Y El Mundo Hispánico Durante La Actual Etapa De Globalización, Eduard Arriaga

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Nowadays talking about national, racial or gender identities and its representations is quite difficult due to current global-local dynamics of cultural formation. In that sense, approaching to these issues requires the use of comprehensive theories and complex tools in order to forge a better understanding. My dissertation explores the artistic representation of ‘afro’ in the Hispanic world (or the culture built upon the legacies of Africans and African-descendants in the New World and especially in the Caribbean) during the current stage of globalization. In my dissertation, I argue that afro-artistic contemporary representations are overcoming traditional ones -bound to race as …