Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

The Afterlives Of Julia De Burgos, Vanessa Pérez-Rosario

Publications and Research

This essay—a response to a discussion of the author’s 2014 book Becoming Julia de Burgos: The Making of a Puerto Rican Icon—focuses on the importance of generations, intellectual genealogies, iconicity, and the afterlives of Puerto Rican poet and writer Julia de Burgos.

La Reproducción De Negritud In Murales Y Estatus En Esmeraldas, Ecuador, Ethan Johnson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

En Ecuador y en otras partes de América Latina el racismo Anti-negro se ha estructurado a través del discurso dominante de la identidad nacional, el mestizaje o la mezcla racial y cultural. El discurso dominante de la identidad nacional en América Latina resultó de los esfuerzos de los grupos de élite para desarrollar ideologías en respuesta a la crisis percibida en sus naciones europeas sobre todo no blancas. Para evitar el estigma asociado a las personas negras e indígenas estas elites desarrollaron el concepto de mestizaje, es decir, mezcla racial y cultural. Sin embargo, estas élites también mantuvieron las jerarquías …

Rodríguez Studies America’S Image Of Cuba And Of Itself, Aldemaro Romero Jr.

Publications and Research

“It has to do with my emotional DNA— storytelling and maternal love are linked together. I was brought up by women who read to me as a kid. I love storytelling because I associate it with love, and that has carried over tremendously throughout my life.” That is how Dr. Rick Rodríguez explains his love for literature.

A native of Havana, Cuba, Rodríguez went on to receive his bachelor’s in English from Florida International University and his doctorate, also in English, from the University of Chicago. Today he is an assistant professor in the Department of English of the Weissman …

Herencia Y Memoria Afro En Las Américas. Una Mirada A La Pedagogía Desde Los Saberes Afrodescendientes, Ethan Johnson

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Mis pensamientos sobre los aportes de la gente de ascendencia africana en América Latina empiezan de mis ideas del mismo grupo de América del Norte. Primero, quiero decir que no soy un investigador sobre la influencia de la cultura africana en la Américas. No es que no tengo interés en África, solo es que siempre me haya sentido muy lejos de África. Para mi era el racismo, interpersonal e institucional, que era lo más central en mi vida creciendo en los Estados Unidos. Espero que ustedes no lo tomen esto como un ejemplo de lo tanto que estoy colonializado, pero …

O Negro E O Poder: The Significance Of Social Support And Positive Black Identity Formation Through An Afro-Brazilian Politico-Cultural Organization In Salvador, Bahia, Ninar Taha

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In contemporary Brazilian history, the prominence of race consciousness and Black pride is relatively new. Those who identify as Black often lack the positive social support that they need to feel empowered and esteemed. This project focuses on the role and power of Afro-Brazilian politico-cultural organizations as networks of social support for Brazilians who self-identify as Black. With specific attention on Associação Cultural Bloco Carnavalesco Ilê Aiyê, my research investigation is intended to develop an understanding of the valuation of such politico-cultural groups in the lives of Black Brazilians and how they contribute to overall emotional health of both individuals …

Somos Tierra Floreciendo: El Surgimiento De La Literatura Kichwa Como Herramienta Política Y Cultural, Kaia Heimer-Bumstead

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Este proyecto de estudio independiente examina el papel de la literatura escrita en la resistencia cultural y política de los pueblos kichwas de la sierra ecuatoriana. Analiza la manera en que la historia de colonización influye en la expresión cultural y lingüística de los pueblos originarios, en particular la fuerte tradición de oralidad y los niveles bajos de alfabetismo en la propia lengua que caracterizan a la actual producción cultural de la sociedad kichwa. Dentro de esto contexto, discute las implicaciones de adoptar y utilizar recursos y códigos occidentales, como la escritura alfabética, para preservar, fortalecer y revitalizar la lengua …

A Danza De Las Tijeras Continuidad Dinámica Y Reivindicación De La Identidad Indígena Andina / Dance Of The Scissors Dynamic Continuity And Reclamation Of Andean Indigenous Identity, Cinthia Durán

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research project aims to analyze the contemporary ways in which the Dance of Scissors is practiced and reproduced to determine if its continuity outside the place of origin, with all the modifications that it has experienced, can be considered a form of cultural resistance. Resistance in this context is addressed in two specific ways: as a dynamic continuity of Andean indigenous identity and as a tool of cultural vindication. To achieve this goal, during the work period the research methodology consisted of interviewing dancers and scissors musicians; be a participant as observer of skills and essays of Tijeras dancers …

Luchadoras: Resistencias Contra La Violencia De Género Por Las Mujeres En La Región De San Ramón, Olivia "Livey" Beha

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This qualitative study describes the dynamic resiliency-building process against gender-based violence in two rural coffee-producing communities in the region of San Ramon, Nicaragua. It examines the methods and efficacy of economic empowerment and educational interventions facilitated by the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives Augusto Cesar Sandino (UCA San Ramón) in addressing gender inequality, preventing gender-based violence, and increasing access to resources for women in the cooperatives of El Privilegio and Danilo Gonzales. This complex ecology, comprised of the interactions between women, their communities, available resources, and institutions, is assessed through the lens of women’s individual perspectives as they engage in three …

“Porque Soy Madre”: Un Análisis Del Rol De La Maternidad En La Organización “Multisectorial Contra La Violencia Institucional” En Rosario, Santa Fe / “Because I’M A Mother”: An Analysis Of The Role Of Maternity In The Organization “Multisectorial Against Institutional Violence” In Rosario, Santa Fe, Daisy Jones

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

It is difficult to talk about social movements in Argentina without discussing the significant impact of “Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo.” “Las Madres,” which began as an activist organization of mothers of “los desaparecidos” or the “disappeared” during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, is politically influential in Argentina to this day. Through demonstrations, marches, and other campaigns, Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo and its work have shaped the way that the whole world understands human rights violations during the dictatorship. Apart from their work to visibilize instances of state terrorism, Las Madres has created a precedent that allows …

Latina School Leadership: Breaking The Mold And Rising To The Top, Velma D. Menchaca, Shirley J. Mills, Filomena Leo

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

For this qualitative research study, interviews with two Latina school leaders revealed their journeys to leadership. The theoretical framework used was Latina critical race theory, feminist theory, and counter storytelling. Identified themes were strong supportive mother, fervent faith, humble beginnings, mentors, intelligent, and challenges not obstacles. These guiding themes serve as a path for Latinas who aspire to public school leadership positions.

Of Stars And Solitude: Two Mexican Documentaries, Paul Julian Smith

Publications and Research

By happy coincidence, Mexico in 2016 yielded two expert and moving documentaries on women, sex, and aging: María José Cuevas’s Bellas de noche (Beauties of the Night) and Maya Goded’s Plaza de la Soledad (Solitude Square). Both are first-time features by female directors. And both are attempts to reclaim previously neglected subjects: showgirls of the 1970s and sex workers in their seventies, respectively. Moreover, lengthy production processes in which the filmmakers cohabitated with their subjects have resulted in films that are clearly love letters to their protagonists.

Lopez, Victor M. (Fa 1037), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1037. Paper titled “Spanish Oxcarts” in which Victor M. Lopez discusses the history, production, and lore of traditional Costa Rican oxcarts. Paper is based on information collected by Lopez from family and friends.

Review Of Peruvian Featherworks: Art Of The Precolumbian Era, Amy Buono

Art Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Peruvian Featherworks: Art of the Precolumbian Era, edited by Heidi King.

Reimagining African Authenticity Through Adichie's Imitation Motif, Ivette Rodriguez

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In An Image of Africa, Chinua Achebe indicts Conrad’s Heart of Darkness for exemplifying the kind of purist rhetoric that has long benefited Western ontology while propagating reductive renderings of African experience. Edward Said refers to this dynamic as the way in which societies define themselves contextually against an imagined Other. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s fiction exposes how, by occupying cultural dominance, Western, white male values are normalized as universal. Nevertheless, these values are de-naturalized by their inconsistencies in the lived experiences of Adichie’s black, African women. Women who are at once aware of and participant in, the pretentions that underlie …

Investigating Female Indigenous Leadership In Latin America, Roseangela G. Hartford

Spanish Summer Fellows

This project investigates gender constructs and the complex assigned gender roles in settings of female indigenous leadership in Latin America. It examines two distinct indigenous communities, including the BriBri society in Yorkín, Costa Rica and the Maya peoples in Santa Anita, Guatemala that demonstrate the circumstantial spectrum in which women can obtain leadership roles and what actors directly influence this process. Each case study explores the fluidity of gender identities in which concepts of masculinity often guide female empowerment and liberation. With Costa Rica abolishing their military in 1948 and Guatemala experiencing a 36-year civil war (1960-1996) and a major …

H.V.: The Cuban Revolution Through One Man’S Life, Isabel Valiela

Spanish Faculty Publications

This paper aims to illustrate the many ways in which the Cuban Revolution shaped the lives of the Cuban people by focusing on one man’s life from his childhood in the early part of the revolutionary period to his final departure from Cuba in 2006. H.V., as I call him, now lives in Barcelona, Spain. He is a man of humble rural origins who moved to Havana in his youth, where he benefitted from various government programs related to education, sports and job training. He and his family were initially very pro-revolutionary, but in the 1980’s he began to observe …

Overcoming The Hurdles: The Journey Of The Afro-Colombian Woman, Nashay M. Kenneth

Undergraduate Research

Afro-Colombian women are marginalized in their society for a variety of reasons. This research aims to address the disparities they face when compared to white or mestizo women in Colombia. Background information about slavery, Colombia’s abundant resources, Colombia’s Pacific Coast, and the Colombian Conflict are introduced to provide a complete understanding of the prevailing discrimination and marginalization experienced by this segment of the population. The Department of Chocó in the Pacific Coast hosts a large population of Afro-Colombians, it is therefore a central component of this discussion. The fight over the Pacific Coast’s lucrative resources has produced damaging effects on …

The 5th Of May: Trajectory, Reappropriations And Possibilities Of A Mexico-American Tradition, Antonio Sánchez, Julieta Altamirano-Crosby

Anthropology and Museum Studies Faculty Scholarship

This paper is aimed at to analyze the historical significance of the date of 5th of May for Mexico and the United States. The Documental Argumentative Research method was used for this research, and it is concluded that this victory had a profound historical significance and relevance not only for Mexico but also for the United States, representing an important symbol of national patriotism. This date was forming a path of the new Chicano, the new Latino, a new future strategically minded, as an opportunity to educate, inform and inspire the public good, to reexamine Mexico and the Mexico-American history, …

Texto, Contexto Y Cultura En Los Comentarios Sobre Teología De La Liberación, Sara Heist

Senior Honors Theses

The critical dialogue sparked by Latin American liberation theology in the 1970s has involved diverse authors from various creeds and cultures. Although dozens of critics have offered an analysis of both Liberation Theology and its foundational text, Gustavo Gutiérrez’s A Theology of Liberation, the discussion has not reached consensus. Some critics, such as Ray Hundley, Ronald Nash, C. F. H. Henry, Harold O. J. Brown and Michael Novak, dismiss the movement as a hopeless entanglement of social goodwill, economic ignorance, and insidious Marxist philosophy. Others, among them the Catholic Magisterium, Michael Löwy, Juan Carlos Scannone, and João B. Chaves, …

Afro-Caribbean Immigrant Faculty Experiences In The American Academy: Voices Of An Invisible Black Population, Dave A. Louis, Keisha V. Thompson, Patriann Smith, Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams, Juann Watson

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

Afro-Caribbean immigrants have been an integral part of the history and shaping of the United States since the early 1900s. This current study explores the experiences of five Afro-Caribbean faculty members at traditionally White institutions of higher education. Despite the historical presence and influence of Afro-Caribbean communities and the efforts within education systems to address the needs of Afro-Caribbean constituents, Afro-Caribbean faculty members continue to be rendered indiscernible in higher education and to be frequently and erroneously perceived as African–Americans. The study examines the lived experiences of these individuals in the hegemonic White spaces they occupy at their institutions with …

Breaking The Silence: The Story Of The Ixil Maya Of Union Victoria During The Guatemalan Civil War, Megan Marcucci (Class Of 2017)

History Undergraduate Publications

In the spring of 2016 and in the spring of 2017, I went to southern Guatemala on a mission trip under the auspices of Sacred Heart University. Never having studied Guatemala or its history, I had no idea what type of turmoil plagued this beautiful country. After traveling high up in the mountains of Guatemala and hearing the story of one indigenous Ixil Maya village, I knew that their story needed to be told.

Boletín V.22 (2017), Fordham University Latin American And Latino Studies Institute

Boletín (Fordham University. Latin American and Latino Studies Institute)

No abstract provided.

El Tirano Indigente: Pedro Páramo, Deuda Y Necropolítica, Alberto Ribas-Casasayas

Modern Languages & Literature

This article studies the connections between conditions of tyrannical control in Juan Rulfo’s novel Pedro Páramo and forms of violence and government in the contemporary world. It discusses debt and violence, two essential elements in the plot of Pedro Páramo, from the perspective of the so-called drug war, as well as critical discussions of debt that have emerged in the context of recent financial crises (Graeber, Lazzarato, Varoufakis).

Pedro Páramo’s tyranny is built on the implementation of two powers that feed on each other: necropolitical power and control through debt. Necropolitical power (Mbembé) involves the administration of and dominion …

El Rock En Nicaragua: Un Discurso De Resistencia Contra La Neoliberalización O Una Re-Definición De La Tradición., Martina Barinova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Abstract in English

This work, which parts from the premise that music is a medium of communication with the potential to transform and create identities, explores rock music in Nicaragua since its beginning until the present. Nicaraguan rock music is born in a sociopolitical context of extreme economic instability and during a crisis of values in the last decade of the 20^th century, with the end of the Sandinista Revolution and the establishment of neoliberal government. The young cultural movement, and rock in particular, constructs a discourse dissident from the patriarchal and capitalist hegemony and interrogates the social reality …

Identificando Los Limites Del Acceso A La Salud Reproductiva: Un Análisis Sobre Las Experiencias Vividas Por Las Mujeres Guaraníes Con Los Servicios De La Salud Reproductiva En La Villa 31 De Buenos Aires, Amelia Mitchell

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In order to serve the ‘public’, public health services must be accessible to everyone, without discrimination based on race, gender, social class, or geographic location, among other facets of identity. Reproductive health services, in particular, are a key service that must be adequately supplied in order to guarantee the health and wellbeing of a population. Reproductive healthcare not only allows individuals to decide if and when they wish to have a child, it also contributes to cancer prevention and the detrimental effects of sexually transmitted diseases. This investigation examines the experiences of Guaraní women that live within “Villa 31” of …

Cuba’S Use Of Medical Diplomacy: Establishing Global Significance And Influence, Juan Herzberg

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research project aims to assess the importance of medical diplomacy as a foreign policy strategy for Cuba, as well as a means by which the small island nation has managed to gain geopolitical prominence in the current international political sphere. Through the analysis of Cuba’s medical internationalism, its impact on the health of populations across the world, its oil-for-doctors trade agreements with Venezuela, and its involvement in initiatives like the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), it becomes easier to see the link between medical diplomacy and geopolitical power, which Cuba has been successfully garnering since its 1959 Revolution …

Listening/Reading For Disremembered Voices: Additive Archival Representation And The Zong Massacre Of 1781, Jorge E. Cartaya

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis grapples with questions surrounding representation, mourning, and responsibility in relation to two literary representations of the ZONG massacre of 1781. These texts are M. NourbeSe Philip’s ZONG! and Fred D’Aguiar’s FEEDING THE GHOSTS. The only extant archival document—a record of the insurance dispute which ensued as a consequence of the massacre—does not represent the drowned as victims, nor can it represent the magnitude of the atrocity. As such, this thesis posits that the archival gaps or silences from which the captives’ voices are missing become spaces of possibility for additive representation. This thesis also examines the role voice …

From Liberation To Salvation: Revolutionary Critical Pedagogy Meets Liberation Theology, Peter Mclaren, Petar Jandrić

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This conversation between Peter McLaren and Petar Jandric´ brings about some of the most recent and deepest of McLaren’s insights into the relationship between revolutionary critical pedagogy and liberation theology, and outlines the main directions of development of McLaren’s thought during and after Pedagogy of Insurrection. In the conversation, McLaren reveals his personal and theoretical path to liberation theology. He argues for the relevance of liberation theology for contemporary social struggles, links it with social sciences, and addresses some recent critiques of Pedagogy of Insurrection. McLaren identifies the idolatry of money as the central point of convergence between liberation …

Smoking Trends Among U.S. Latinos, 1998–2013: The Impact Of Immigrant Arrival Cohort, Georgiana Bostean, Annie Ro, Nancy L. Fleischer

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Few studies examine nativity disparities in smoking in the U.S., thus a major gap remains in understanding whether immigrant Latinos’ smoking prevalence is stable, converging, or diverging, compared with U.S.-born Latinos. This study aimed to disentangle the roles of period changes, duration of U.S. residence, and immigrant arrival cohort in explaining the gap in smoking prevalence between foreign-born and U.S.-born Latinos. Using repeated cross-sectional data spanning 1998–2013 (U.S. National Health Interview Survey), regressions predicted current smoking among foreign-born and U.S.-born Latino men and women (n = 12,492). We contrasted findings from conventional regression analyses that simply include period and duration …

La Violencia: Los Semas De Rasgos Diegéticos Y Miméticos De La Literatura Colombiana De La Segunda Mitad Del Siglo Xx., Omar Fernando Sánchez Forero

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Los fenómenos de la realidad tienen repercusión en la ficción literaria. La ficción se vale de elementos reales para develar las problemáticas sociales. Podría ser comprendido como una forma de decir “verdades usando mentiras; la mentira de los personajes, con una trama muy real” (Monroy 3). Es oportuno entonces analizar la posible relación casi simbiótica existente entre la realidad y la ficción, presente en la praxis literaria colombiana de gran parte del siglo XX, e incluso de nuestros días. Argüimos que los personajes de las obras utilizan semas, o rasgos de significado distintivo mínimos, tanto diegéticos como miméticos que caracterizan …