Latin American Languages and Societies Commons^™

Q’Iij Metaphysics: Vico’S Theologia Indorum And The Gods, Ancestors, And Idols Of The 16th Century K’Ichee’ Mayas, Phillip Salazar

Latin American Studies ETDs

Domingo de Vico completed the Theologia Indorum, a K’iche’ Christian manuscript, in Guatemala in 1554. In the manuscript, Vico distinguishes between the idols, ancestors, and gods of the K’iche’s. This paper shows that Vico believed the idols to be inanimate objects, ancestors to be the older generations that have passed away, and gods to be demons. This paper then develops a theory of animist ontology for the K’iche’s. Using that ontological theory, this paper argues that, for the K’iche’s, their idols and gods were indistinguishable and that their ancestors were still alive, present, and active among them.

Remedios Y Rituales De La Medicina Tradicional Hispana En Nuevo México., Mario E. Del Angel Guevara

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

El presente ensayo proporciona materiales educativos para el aprendizaje sobre varios de las plantas medicinales que se utilizan en la elaboración de remedios y rituales en el curanderismo, la medicina tradicional hispana de México y el suroeste de los Estados Unidos. Estos materiales educativos se encuentran disponibles a estudiantes registrados en el curso de Curanderismo que se enseña en la Universidad de Nuevo México o a cualquier miembro de la comunidad por medio de su clase de verano ofrecida a través de la oficina de “Continuing Education”. En la primera parte del ensayo se incluyen hierbas comunes en el tratamiento …

Cosmic Desert Art, Mike Graham De La Rosa

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of New Mexico and the Greater Southwest

The Cosmic Desert are the designs inspired by chile hallucinations, desert creatures, and the long weird neon nights in the Borderworld. Made with love on the banks of the Rio Grande.

My family is originally from Northern Mexico but I grew up in Northern New Mexico down river of both where Al Hurricane and Nuclear Annihilation were originally created. Amongst chollas, rattle snakes, and river willow, the imagining of New Mexico permeates the landscapes. The Cosmic Desert is inhabited lowriders, taco trucks, neon adobe bars, cholas, native peoples, immigrants, punk rockers and cowboys. Just beyond the darkness, our imagination takes …

Congress And The Fall Of Jacobo Arbenz: A Narrative Of Cold War Fears And Redemption, David Erik Lindwall

Latin American Studies ETDs

This thesis will examine the statements and actions of U.S. Congressmen and Senators between 1945 and 1996 to understand how they influenced White House policy towards the regime of Jacobo Árbenz. It will show how legislators equated growing communist influence in the Árbenz regime to Cold War struggles going on in Korea, Indochina and Eastern Europe, and how Congressmen from both parties drew on those fears to pressure Presidents Truman and Eisenhower to "neutralize the threat," leading to Árbenz’s fall. When violence erupted again in Guatemala in 1960-1996, Congress reinterpreted the story of Árbenz as Republicans and Democrats were polarized …

Researching Paraguayan Guarani: The Minoritized Language Of The Majority, Josefina Bittar Phd Candidate

LAII Events

Paraguayan Guarani, one of the native languages of Paraguay, is spoken by more than 80% of the country’s population. However, despite government and societal efforts, Spanish remains the language of prestige, required for education opportunities and social mobility. In this presentation, Josefina Bittar will discuss the characteristics of Guarani-Spanish bilingualism in Paraguay, the importance of documenting linguistic practices in the country, and the role of researchers in challenging the population’s internalized prejudices about languages and their speakers.

Trespassing And Transcending: Newcomer Crossing And Movement In Latina And Latin American Literature, Marina C. Todeschini

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In times when walls are raised and human diversity condemned, stories that present the free urban movement of marginalized characters become political. While the system excludes the brown/black newcomer bodies and restricted them to the margins, the texts analyzed here bring these bodies to the center, claiming their active role in the construction of the urban fabric. This way, Latin American and Latina authors are contesting the idea of citizenship and the right to the city of newcomer subjects by narrating the freedom of geographic and symbolic movement of often disenfranchised peoples. This dissertation analyzes the claims to urban rights …

Ecuador’S New Water Legal Framework (Lorhuya, 2014): An Assessement Of The First Five Years Of Implementation Through The Lens Of Plurinationality And Campesino’S Buen Vivir, Martina Nebbiai

Latin American Studies ETDs

A preliminary assessment of the first five years of implementation of Ecuador’s new Ley Organica de Recursos Hidricos, Usos y Aprovechamiento de Agua (LORHUyA, 2014), exlploring its impact on small irrigators communities, through the lens of Buen Vivir. A communication-based action research and political ecology of water in Ecuadorian marginalized Campesino communities, elucidating the repercussions of state-centralized water policy on the customary water management systems, and the disconnect between policy as determined nationally vs implemented locally. This research investigates the gap between Ecuador’s plurinational recognition of cultural rights, epistemic diversity, citizens’ participation and community control outlined by Buen Vivir, …

El Duende: Folktale, Oral History, And The Construction Of Gendered And Racialized Discourses In Quito, Carolina Bucheli Penafiel

Latin American Studies ETDs

El Duende is a popular mythical character featured in written and oral traditions in Latin America and Spain, where it is often described as particularly dangerous for women. In this research project, I focus on this character to explore the cultural and social meanings of these narratives in the Ecuadorian context, specifically in the city of Quito. Applying oral history methodology, I collected nine participants’ narratives about El Duende and conducted a discourse analysis of these stories. In this thesis, I discuss ways in which the stories about El Duende reproduce narratives of traditional gender role expectations and violence against …

Science Under The Microscope And Legality On Trial: How Female Authors In Latin America Confront And Challenge The Patriarchal Control Of Science And Legality In The Representation Of Women, Anna Bellum

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In this dissertation, I analyze a selection of works by eight Latin American female authors in order to explore how they represent the process of the social construction of women’s identities and roles in the male-dominated social, institutional, familial, and personal spaces that force women into particular positions of subordination. This analysis will focus, in particular, on how women writers represent the hegemonic systems of legality and science in order to highlight their role in the reproduction of values, practices, and institutions that maintain male control and female exploitation.

Each of the authors I analyze addresses the construction of women’s …

How Do Farmers Experience Agroecology In Rural Communities Of Northern Ecuador?, Neil Michael Ayala Ayala

Latin American Studies ETDs

Agroecology, a concept in continuous evolution embraces science, practice and sociopolitical aspects. Its meaning is gaining space of debate and global interest as an alternative for building sustainable food systems and resilient communities, not only from the environmental perspective, but from all the dimensions of sustainability. The Andes region is recognized for its agrodiversity and for its history of agricultural activity; nevertheless, the effects of unsustainable agricultural practices inspired in the principles of the so called “Green Revolution” are evident. Conventional agriculture has decreased the capacity of resilience of the agroecosystems and their associated communities. Agroecology is often perceived as …

La Llorona In Nuevomexicana Poetic Narratives: Reflections On Writing And Memory, Sutherland Jaramillo

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This paper focuses on poetic narratives that consider the folklore figure of La Llorona. I argue that contemporary nuevomexicana poets are responding to regional narratives as a way of challenging traditional structures of the lore and female archetypes to reclaim the identity and voice of the figure of La Llorona. Through literature that considers structure and archetype of the lore, Chicana feminist theory, and spectral theory, this essay surveys a selection of poems: “La Llorona Speaks” (2018) by Mercedez Holtry, “Una Carta de Amor de la Llorona” (2011) by Jessica Helen Lopez and “La Llorona” (2018) by Joanna Vidaurre-Trujillo. Through …

Critical Discourse Analysis Of Human Rights Education: Defensoría Del Pueblo Program In Ecuador, Monserrat Fernandez-Vela

Latin American Studies ETDs

This dissertation recognizes Human Rights Education (HRE) discourse as a multifaceted and multimodal construction situated socially and historically. Using a Multimodal Critical Discourse Study (MCDS), the research explores the HRE discourse proposed by the Defensoría del Pueblo de Ecuador (DPE), the National Human Rights Institution (NHRI) in charge of designing, approving and implementing contents, methodologies and resources of HRE initiatives nationwide. I focus on the educational, communicational, and ontological discourse of the DPE, materialized in three books published in 2015-2016. The results addressed the stenghts of the communicational and educative content and design of the books, showing the levels of …

Sex, Labor, And Digital Spaces: A Critical Discourse Analysis Of Gpguiadelas, A Brazilian Sex Worker Twitter Feed, Ailesha L. Ringer

Communication ETDs

This dissertation project is a critical discourse analysis of written and visual texts produced for GPGuiaDelas, a Brazilian sex worker Twitter feed. Drawing on digital labor studies, feminist studies on sex work, and Brazilian studies on race and gender, 176 Twitter conversations between sex workers and clients were analyzed in order to answer the following: (1) What are the dominant themes in the discourse about sex work constructed through microblogging on social media?; (2) What are the discursive practices of sex workers who use social media as a platform?; and (3) What theoretical insights emerge from the analysis of sex …

Science For All: Exploring Science Communication For Public Engagement In Culturally Diverse Scenarios In The Americas, Denisse Helena Vasquez-Guevara

Latin American Studies ETDs

Universities in the United States and Ecuador must meet various policy guidelines concerning research and teaching that address the needs of their local communities. In Ecuador, the higher education law requires that universities undertake research and public outreach projects that respond to societal needs. In the United States, Carnegie Research Classifications motivate universities to serve their publics by carrying out community-engaged research. However, evaluations of public outreach projects and community-engaged research have consistently demonstrated that the segments of society that are ostensibly served by these initiatives are not meaningfully engaged in them; members of the public are treated as, and …

La Gota Que Colma La Caguama: Cummulative Tensions Transformed Into The Defense Of Water, Anthony J. Meluso

Geography ETDs

Making water management decisions is often where dreams and visions about potential futures are constructed and contested (Swengedouw 2015). However, in a globalized world, it is not well understood how people can challenge dominant paradigms to shape desirable futures when they are also complicit in, and dependent on existing structures (Arts & Buizer 2009; Emery, Perks, & Bracken 2013: Kleinschmit, Böcher, & Giessen 2009). This project examines a brewery conflict in the Mexicali Valley that provides an example of how protesters were able to challenge dominant assumptions about water management in a complex, globalized environment. I draw on Laclau’s (2005) …

Written And Oral Histories Of The Chicano Movement At New Mexico Highlands University, 1968-1970, Julianna C. Wiggins

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This thesis presents spoken, written, and drawn histories produced before the Chicano Movement at New Mexico Highlands University in November 1970 and the discourses which have followed in the movement’s wake fifty years later. This qualitative study explores the campus climate at NMHU using the student newspaper Highlands Candle. Its contents from 1968 until 1971 are contrasted with the multiple voices of a generation which adopted the term Chicano as a racial identifier into the NMHU vernacular. Social factors including the formation of student-of-color groups and the return of veterans from the Vietnam War appear to change the student …

Partnership Agreement Between Abya-Yala, An Academic Publishing Unit Of The Abya-Yala Cultural Center, And The University Of New Mexico's University Libraries, University Of New Mexico

Centro Cultural Abya Yala del Ecuador

The parties believe this partnership agreement will:

• enrich the Indigenous and Latin American research collections at the University of New Mexico
• give global visibility to the Abya-yala Cultural Center and its publications
• extend the market for Abya-yala publications
• bring new revenue to Abya-yala to digitize more publications
• integrate Abya-yala publications in searches in or about Latin American and indigenous issues in English and Spanish (and eventually other languages such as Portuguese)
• increase research activity in these areas
• the production of more publications
• enhance the technical capacity of Abya-yala to create digital publications based on OAI standards
• create opportunities to include …

Textures Of Transition: Understanding Memorial Spaces In Medellin, Colombia, Hayley Pedrick

Shared Knowledge Conference

The past decade has welcomed a surge in the creation of memory and human rights museums with existing scholarship linking concepts of transitional justice and the rush to memorialize. The role of symbolic reparation in transitional justice through memorials in Latin America, in particular, is increasingly prominent at both local and international scales, ranging from recommendations outlined by the Inter-American court system to the state-funded construction of memory sites in rural communities. Colombia, home to the longest ongoing civil conflict in the Americas and currently in transition towards peace, presents unique approaches to symbolic reparation. Apart from land restitution and …

The Variable Expression Of Transitive Subject And Possesor In Wayuunaiki (Guajiro), Andres M. Sabogal

Linguistics ETDs

In Wayuunaiki, verbal affixes cross-reference clausal arguments in various ways. Most notably, there are two ways to express transitive subjects, and two ways to express possessors. Much like voice alternatives, the variable expression of subject and possessor impart different perspectives on a situation type, but unlike traditional voice categories, syntactic valence remains equal. This dissertation characterizes these constructions with a specific question in mind: what do these two cross-referencing alternations communicate and what influences their usage? To answer these questions, I consider the linguistic properties observed in the usage of these constructions in narratives (Jusayú 1986, 1994), and informal conversations. …

Revealing Silences: The Representation Of Black Identities In Hispanic Afro-Caribbean Autobiographical And Biographical Writing, Bryn Campbell

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This project explores how the historical contexts of the Hispanic Caribbean, including the regions of the Circum-Caribbean and the Caribbean Diasporas in the United States, have sustained dominant racial and nationalist ideologies that continue to silence or negate the identity of Afro-Caribbean subjects in national letters. My research focuses on the autobiographical and biographical writing of four Hispanic Afro-Caribbean men: Autobiografía de un esclavo (1840) by Juan Francisco Manzano¾originally published and translated to English in 1840 by Richard R. Madden¾ Klabel (2002) by Víctor Virgilio López García, Down These Mean Streets (1967) by Piri Thomas, and Las criadas de la …

Relanzamiento Of Nicaragua’S Christian Base Communities: Forging New Models Of Church And Society For The Twenty-First Century, Lara M. Gunderson

Anthropology ETDs

How do narrative practices used by members of Christian Base Communities (in Spanish, CEBs) construct particular Catholic-political subjectivities within the Church, the nation-state, and the larger global institutions? Christian Base Communities, the vehicle by which liberation theology is put into practice, played a significant role in Nicaragua’s Sandinista revolution. Their proclaimed renewal is happening under dramatically different contexts from which they first emerged. Their religious beliefs continue to justify and place a moral thrust on their struggle for a more egalitarian society despite the reduction of social programs on the part of neoliberal governments, including the current Sandinista party administration. …

Knowledge Sharing As A Means For Capacity Building In International Non-Governmental Organizations In Ecuador, Yolanda E. Ledesma Silva

Latin American Studies ETDs

The purpose of this research was to study factors that facilitate technical knowledge sharing internally in international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in Ecuador. Using a qualitative design, and semi-structured interviews this study examined knowledge sharing practices in four INGOS located in Quito, capital of Ecuador.

The findings supported nine factors identified in the literature as influencing knowledge sharing practices. These factors included (1) organizational culture, (2) role in organization, (3) procedures for managing knowledge, (4) perceived value of knowledge sharing, (5) media used for sharing information, (6) management practices, (7) organizational structure, (8) mission and strategy, and (9) organizational climate and …

Performing (Female) Masculinity In The Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World: An Analysis Of The Mujer Varonil In Gender And Genre, Nathaniel L. Redekopp

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The following dissertation on the trope of the mujer varonil^[1] employs bibliographical research in literary criticism and historiography to identify and describe socio-historic attitudes about gender. In particular, this dissertation examines gender as communicated by texts that use the mujer varonil, or “masculine woman”, characterization to either praise or vilify exceptional female subjects in ways that highlight normative limits for masculine and feminine gender expression. Four texts are examined: a male author writes each and each represents a literary genre that was significant in early modern Spain and Spanish America. These genres are the hagiography, the relación, the …

Drinking Our Stories:Food Sovereignty In Ecuador And Amazonian Runa Relations With Manioc And Guayusa, Jacqueline Michelle Kramer

Latin American Studies ETDs

Food sovereignty and the role of the state, international organizations, and social movements in its defense have been deeply researched. However, the role of small-scale farmers who continue traditional agricultural methods reflecting tenets of the food sovereignty movement, has been neglected in its relation to food sovereignty. This work aims to connect the plant-based ecological relationships with small-scale farmers using food sovereignty as an analytical discourse. Specifically, this thesis explores the relationship between Ecuadorian Amazonian Quichua people and two staple crops: manioc and guayusa. Through a gendered and epistemological analysis of food sovereignty, it argues that under the politics of …

Masculinidades Peligrosas: Monstruosidad, Vampirismo, Canibalismo Y Homosexualidad En La Literatura Mexicana De Los Siglos Xx Y Xxi, Jorge Estrada

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation examines public and institutional perceptions of homosexuality in Mexico from the time of Porfirio Díaz’s dictatorship (c. 1880-1910) through the early twentieth-first century. In my introduction, I study diverse representations of the male homosexual as a monstrous figure in Western culture, taking as models gothic images that emerged in the late nineteenth-century as a response to the rise of scientism, industrialization, and urbanization. The models that I utilize include the literal and metaphorical cannibal, the anxiety-causing vampire, and the dehumanized depiction of those who transgress social boundaries of gender and race.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach drawing on critical …

Diversas De Sí, Entre El Hoy Y El Ayer: Rememoria De Tres Íconos Femeninos Espirituales, La Condesa De Malibrán, Sor Juana Inés De La Cruz Y La Falsa Teresa De Jesús, Ana Gabriela Hernandez Gonzalez 5059749397

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This dissertation traces the cultural memory of three magical/religious women of the colonial period: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, La Condesa de Malibrán and La Falsa Teresa de Jesús. It studies these icons specifically in three different discourses that construct cultural identities in Mexico: colonial discourse (XVI-XVII Centuries), the discourse of national consolidation (XIX-XX centuries) and postcolonial discourse (XX-XIX Centuries). First I describe how the narratives of the colonial period and of national consolidation employ an official lens to place magical/religious women within traditional gender roles. Then I delineate how historical novels in the 21st century employ a postcolonial …

The Glocal Creation Of Space: Paru Paru’S Youth Casting Their Own Futures, Teresa M. Drenten

Architecture and Planning ETDs

This thesis illustrates the active participation of Indigenous children in the creation of space intersecting across multiple scales. I engaged with critical decolonial theories to create a community based participatory process with eleven bilingual Quechua-Spanish children in Paru Paru, Peru. My methodology focuses on the desires of the community, concentrating on their lived experiences and honoring the community’s challenges and resiliency. This research and knowledge belong to the community. Through small group and observation methods, these young participants demonstrated two desires; First, they want to remain connected to their lands and cosmology; next, they wish to receive the benefits from …

The Right To City In Argentina: Building Capacity Through Hecho En Buenos Aires, A Street Newspaper, Keira Philipp-Schnurer

Architecture and Planning ETDs

As the new millennium unfolds, many activists and scholars have responded to enduring inequality in urban environments by embracing French philosopher Henri Lefebvre's writings on the "right to the city" as a "rallying cry and demand." In an effort to contribute to this dialogue, this thesis explores the concept of the "right to the city" by operationalizing it as a theoretical framework rooted in Lefebvre’s original writings and applying it o a grounded examination of the street newspaper Hecho en Buenos Aires to examine the intersection of "right to the city" theory and practice. This investigation finds that the organization …

Del Entusiasmo Al Desencanto: Ironía Y Modernidad En La Obra De Tres Poetas Tzántzicos, Juan Carlos González Granja

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

In this dissertation I study the poetry of the Tzántzicos, an Ecuadorian cultural movement that in the 1960s intended to subvert the social order and assert the role of literature in the destabilization of the capitalist society. I analyze the poetry of Ulises Estrella, Raúl Arias, and Humberto Vinueza as a biography of a generation of leftist intellectuals engaged with the Revolution, and as a meaningful moment in the history of Ecuadorian modernity. I identify two moments in the continuum of this poetry across the decades from the 1960s to the present: enthusiasm and disenchantment. The moment of enthusiasm registers …

La Ausencia De Lo Afro En La Identidad Nacional De México: Raza Y Los Mecanismos De La Invisibilización De Los Afrodescendientes En La Historia, La Cultura Popular, Y La Literatura Mexicana, Dora Careaga-Coleman

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

Recognizing the dire need for foundational texts in the burgeoning field of Afro-Mexican Studies, this dissertation illuminates transhistorical social, political, and cultural processes that led to the marginalization (invisibilization) of the African presence in Mexico. The project begins with an examination of the complementary relationship between hierarchy, integration, and 'blanquiamento' in the construction of Mexican national identity during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and concludes with a discussion of Afromexicanos in popular culture from the golden age of Mexican cinema to the present. Chapter One demonstrates how from its implementation in the eighteenth century until its abolition by Jose Morelos …