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Honors Theses

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Full-Text Articles in Latin American Languages and Societies

"En Papel,” Not In Practice: Indigenous Autonomy And The Structural Barriers To Land And Resource Control In Bolivia, Andrew F. Purcell May 2026

"En Papel,” Not In Practice: Indigenous Autonomy And The Structural Barriers To Land And Resource Control In Bolivia, Andrew F. Purcell

Honors Theses

This thesis examines why Bolivia’s 2009 plurinational constitution—despite its strong recognition of Indigenous autonomy, collective territory, and prior consultation—often produces rights that remain “en papel” rather than in practice. Based on one month of fieldwork in Tumupasa, Chojasivi, La Paz, El Alto, and Santa Cruz, the study draws on interviews, participant observation, and NGO documents to analyze the structural barriers that prevent constitutional guarantees from becoming enforceable governance tools. This gap between recognition and implementation structures the central research question: why do Bolivia’s constitutional and legal protections for indigenous land and resource rights function as symbolic guarantees rather than enforceable …


Brewing Resilience: Cooperatives, Micro-Mills, And The Quest For Survival In Costa Rica's Changing Coffee Landscape, Leila N. Iredell Jan 2026

Brewing Resilience: Cooperatives, Micro-Mills, And The Quest For Survival In Costa Rica's Changing Coffee Landscape, Leila N. Iredell

Honors Theses

This thesis examines how different organizational models in Costa Rica's coffee sector shape producers’ ability to capture value, build resilience, and sustain rural livelihoods in a rapidly changing global market. In comparing traditional cooperatives and new micro-mills, I examine specifically how control over the value chain, access to markets, and social infrastructure differ across models and what these differences mean for the farmers who depend on them. This project analyzes how the collapse of international price agreements and decades of market volatility drove producers toward new strategies, from independent processing and direct trade to coffee tourism. Costa Rica stands as …


From War To Walls: U.S. Intervention And The Rise Of Carceral Society In El Salvador, Xochitl Granados Jan 2025

From War To Walls: U.S. Intervention And The Rise Of Carceral Society In El Salvador, Xochitl Granados

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the historical and contemporary impact of US foreign policy on El Salvador’s security landscape. El Salvador’s gang crisis, largely driven by the deportation of gang members from the US in the 1990s, is rooted in a complex history shaped by US intervention during the Salvadoran civil war, which intensified political, social, and economic inequalities. These inequalities, along with the rise of international gangs such as La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and 18th Street, have contributed to El Salvador’s ongoing security challenges. This thesis demonstrates how US involvement in the Salvadoran civil war indirectly fueled the growth of gang …


Cultural Folk, Political Lore: The Politics Of Folklore During The United States Occupation Of Haiti From 1915 To 1934, Cheyla G. Muñoz Ramos Jun 2023

Cultural Folk, Political Lore: The Politics Of Folklore During The United States Occupation Of Haiti From 1915 To 1934, Cheyla G. Muñoz Ramos

Honors Theses

My project focuses on Haitian folklore in the early twentieth century in connection to the first United States’ occupation of Haiti. The United States’ Marine Corps occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934. This nineteenth-year occupation brought violence and racial stereotypes towards the Haitian population, especially the peasantry. United States Americans coming to Haiti intensified these stereotypes. During this period, Haitian upper-and middle-class members heavily politized Haitian folklore and used it to defend Haiti against these stereotypes. Scholars have long discussed the anthropological works of ethno-anthropologist Jean Price-Mars as someone who tried to show the value of Haitian folklore, especially the …


¡Si Nicaragua Venció, El Salvador Vencerá!: A Comparative Analysis Of The Nicaraguan Revolution And The Salvadoran Civil War, Edrei Pena May 2023

¡Si Nicaragua Venció, El Salvador Vencerá!: A Comparative Analysis Of The Nicaraguan Revolution And The Salvadoran Civil War, Edrei Pena

Honors Theses

This thesis compares the history of the Nicaraguan Revolution and the Salvadoran Civil War in order to understand why Nicaragua had success, unlike El Salvador. I analyze the history by focusing on four factors I believe are important for a successful revolution. These factors are broad multi-class alliances, military strength and strategy, the role of the Church, and external influences. Through this, I find that the factor of class alliances is the most crucial for a successful revolution to take place. The Sandinistas in Nicaragua had these broad class alliances while the FMLN in El Salvador did not.


Coded: Dialect Diversity In The Secondary American Classroom, Madeline Dunn Oct 2022

Coded: Dialect Diversity In The Secondary American Classroom, Madeline Dunn

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the differences between dialects along racial, cultural, and ethnic lines with a specific focus on Black and Latine students inside the public secondary classrooms of America. The focus of the paper is on two linguistic tactics: “code-switching,” a linguistic practice which teaches students to separate their home language from the language they use in formal or professional settings, and “code-meshing,” a linguistic practice to teach students how to mesh together multiple dialects with which a student is familiar. Through the creation of a historical framework and an analysis of existing literature, theory, and pedagogical practices regarding the …


Church State Relations: Religiopolitics In Chile And Uruguay In The 21st Century, Calley Overton May 2022

Church State Relations: Religiopolitics In Chile And Uruguay In The 21st Century, Calley Overton

Honors Theses

This paper addresses the issue of Church-state relations in the last twenty years with special respect to Latin America, specifically in Chile and Uruguay. In my project, I will be looking at the presidential administrations of Chilean presidents Michelle Bachelet and Sebastian Piñera and Uruguayan president Tabaré Vázquez. I will use newspaper articles from El Pais (Uruguay) and El Mercurio (Chile) to examine whether political affiliation or country history determines the activism of the Catholic Church in these countries. I argue that country history has a greater influence on the role of the Catholic Church in a country’s politics than …


Body Image Perceptions Reflected In Social Media: A Guatemalan Instagram Study, Sarah Harris May 2022

Body Image Perceptions Reflected In Social Media: A Guatemalan Instagram Study, Sarah Harris

Honors Theses

Guatemala has faced a long battle with colonialism, civil war, and an ensuing, rapid urbanization. Still today, the country exhibits high levels of malnourishment while also facing an ascending obesity epidemic. This project seeks to explore how the obesity epidemic has changed body image perceptions in the region. Through the use of social media accounts on Instagram, I aim to analyze how Guatemalan influencers use their platform to explore notions of varying body image perceptions in a country where food is culturally significant, malnutrition has plagued many communities, and obesity is growing in prevalence daily. This thesis aims to answer …


Cultural Memory Conflicted In Post-Conflict Peru: Constructing Heroes And Villains La Hora Final And La Casa Rosada, Reed Peets May 2022

Cultural Memory Conflicted In Post-Conflict Peru: Constructing Heroes And Villains La Hora Final And La Casa Rosada, Reed Peets

Honors Theses

Building on this same theoretical platform, this project uses two critically-acclaimed contemporary cinematic representations of the internal armed conflict—La hora final and La casa rosada—as reflections of the ways in which the Peruvian cultural products of today are leveraged to reorchestrate collective understandings of the past.


Who Gets To Ride? A Case Study In Inequality And Public Transportation In Santiago, Chile, Melissa Sanguientti May 2021

Who Gets To Ride? A Case Study In Inequality And Public Transportation In Santiago, Chile, Melissa Sanguientti

Honors Theses

While the metro public transportation system in Santiago, Chile was intended to serve all citizens equally, this did not become a reality. Instead, the metro has become a symbol of the short comings and failures in the state's city planning and expansions, benefitting the richer areas of the city. With a grand promise that was never fulfilled, frustration grew over time. While smaller protests were targeting public transportation with the increase to the fare of the metro, protests sparked overnight in 2019. However, by looking at the travel patterns, commute times, spatial inequalities, decision-making of metro expansions, and comuna level …


The Impact Of Civil Society Engagement On Support For The Colombian Peace Accord, Victoria Gallegos May 2021

The Impact Of Civil Society Engagement On Support For The Colombian Peace Accord, Victoria Gallegos

Honors Theses

This thesis asks the impact of someone’s civic engagement and civil society organization involvement on support for the 2016 Colombian peace agreement. Additionally, discussed is the impact of conflict exposure on engagement and involvement. Through an analysis of several variables taken from Vanderbilt University’s LAPOP data set, there is a positive association between conflict exposure and one’s civic engagement and civil society involvement. Civil society engagement then positively associates with support for the peace process.


Being Female And Indigenous: Barriers To Reducing Bolivia's Maternal Mortality Rates Under Evo Morales, Channell Cole May 2021

Being Female And Indigenous: Barriers To Reducing Bolivia's Maternal Mortality Rates Under Evo Morales, Channell Cole

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the question: What are the barriers to attempts to reduce Bolivia’s maternal mortality rate under Evo Morales? While Morales’ presidency began in 2006, the timeline is from 2004 to the present to account for changes due to his policy. Using activity theory and social capital theory, I argue that machismo and racism are two social factors that are barriers to efforts to reduce the maternal mortality rate. Machismo manifests itself uniquely in Bolivia, as I argue through a comparison to Paraguay. Machismo is also riddled with a history of anti-indigenous racism. I examine the Rockefeller …


Refugees Not Welcome Here: An Analysis Of Human Rights Transgressions Under The Migrant Protection Protocols, Claire Haxton May 2021

Refugees Not Welcome Here: An Analysis Of Human Rights Transgressions Under The Migrant Protection Protocols, Claire Haxton

Honors Theses

On December 20, 2018 the Trump administration released a statement announcing the signing of an executive order implementing a new asylum program called the Migrant Protection Protocols. Under this legislation, third party nationals arriving at the United States’ southwestern border seeking asylum would be forced to remain in Mexico throughout the processing of their asylum application. This new protocol promised to limit false asylum cases and streamline meritorious applications while preventing migrants from exploiting loopholes in the former asylum system. However, critics argue that the Migrant Protection Protocols further endanger refugees and infringe on their human rights. This study aims …


Una Deconstrucción Espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia Y La Resistencia Indígena Cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg Jan 2021

Una Deconstrucción Espacial: Movimiento Maricas Bolivia Y La Resistencia Indígena Cuir, Cooper J. Bussberg

Honors Theses

El legado (neo)colonial ha intentado borrar las experiencias Indígenas cuir en Abiayala. Sin embargo, existen cambios a esta historia. Grupos activistas se están adaptando a retos distintos por medios diferentes. Movimiento Maricas Bolivia es una organización activista de La Paz, Bolivia que ejerce activismo en su canal de YouTube donde publican varios videos informativos alrededor del tema Indígena cuir. En este proyecto, yo aplico una perspectiva teórica trans- Indígena hemisférica para aproximar a un entendimiento mejor de la resistencia Indígena cuir de Movimiento Maricas Bolivia. Utilizo varios críticos de los estudios Indígenas de varios sitios de Abiayala para promover la …


El Mar Y La Gente: Hacia Una Contextualización De Lo Indígena En El Botón De Nácar, Jonathan Braden Taylor Jan 2021

El Mar Y La Gente: Hacia Una Contextualización De Lo Indígena En El Botón De Nácar, Jonathan Braden Taylor

Honors Theses

El presente trabajo analiza las ramificaciones ontológicas, epistemológicas, y políticas del botón de nácar, un documental hecho en 2015 por el cineasta Patricio Guzmán. El siguiente análisis busca poner esta obra cinemática en el contexto de la formulación y el desarrollo del estado-nación chileno, lo cual ha ocurrido a expensas de las personas indígenas de la zona. Se observa que se emplea significación verdaderamente descolonizada en representaciones y discusiones de espacios acuáticos, lo cual engendra avances teóricos que utilizo para contextualizar el filme. Se sostiene que los efectos políticos de dicha significación descolonizada se ponen en marcha productivamente cuando son …


Success And Failure Of Indigenous Social Movements: A Comparative Case Study Of Ecuador And Chile, Jenna White May 2020

Success And Failure Of Indigenous Social Movements: A Comparative Case Study Of Ecuador And Chile, Jenna White

Honors Theses

This thesis is a comparative case study of the social movements of the Mapuche in Chile and the fourteen indigenous tribes in Ecuador. I study their social movements by utilizing the structural strain theory of social movements. This theory states that people in society experience deprivation, the people recognize the deprivation, a solution is proposed and this ideology is diffused to the society, events occur to begin motion of the movement, the society (including government) need to be open to change, and eventually there will be mobilization of resources in order to form a successful social movement. The dependent variable …


Immigrants: A Threat To The Economy Or Cultural Identity? A Case Study Of Haitian And Venezuelan Immigrants In Chile, Erin Geist Apr 2020

Immigrants: A Threat To The Economy Or Cultural Identity? A Case Study Of Haitian And Venezuelan Immigrants In Chile, Erin Geist

Honors Theses

Historically, countries often faced the difficult task of favoring one immigrant group over another. Typically, this is in response to their inability to support those immigrants due to an unstable economy. However, some scholars argue that during times of economic prosperity, excluding immigrants may be the result of the group’s incapacity to assimilate to the nation’s “cultural identity”. Since Chile’s conception as a nation and as one of the most prosperous Latin American countries, they have received notably minuscule immigration rates. As a result, Chileans prides themselves as a relatively homogeneous country. Consequently, in 2018, President Sebastián Piñera differentiated visas …


Acoso Visual: Staring Back At The State And Gender Conformity, Juan Luna Jan 2020

Acoso Visual: Staring Back At The State And Gender Conformity, Juan Luna

Honors Theses

A semi-autoethnographic piece that uses a radical transfeminist lens to interrogate hegemonic systems of gender and race in the Dominican Republic through the violence that Trans and Gender Nonconforming people face. While focusing on trans violence, this thesis explicitly turns its gaze away from Trans/Gender Nonconforming people and interrogates the state, cisnormativity, and gender conformity. This thesis explores how acoso visual (visual accosting) is a historically informed process that works to border trans/gender nonconformity out of the idea of Dominicanidad. Ultimately, this text reminds Trans/Gender Nonconforming individuals that they are not the reason for the transphobia that they experience, and …


Increasing Quechuan Identification Through Language Acquisition, Emily Mcandrew May 2019

Increasing Quechuan Identification Through Language Acquisition, Emily Mcandrew

Honors Theses

A language spoken by 3.7 million people in Peru and by several thousands more in the surrounding countries in the Andean region, Quechua as an indigenous language plays an important role not only in the rich history of the area but also the modern society. Through a history of colonization and racial injustice against indigenous groups, Quechua has survived as one of the strongest language groups in Latin America. Peru has been leading the way in bilingual education focused around acquisition, but does this focus on the key aspects of language acquisition for Quechua function in order to improve cultural …


“¿Qué Coño Es Esto?”: Exploración De Identidad De Género Y De Orientación Sexual En La Mucama De Omicunlé, Vianny C. Lugo Aracena Jan 2018

“¿Qué Coño Es Esto?”: Exploración De Identidad De Género Y De Orientación Sexual En La Mucama De Omicunlé, Vianny C. Lugo Aracena

Honors Theses

La mucama de Omicunlé (2015) es una novela escrita por la autora dominicana Rita Indiana, que lidia con temas que son considerados tabúes dentro de la sociedad dominicana: sexualidad, identidad de género, y espiritualidad afrodescendiente. Indiana utiliza la espiritualidad afrodescendiente para facilitar la exploración de las respectivas identidades de género y de orientación sexual en los personajes principales, Acilde y Argenis. El utilizar la espiritualidad afrodescendiente también permite ver a la novela como un texto literario que utiliza el patakí, una narración que contiene conocimientos afrodescendientes, como elemento estructural principal. Los temas que normalmente caracterizan a los patakíes son abundantes …


“La Política Del Avestruz”: The Regulation Of The Black Market For Medical Abortion In Chile, Sophia M. Bartels Jan 2017

“La Política Del Avestruz”: The Regulation Of The Black Market For Medical Abortion In Chile, Sophia M. Bartels

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the overarching question of how the black market for medical abortion is regulated in Chile. In answering this question, this thesis responds to the two sub questions: why is the Chilean government ineffective at regulating the black market for medical abortion in Chile, and how have non-governmental actors filled this vacuum through informal regulation? Although the Chilean government has one of the highest levels of state capacity in Latin America, it has surprisingly allowed this black market to exist in almost complete impunity. In this thesis, I argue that although the Chilean government has the …


The Effect Of Americanization On Latin American Culture: A Comparative Study Using Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions And Pop Music, Jason Robert Shockey Mar 2016

The Effect Of Americanization On Latin American Culture: A Comparative Study Using Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions And Pop Music, Jason Robert Shockey

Honors Theses

In 1980, Dr. Geert Hofstede published a book outlining his methodology for quantifying and objectively comparing cultures based on six distinct dimensions. However, since Dr. Hofstede's research focused primarily on adult demographics, it may not adequately predict reality once the younger generation assumes a place of ideological primacy in society. My project aims to determine Americanization's impact on current Hispanic scores to see if they remain consistent with tradition or shift towards the United States' values. To accomplish this, I developed a scale similar to Hofstede's and analyzed the Billboard Top 40 list for 2014.


When The Walls Talk: Political Graffiti At La Universidad Nacional In Bogotá, Colombia, Abbott Grey Matthews Jan 2013

When The Walls Talk: Political Graffiti At La Universidad Nacional In Bogotá, Colombia, Abbott Grey Matthews

Honors Theses

Graffiti in Latin America is often political. This thesis considers the political graffiti found at la Universidad Nacional (UNAL) in Bogotá, Colombia. Unlike many other nations in the region, Colombia has not experienced the same political history of repressive dictatorships. As a result, the current literature on political graffiti does not cover the outlier case of Colombia. This research uses survey responses from and interviews with students at UNAL in order to better understand what the graffiti says and how it impacts students at the university. Moreover, this thesis seeks to answer why political graffiti persists at UNAL despite attempts …


Remapping Nature: Motherhood, Autonomy, And Anti-Mining Activism In Íntag, Ecuador, Ellicott K. Dandy Jan 2013

Remapping Nature: Motherhood, Autonomy, And Anti-Mining Activism In Íntag, Ecuador, Ellicott K. Dandy

Honors Theses

This honors thesis explores the social changes that women engaged in anti-mining activism bring to a region in rural Ecuador. I discuss the ways in which they incorporate their activist techniques into everyday life, using their status as mothers to access public discourses of environmentalism, and ultimately rewrite gender roles locally. Framing the mining conflict as a catalyst for social change, I draw parallels between this movement and indigenous politics in Ecuador, propose new interpretations of the mestizo ethnic identity and assimilation in the Spanish Empire, and finally, make the case for a nature-centric cultural analysis in anthropology.