Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Mexican Money Laundering In The United States: Analysis And Proposals For Reform, Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Charles Lewis, William R. Yaworsky

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article explains some of the mechanisms through which corruption by high-level Mexican politicians and other organized crime members is facilitated in the United States through money laundering operations. The analysis is based on information contained in court records related to key money laundering cases, as well as in news articles and reports from law enforcement agencies. These materials highlight the interrelationships among U.S. drug use, cartel activities in Mexico, human rights abuses, Mexican political corruption, and money laundering in the United States. This work demonstrates the pervasive use of legitimate businesses and fronts in the United States as a …

The Holobiont, Food Justice, And Gaia 2.0 A Post-Human(Ist) Approach To Functional Medicine, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Functional medicine is a personalized and holistic approach to treating chronic disease. In this article, I build upon posthumanist literature by examing how functional medicine practitioners are decentering and destabilizing what it means to be human. Functional medicine discourse on the holobiont, which considers the human as an assemblage of different microbial species, reframes the “humananimal” (see Nayar 2018) as the “humicrobe.” I engage Gaia 2.0 (see Lenton and Latour 2018) when analyzing the interconnectivity, interdependence, and mutualism of all life. My approach to interconnectivity interweaves both functional medicine descriptions of systems biology and Luhmann’s (2012) approach to system’s theory …

Hesitation Towards The Covid-19 Vaccine In The United States: A Digital Ethnographic Study [Vacilación Ante La Vacuna Contra El Covid-19 En Estados Unidos De América: Un Estudio Etnográfico Digital], Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Following the authorization of the use of COVID-19 vaccines in babies age 6 months through children 4 years old in the United States, some individuals (parents, pediatricians, and communicators) framed COVID-19 vac-cination as an issue of access, while many others expressed hesitancy, and some resisted recommendations from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In this context, this study aimed to explore: 1) divergent reactions to the authorization of COVID-19 vaccine use in children aged 6 months to 4 years; and 2) opposing logics underlying attitudes towards pro-vaccination, anti-vaccination, and vaccine hesitancy regarding COVID-19 vaccines. To achieve this, a …

Comparative Health Disparities: International Perspective, Oluwadamilola Omojola, Betty Onyebu, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

After completing this brick, you will be able to:

• Explain health disparity, inequity, and inequality1
• Compare inequity and inequality in low and middle-socioeconomic countries to high-socioeconomic countries.2
• Describe factors that contribute to health disparity3
• Understand the comparative approaches used in understanding health disparities4
• Understand limitations in addressing health disparities

Identificación Mediante Histología De Implementos De Madera De Dos Sitios Prehistóricos Costeros En El Valle De Casma, Perú [Identification By Histology Of Wooden Implements From Two Coastal Prehistoric Sites In The Casma Valley, Peru], Shelia Pozorski, Teresa E. Rosales Tham, Thomas Pozorski, Víctor F. Vásquez Sánchez

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Una muestra de implementos de madera que provienen de dos sitios prehispánicos del valle de Casma (Bahía Seca y Huaynuná), dentro de los que destacan iniciadores de fuego fueron fabricados a partir de madera, que los análisis histológicos de la anatomía vascular indicaron el uso de madera de Prosopis sp. “algarrobo”, utilizando ramas secundarias gruesas y delgadas. Estos hallazgos indican que la generación del fuego en tiempos prehispánicos se realizó utilizando conocimientos tecnológicos y del uso de las maderas, en este caso de utilizar una especie que tiene como característica tener madera resinosa, favorable para la generación y obtención de …

The First Peoples Of The Lower Rio Grande Valley Of Texas And Northern Mexico: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Defining The Paleoindian Period, Starr Elena Hein

Theses and Dissertations

The archaeological record of the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas and northern Mexico is poorly understood. There are few excavated sites at which Paleoindian cultural materials have been found, and in these cases the context is uncertain. In order to better understand the Paleoindian period, projectile points that reside in private collections are documented, and the time period they are assigned to, based on absolute dating from surrounding regions, is used to cross-date local materials. This is limited by the lack of named typology for Upper Paleolithic materials in the Americas. Clovis is well represented in the Lower Rio …

The Lingering Ache: Temporalities Of Oral Health Suffering In United States-Mexico Border Communities, William A. Lucas, Heide Castañeda, Milena A. Melo

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent scholarship theorizes temporalities as an important part of the migration experience, with temporal insecurity being a crucial element of (im)mobility and inequality via the phenomenon of waiting. In this article, we examine how temporalities and experiences of waiting influence health status and access to care, using ethnographic data to articulate how temporalities impact resources and how a doxa of waiting is enacted, placing some groups at heightened risk of illness and pain compared to others. Drawing upon a sample of 100 immigrant families with mixed legal status living in United States-Mexico border communities, we focus on an understudied area …

Investigación Arqueológica: Sitio Buen Suceso, Comuna Dos Mangas, Provincia De Santa Elena. Informe Preliminar. Temporada 2022., Sarah M. Rowe, Guy S. Duke, Sara L. Juengst, Daniela Balanzátegui

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Preliminary report on the 2022 excavation season at Bun Suceso, a Valdivia site located on the coast of Ecuador. Report submitted to the Region 5 Office of the Instituto Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural, Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Nepantla – Examining The Sacred Middle Ground Of Syncretism, Jose Luis Garcia Iii

Theses and Dissertations

As a result of historical traumas caused by the Spanish invasion of Mexico, the autonomy of its Indigenous peoples has been replaced by a Eurocentric identifier based on a colonial language and theologies. Because of the vastness surrounding the Nahua pantheon, Spanish and Church officials relied on guided syncretism as means of correcting their methodologies in converting Mexico’s Indigenous population. This thesis examines syncretism as a process of religious mixing and its residual cultural changes that affected Mexico’s Indigenous populations. This ethnographic research argues that syncretism as an overarching, universalized term is insufficient to describe this process in the Chalma …

Investigación Arqueológica: Sitio Buen Suceso, Comuna Dos Mangas, Provincia De Santa Elena. Informe Preliminar. Temporada 2019, Sarah M. Rowe, Guy S. Duke, Daniela Balanzátegui

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Preliminary report on the 2019 excavation season at Bun Suceso, a Valdivia site located on the coast of Ecuador. Report submitted to the Region 5 Office of the Instituto Nacional de Patrimonio Cultural, Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Connecting Palaeopathology And Evolutionary Medicine To Cancer Research: Past And Present, Carina Marques, Zachary Compton, Amy M. Boddy

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cancer has a significant impact on morbidity and mortality worldwide, with estimates reaching 18.1 million cases in 2018 alone. This chapter reviews the contributions of evolutionary medicine and palaeopathology to oncological research and addresses how these disciplines can conjointly develop models that evaluate how biological, ecological and sociocultural dynamics have prompted the development of cancer across deep time. It highlights that cancer has a long history affecting species across the tree of life, as well as being particularly pervasive in human populations today. While addressing recent advances in comparative oncology and palaeopathology, it discusses how novel environments may contribute to …

Field Research In The Era Of The Islamic State And Trump, William Yaworsky, Dawid Wladyka, Katarzyna Sepielak

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

We survey anthropologists who work in Arab League countries to ascertain their perceptions of fieldwork security conditions. Based on the responses of forty-seven specialists reporting on conditions in 127 field sites, we find the security environment in the Arab League to be diverse. Scholars working in nations such as Morocco, Oman, and Qatar report overwhelmingly favorable research conditions, while their colleagues working in Lebanon and Syria report a largely dismal situation. The paper also queries respondents on their perceptions of the impact that Trump administration policies and rhetoric have on their ongoing field research. Here, we find Arab League specialists …

Differential Diagnosis Of Metastatic Bone Disease: A Case Study From The Ceaf Identified Skeletal Collection Of The University Of Pernambuco, Brazil [Diagnóstico Diferencial Da Doença Óssea Metastática: Um Estudo De Caso Da Coleção Esqueleto Identificado Do Ceaf Da Universidade De Pernambuco, Brasil], Evelyne Pessoa Soriano, Marcus Vitor Diniz De Carvalho, Emília Alves Do Nascimento, Rodrigo Araújo De Queiroz, Carina Marques, Eugénia Cunha

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study aims to discuss the occurrence of pathological changes found in a skeleton from the Center for Studies in Forensic Anthropology (CEAF) Identified Skeletal Collection, Faculty of Odontology, University of Pernambuco (FOP/UPE), Brazil. The skeleton of a 47-year-old male that died in 2014 was macroscopically examined, and the differential diagnosis was performed based on clinical and paleopathological criteria. Lesions that were predominantly osteoclastic were observed in a multifocal pattern, mainly on the skull (29.6% of the total of lesions observed), pelvic bones (22.2%), and vertebrae (25.9%). The lesions morphology consists of elliptical osteolytic foci and areas of coalescent porosity, …

Politics Of Controlling Birth: C-Section, Use Of Contraception And Obstetrics Violence In Bangladesh, Sadia Sharmin

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines the increasing rate of cesarean birth in Bangladesh through the lens of the population control program. Based on three months of data collection, the study explores various politics of the government’s population control program, leading me to argue that cesarean birth is an implicit way of controlling overpopulation in Bangladesh since it limits women’s reproductive choices and thus contributes to population control. Using ethnographic vignettes, I discuss how my research findings point to the government’s disparate population control politics and how this has given rise to various forms of obstetric violence against women. The study also addresses …

Cancers As Rare Diseases: Terminological, Theoretical, And Methodological Biases, Carina Marques, Charlotte Roberts, Vitor M. J. Matos, Jane E. Buikstra

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Objective

Was cancer a rare disease in the past? Our objective is to consider the various terminological, theoretical, and methodological biases that may affect perceptions of the rarity of cancer in the past.

Materials and methods

We discuss relevant malignant neoplastic biomedical and paleopathological literature and evaluate skeletal data. We selected 108 archaeological sites (n = 151 cancer cases) with published malignant neoplasms and that were amenable to calculating cancer crude prevalence. Furthermore, datasets from four medieval/postmedieval Portuguese and 12 postmedieval UK sites were used to compare age-adjusted rates for metastatic bone disease and tuberculosis.

Results

In the literature review, …

Operating At The Edge Of Il/Legality: Systemic Corruption In Mexican Health Care, Rosalynn A. Vega, A. Paulo Maya

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Through a series of ethnographic vignettes, this article examines how providers contribute to corruption in Mexican health care, how providers are themselves subjected to logics of corruption, and the relationship between patients’ and providers’ vulnerability within contexts of resource scarcity. Doctors, faced with insecure salaries due to nonpayment of wages by the government, collude with hospital staff to sell state drugs on the black market. Meanwhile, vulnerable patients are used as teaching opportunities for private school students—with horrifying, and fatal, effects. Palancas (“favors” granted by colleagues and higher-ups to individuals with less authority) and exclusive treatment of recomendados (patients given …

Changing Birth In The Andes: Culture, Policy And Safe Motherhood In Peru. Guerra‐Reyes, Lucia. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2019., Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Buen Suceso: A New Multicomponent Valdivia Site In Santa Elena, Ecuador, Sarah M. Rowe, Guy S. Duke

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

New radiocarbon dates and excavations show that Buen Suceso (OSE-M-2M-4) in Santa Elena, Ecuador, was occupied between 3700 and 1425 BC. These dates demonstrate that Buen Suceso is a rare multicomponent Valdivia site and one of the longer-occupied Valdivia sites investigated to date.

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Nuevas excavaciones y fechados radiocarbónicos demuestran que Buen Suceso (OSE-M-2M-4; Santa Elena, Ecuador) estuvo habitado entre 3700 y 1425 aC (Valdivia, fase Ib a fase VIIIb). Estas fechas señalan que se trata de un sitio Valdivia multicomponente excepcional y uno de los habitado por más tiempo, entro los sitios Valdivia investigados hasta la fecha. El diseño …

Privileges Of Birth: Constellations Of Care, Myth, And Race In South Africa. Rogerson, Jennifer J. M., New York: Berghahn Books, 2020, 200 Pp., Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Privileges of Birth: Constellations of Care, Myth, and Race in South Africa centers around the natural birth movement in South Africa, where births are largely determined by socioeconomic factors. Jennifer Rogerson argues for examining care in relation to race and privilege, specifically what care means in specific contexts. Privileges of Birth is an ethnography about the “constellation” of care, race, and privilege among an atypical group of women in South Africa.

Covid-19, Wall Building, And The Effects On Migrant Protection Protocols By The Trump Administration: The Spectacle Of The Worsening Human Rights Disaster On The Mexico-U.S. Border, Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The COVID-19 pandemic has repercussions well beyond the confines of borders. National border policies can thwart international efforts to combat the spread of infectious diseases. These problems are especially relevant for the United States with the spectacle of President Trump’s “big, beautiful border wall” used as leverage to maintain political and economic power domestically and globally while confronting the coronavirus pandemic. The focus of this paper is the implementation of Trump’s Zero Tolerance Policy, Migrant Protection Protocols, and the Asylum Cooperation Agreement, all aimed primarily at migrants and refugees from Central America to prevent entrance into the U.S. using the …

The Security Apparatus, Federal Magistrate Courts, And Detention Centers As Simulacra: The Effects Of Trump’S Zero Tolerance Policy On Migrants And Refugees In The Rio Grande Valley, Terence Garrett

Political Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Trump’s DHS implemented the Zero Tolerance policy from April 6 to June 24, 2018. Refugees, prevented from crossing the midpoints of bridges by Customs and Border Protection agents, crossed the Rio Grande to ask for asylum, were denied, and forced to cross at places deemed illegal by law. This resulted in misdemeanor violations for unlawful entry and fleeing immigration checkpoints. The policy initiative centered on the separation of children from their migrant parents—refugees fleeing from the northern triangle countries: El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Adult migrants were sent to prisons and holding facilities, brought before a magistrate to plead guilty, …

“Traditional Mexican Midwifery” Tourism Excludes Indigenous “Others” And Threatens Sustainability, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Drawn by the allure of “ancient cultures,” tourists inadvertently consume deauthenticated indigenous practices, including ethnomedical traditions such as midwifery. This is especially true in the case of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” since stark differences exist between how midwifery practices unfold in indigenous contexts and how they are represented to global tourists. “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” tourism is a unique lens for examining some of the underlying, intersectional issues threatening “sustainability” in ethnomedical tourism. When nonindigenous individuals position themselves as representatives of “Traditional Mexican Midwifery” and indigenous midwives are excluded from profit chains, this type of tourism not only fails to meet the …

Three Existentialist Readings Of Gloria Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera, Mariana Alessandri

Philosophy Faculty Publications and Presentations

This essay provides three new and related philosophical readings of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/la Frontera: 1) in the lineage of canonical European Existentialists like Jean Paul Sartre, who provides an analysis of shame; 2) in the lineage of Mexican Existentialists like Samuel Ramos and Octavio Paz, who attribute a relative of shame to Mexicans; and 3) in dialogue with Africana Existentialists like Franz Fanon, who describe the bodily shame of nonwhites in racist societies. Anzaldúa’s concept of “linguistic terrorism,” which existentially translates into la vergüenza linguística, extends the scope of European, Africana, and Mexican Existentialisms while putting all three in dialogue …

Fresh Studies In Rio Grande Valley History, Milo Kearney, Anthony K. Knopp, Antonio Zavaleta, Thomas Daniel Knight

UTRGV & TSC Regional History Series

Jim Wells, George Parr, Pepe Martin, and Gene Falcón: the spirit of ‘’El Patrón’’ along the Rio Grande of South Texas / Billy Hathorn -- The other underground railroad / Rolando Avila -- Frank Ellis Ferree, humanitarian / Norman Rozeff -- Chip Dameron's Rio Grande Valley: center of a narrowing universe / Ronny Noor -- Historia de la education superior en la ciudad de H. Matamoros, Tamaulipas / Miguel Sesis Botti y Maria Elena Flores Montalvo -- The quest for a public library for Brownsville / Anthony K. Knopp and Alma Ortiz Knopp -- Las Palomas Wildlife management area: a …

Converging Space And Producing Place: Social Inequalities And Birth Across Mexico, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

I combine ethnographic research of the professional midwifery model in Mexico with concepts gleaned from an interdisciplinary literature in order to illustrate how different types of spaces converge in the process of place-making. From October 2010 to November 2013, I conducted twenty-eight months of research, interviewing employees of government bureaus and public health programs, observing how the professional midwifery model unfolds in distinct contexts, performing interviews and participant-observation with casa midwifery students/alumni, and “shadowing” professional midwives and obstetricians as they engage with pregnant women in a hospital setting. Drawing from ethnographic examples, this article points to five different types of …

What’S Out There (Review Of A Portrait Of Assisted Reproduction In Mexico: Scientific, Political, And Cultural Interactions, By Sandra P. González-Santos), Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

González-Santos’ book begins with a poem that likens counting sperm to counting moving stars. She alludes to the significance of the book’s title when she describes the portraits painted by Milanese artist Guiseppe Arcimboldo, and the power of portraits to convey the social position, psychological characteristics, personality, mood, and historical context of the person being depicted. The analogy of painting a portrait is indicative of González-Santos’ methods and the organization of the book. González-Santos paints through words a “repronational portrait” (Franklin and Inhorn, 2016) of Mexico’s system of assisted reproduction. González-Santos began her research in 2007. In the following twelve …

Isabel M. Córdova, Pushing In Silence: Modernizing Puerto Rico And The Medicalization Of Childbirth (Austin, Tx: University Of Texas Press, 2017), Pp. 234, $29.95, Pb., Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Córdova documents a twenty-year transformation in how babies were born in Puerto Rico. In the middle of the twentieth century, Puerto Rico had twice as many midwives as registered doctors. At this time, birth was a home-based, family-oriented process that mothers accomplished with the assistance of midwives. By 1970, midwives had disappeared and the number of physicians tripled—a context that led to nearly every Puerto Rican baby (98%) being delivered in a hospital under the authority of an obstetrician. In contrast to births a couple decades before, hospital-based births in the 1970s were highly medicalized and directed by predominantly male …

Mexicanismo: Francisco Javier Clavigero And The Jesuit Expulsion Of 1767, Francisco Ortiz Jr.

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study will ask if the expulsion of the Jesuits played a part in the formation of this national spirit. In no way will this try to give a complete explanation of the events which led to the Jesuit expulsion, nor to explain the inner workings of Jesuit society and its influences. The focus will concentrate on the effect that the expulsion of Jesuits from New Spain, which was done by secret order and simultaneously across New Spain, may have had. Most of the Mexican Jesuits which were expelled eventually ended up in Bologna, Italy. Some of these individuals, notably …

Syndemics: Considerations For Interdisciplinary Research, Rosalynn A. Vega

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this short piece, I explore how medical anthropology could be deployed through interdisciplinary collaborations in a way that is both theoretically rich and poised to positively impact health outcomes. In particular, I consider how research agendas focused on improving health care outcomes reveal certain limitations and underlying assumptions within the discipline. What types of methodological shifts might occur if we interrogate those limitations and assumptions? What are some alternatives? To answer these questions, I turn to the concept of “syndemics” as one example of how a human rights approach can transform the way we do anthropology for the betterment …

Anthropology's Science Wars : Insights From A New Survey, Mark Horowitz, William Yaworsky, Kenneth Kickham

Anthropology Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent decades the field of anthropology has been characterized as sharply divided between proscience and antiscience factions. The aim of this study is to empirically evaluate that characterization. We survey anthropologists in graduate programs in the United States regarding their views of science and advocacy, moral and epistemic relativism, and the merits of evolutionary biological explanations. We examine anthropologists’ views in concert with their varying appraisals of major controversies in the discipline (Chagnon/Tierney, Mead/Freeman, and Menchú/Stoll). We find that disciplinary specialization and especially gender and political orientation are significant predictors of anthropologists’ views. We interpret our findings through the …