Latin American Studies Commons^™

Darkness In Anthropology, Peter Van Arsdale

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An essay covering Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon by Patrick Tierney. New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. 417 pp. and related documents.

Home As A Place Of Exhibition And Performance: Mayan Household Transformations In Guatemala, Walter E. Little

Anthropology Faculty Scholarship

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, the town of San Antonio Aguas Calientes, Guatemala, has been incorporated into transnational movements of people, commodities, and ideas through tourism, development, and religious evangelism. The Kaqchikel Mayas living there have long looked outward from their community as they embraced, ignored, or criticized these global flows. Contemporary Kaqchikel Mayas have incorporated these global flows into the organization and maintenance of their households, while giving them a local interpretation. Some families have made their homes a place to enact their culture through exhibitions and performances for tourists. Such performances are indicative of the strategies …

Global Competition And Community: The Struggle For Social Justice, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

The above two quotations embody disparate worldviews with regard to the neoliberal project that has enveloped much of Latin America in the past decade. Globalization intensifies the region's integration into the world economy through neoliberal reforms such as market opening, privatizations, and rationalization of production. These reforms are transforming rural societies, raising important questions concerning policies that selectively favor new strategies for capital investment and production oriented toward market expansion, as they marginalize surplus workers and "inefficient" forms of production. This paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the contradictions brought about by globalization and local people's struggles to …

Table Of Contents, Journal Staff

Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice

No abstract provided.

Water, Sugar, And Power: Irrigation In Southern Puerto Rico During The Late Nineteenth Century, Marisol Ramos

Published Works

The purpose of this thesis was to address an important element in the study of the sugar cane industry in Puerto Rico that has been neglected in its literature: water. By analyzing the failure of the Guayama Irrigation Project of 1864-1866, the thesis showcased the importance of water and the establishment of irrigation projects to local hacendados as an strategy to address the vulnerability that the sugar cane industry at the time was facing: falling prices, low capacity, and the ever present danger of droughts, which the colonial government was unable to solve for lack of liquid capital.

Culture, Ideology, And Community: The Dynamics Of Accommodation And Resistance To Restructuring Of The Mexican Sugar Sector, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

Neoliberalism has provoked profound and diverse consequences for rural Mexico, escalating the agricultural crisis for producers and workers in various sectors. Against this context, recent improvements in the sugar sector raise interesting questions about its relative economic success under the neoliberal paradigm. This article contrasts two cane zones--one that experienced economic recovery and another affected by abandonment of the sugar mill--to argue that in the interstices of modernizing neoliberalism, cane growers and mill workers who were subjected to politics of exclusion struggle to ensure the survival of their culture, community, and economic livelihood.

Restructuring The Mexican Sugar Industry: Campesinos, The State, And Private Capital, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

Under the new agrarian policies and economic rules of Article 27, implemented in January 1992, the customary patters of political patronage and loyalty in the countryside no longer operate as before. Campesions now are challenged to think and act like entrepreneurs who assume investment risks in order to successfully participate in competitive markets. But most possess neither the economic resources nor worldviews to be the “campesino entrepreneurs” sought by the government or by the leaders of the Confederación Nacional Campesina (CNC) and the Confederación Nacional de Productores Rurales (CNPR), the two campesino confederations affiliated to the ruling PRI. This contradiction …

Defining Religion: Death And Anxiety In An Afro-Brazilian Cult, James M. Donovan

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

This dissertation clarifies the anthropological concept of religion by crafting the most useful scientific definition. The first chapter illustrates the confusion surrounding this term, and argues that the comparative method of anthropology requires that this imprecision be removed. Reviewing the four types of definitions of religion extant in the literature -- Content, Behavioral/Performative, Mental, and Functional -- Chapter 1 concludes that the best definition will be a generative functional definition. The second chapter supports this conclusion by finding that an independent discipline, American constitutional law, has arrived at the same understanding.

Chapter 3 details the nature of definitions and the …

Etdebali: Un Viaje Al Corazón Del Pueblo Ngóbe, Phil D. Young, Milton R.A. Machuca-Gálvez, Jorge Sarsaneda

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Etdebali: Un viaje al corazón del pueblo ngóbe fue publicado en 1993 en Panamá (ACUN, Serie “Nuestro modo de ser” / Colección “Mundo Ngóbe.”). Se imprimió un pequeño tiraje y en la actualidad el libro impreso está agotado. Esta es una copia facsímil del original en formato Adobe Acrobat (PDF).

El libro incluye la presentación, seguida de tres artículos del antropólogo estadounidense Phil D. Young (*1936-+2013); los artículos fueron originalmente publicados en inglés, traducidos al español:

(1) Presentación. Jorge Sarsaneda del Cid. Páginas 5-6.

(2) Young, P. (1970) “Notes on the ethnohistorical evidence for structural continuity in Guaymí society”, Ethnohistory …

The Uses Of Maya Structures: A Study Of Architecture And Artifact Distribution At Sepulturas, Copan, Honduras, Julia A. Hendon

Anthropology Faculty Publications

This dissertation presents a compositional analysis of the architecture and a distributional analysis of the associated artifacts resulting from excavation of some ninety buildings dating from the Late to Terminal Classic Period at the Maya site of Copan, Honduras. The study of all artifacts recovered from primary contexts, both in situ and redeposited, focuses first on a determination of their function, second on an analysis of their distribution within the site, and third on their associations with one another in order to identify the kinds of activities carried out at various locations. A second line of evidence used is the …

El Pueblo Guaymí Y Su Futuro, Milton R.A. Machuca-Gálvez, Daniel Holness Carrasco Sr.

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Esta publicación contiene las ponencias y documentos que se presentaron en el FORO SOBRE EL PUEBLO GUAYMÍ SU FUTURO, celebrado en la ciudad de Panamá del 23 al 27 de marzo de 1981. El material está dividido en cinco secciones: una introducción seguida de 1. La historia de los guaymíes; 2. Situación actual del pueblo guaymí; 3 Las luchas guaymíes; 4. Los grandes proyectos de desarrollo: ¿bendición o maldición?; y, 5. "Se hace el camino al andar": pasos en la lucha. Las secciones “guardan una estrecha relación temática con un eje central que aparece a lo largo de la publicación: …