Latin American Studies Commons^™

Editorial, . .

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

No abstract provided.

Tabla De Contenido, . .

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

No abstract provided.

Voting Changes Between The 2016 And 2020 Presidential Elections In Counties Across The United States With Large Latino-Origin Populations, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction:

This report examines trends in votes cast between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections in 1) the 101 counties in the United States in which Latinos comprised 50% or more of total populations; and 2) in the 35 counties in the U.S. which had the largest Latino populations.These latter counties were home to 50% of all Latinos living in the United States according to 2019 census data.

Methods:

Exit polling data from 2016 and 2020, American Community Survey (2019)

Discussion:

Of the 101 counties in which Latino populations were more than half of all residents, the Republican candidate won …

Do The Tactics Of Armed Groups Affect Organizational Behavior? The Case Of Kidnap For Ransom, Tyler Young

Theses and Dissertations

N/A

Chaos From Order: A Network Analysis Of In-Fighting Before And After El Chapo's Arrest, Darren Colby

Independent Student Projects and Publications

The effect of leadership decapitation—the capture or killing of the leader of an armed group—on future violence has been studied with competing conclusions. In Mexico, leadership decapitation has been found to increase violence and in-fighting among drug cartels. However, the causal pathways between leadership decapitation and in-fighting are unclear. In this article, it is hypothesized that leadership decapitation will weaken alliances between armed actors, lead to greater preferential attachment in networks of cartels and militias, and result in greater transitive closure as cartels seek to expand their power. These hypotheses are tested with a stochastic actor oriented model on a …

Assimilating The Dominican Tourist: What Maps Tell Tourists In Puerto Plata About The Processes Of Capitalism And Imperialism, Amy Duncan

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The tourism industry in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic is dominated by foreign enterprise. Given the history of colonization in the Dominican Republic, the social dynamics in the tourism industry are imperialist by nature. This thesis seeks to understand how tourist maps are used to assimilate tourists into the social dynamics of Puerto Plata. To do this, it unravels existing literature on tourism in the Caribbean, the nature of the tourism industry in the Dominican Republic as well as its foreign benefactors, and foundational works on the sociological aspects of tourism.

The findings of this paper are that tourist maps seek …

Community-Based Disaster Risk Management And Covid-19: How Local Ngos In Latin America Adapted To The Pandemic, Emily Pugh

CMC Senior Theses

The global COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges for communities across Latin America: lack of access to potable water and food, loss of jobs and lack of access to technology now needed for children to attend school. By interviewing different leaders of NGOs throughout the continent, I was able to find out how local NGOs were adapting their typical activities to help their communities face these new and worsening challenges. While the NGOs in this study do not primarily focus on disaster relief, each adapted their initiatives to deal with the current needs of the community they serve. Some were able …

Making The Connections: Gender Quotas, Representation, And Critical Mass In Latin America, Katherine O'Neill

CMC Senior Theses

Using Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico as case studies, this paper examines how women’s collaboration influences the effects of gender quotas on women’s representation. The efficacy of gender quotas in increasing the numerical representation of women and improving gender equality outcomes is well-researched, but questions remain about the precise linkages between the numerical representation of women and the substantive representation of women. This thesis analyzes previously identified linkages alongside actions by women’s organizations in national legislatures and civil society to better understand women’s roles as critical actors in making gender quotas successful. The findings suggest that women’s collaboration is crucial …

Deported Veterans: The Unintended Consequences Of “Good Moral Character”, Jonathan Deras

Master's Theses

The purpose of this research is to argue that U.S. immigration policy, specifically the 1996 IIRIRA (also known as IIRAIRA), needs to change regarding the legal treatment of immigrant U.S. military veteran deportees due to the following concepts. The first concept is to articulate how the criminalization of immigration, and how the military system intersects to facilitate the Deportation of U.S veterans. A key concept in this analysis is the standard of “good moral character” set by the U.S. government that enlistees need to meet to be accepted into the military; this standard is also used against immigrant veterans during …

Health Care And Education Access Of Transnational Children In Mexico, Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes, Laura Juarez

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

Between 2001 and 2018, more than 5.5 million Mexican migrants were removed from the United States or returned to Mexico with their families as immigration enforcement escalated. Learning how this transition affected the access to health and education services of their children –also referred to as “the invisibles”– is a policy-relevant topic for both the United States and Mexico. Using representative data on 7.6 million Mexican and U.S.-born children from the 2015 Mexican Intercensal Survey, we provide evidence on the education and health care access gaps between these two groups and on the factors potentially responsible for the barriers encountered …

Brazil, Big Hydro, And A Beautiful Monster: “Green” Energy Generation In The Xingu River Basin, Ian F. Hirons

Student Works

Brazil is quickly becoming an influential actor on the world stage of geopolitics. The nation has achieved global economic and environmental recognition due to the extensive development of its hydrological resources in the form of hydroelectric power plants. As the world’s second greatest generator of hydroelectricity, Brazil has proven a staunch adherence to building dams in the large-scale. Though these dams have brought electricity to millions of people across the country, the socio-ecological toll inflicted by their construction has been devastating to natural biomes and local inhabitants. This article traces Brazil’s proclivity for large-scale hydropower to four motivational categories often …

Making The Case For Genocide, The Forced Sterilization Of Indigenous Peoples Of Peru, Ñusta P. Carranza Ko

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Peru’s national health program Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (PSRPF) aimed to uphold women’s reproductive rights and address the scarcity in maternity related services. Despite these objectives, during PSRPF’s implementation the respect for women’s rights were undermined with the forced sterilization of women predominantly of indigenous, poor, and rural backgrounds. This study considers the forced sterilization of indigenous women as a genocide. Making the case for genocide has not been done previously with this particular case. Using the normative markers of the Genocide Convention, this study categorically sets forced sterilization victims from the state-led-policy as victims of genocide, …

Dual Immersion Programs And Their Implications: Focused Analyses On The Educational History, Francisco Reynoso Barron

International Studies (MA) Theses

As a social construct, education fulfills the necessary elements, ideologies, and rituals required to construct social norms for society. What a society deems as a norm determines the sentiments and direction that a nation will take. These normative tendencies lead to national identity and national security through policies and legislation within the nations' utilization of sovereignty. National interest being influenced by global events and ethnocentric ideologies has seen cycles leading to different immigration, educational, and economic policies. This paper analyzes dual immersion programs, which have been treated as a controversial topic due to its implications on national security and identity. …

The Origin Of Usurpation And Tyranny: Nonagentic Anti-Imperialism Of The Twenty-First Century And The Legacy Of Chavismo, Juan Bustillo

International Studies (MA) Theses

As Venezuela’s Chavista regime presides over the country’s descent into Latin America’s worst refugee and humanitarian crisis in modern times, a mass exodus of nearly five million Venezuelans since 2015, the rhetoric of Western anti-imperialists and the regime itself has absolved it of any responsibility for the crisis and the increasing authoritarianism that led to it by abdicating the regime's agency to act according to its own free will. This paper develops the discursive concept of nonagentic anti-imperialism, a rhetoric that effectively absolves self-declared anti-imperialist regimes, from Castro’s Cuba to Rajapaksa’s Sri Lanka, of human rights abuses and democratic erosions …

Contemporary High-Skilled Mexican Immigrant Entrepreneurs In Texas, Elizabeth Salamanca, Jorge Alcaraz

Mission Foods Texas-Mexico Center Research

The number of Mexican entrepreneurs relocating to the United States has significantly increased during the last decade and their profile, as well as that of their businesses, have changed. This study develops a typology of Mexican migrant entrepreneurs living in the U.S., particularly in Texas, and of the business ventures that they undertake, and it determines the association between the entrepreneurs' profile and the kind of businesses they create. Through the analysis of migrant entrepreneurs' profiles, this paper identifies in what kind of transnational activities these entrepreneurs participate. The research follows both a qualitative approach based on the Gioia methodology …

Can Cities Be Feminist? A Cross-National Analysis Of Factors Affecting Local Female Representation In Latin America, Katie Davis

Honors Theses

Women are underrepresented in mayor’s offices and on city councils across Latin America. In this paper, I examine gender-based differences in individual opinions toward running for office in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as conduct a twenty-six country analysis on factors related to female representation in municipal government. Based on these analyses, I make three main conclusions about female local representation in Latin America. The first conclusion is that women in Latin America are significantly less likely to want to run or feel qualified to run for office. The second conclusion is that cross-national variation in the percentage of female …

The Mapuche And Chilean State: An Analysis Of The State Reaction To Mapuche Protests, Mckenna Gossrau

Honors Theses

The history between the Mapuche and Chilean state is long and complex. Since 2000, the conflict between the state and Mapuche has periodically drawn wider public attention as well as public demands for change. In this thesis, I look to examine how the Chilean state has reacted to the demands of the Mapuche since 2000. Mapuche activists have protested violently and peacefully against state policy that has left many rural Mapuche impoverished and landless. This project assesses the impact of protests on state-Mapuche policy. The project also examines how deeply entrenched neoliberal fiscal policies of the state play a central …

The Belt And Road Initiative: China’S Rise, America’S Balance, And Latin America’S Struggle, Garrett Bullock

History Honors Papers

This research attempts to understand the evolving relationship between China, the United States, and Latin America. Specifically, it explores China’s rapid rise as a formidable geopolitical power, the United States’ mixed response to that rise, and efforts by two Latin American countries, Ecuador and Argentina, to avoid exploitation by both China and the United States—and, indeed, to even benefit from this mutating relationship. In all cases, historically constructed ideas and strategic interests shape relations among these various actors. Accordingly, this research lays out the historical sources for each of these powers’ central ideas. Then, it connects those ideas to the …

How Socialism Failed Venezuela, Ben Abrahamson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

In the 1970s, Venezuela was considered one of the wealthiest nations in the world. They enjoyed high oil prices after the discovery of OPEC, they were a democratized country in a continent where most of it was still undeveloped. Unfortunately, in the 1980s a major cut in oil prices caused economic turmoil, and leading into the 90s there were bloody riots, political disparity, attempted coups and building poverty. In 1998 came Hugo Chavez, a newly elected president to rid their economic issues and end corruption. However, that all turned out to be the opposite of what he did. The country …

From Valladolid To Venezuela : The Legacy Of Las Casas, Vitoria, And Sepúlveda In The Current Venezuelan Crisis., C. Evan Clark

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

This thesis analyzes the current Venezuelan crisis and the international legal questions it has posed concerning sovereignty, the responsibility to protect, and international efforts to influence a state’s internal politics. In particular, the thesis expounds the historical and theoretical context behind international legal principles that governments, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have invoked in favor of Juan Guaidó or Nicolás Maduro. The thesis’s analysis centers around its examination of the parallels between the international legal principles that relate to the Venezuelan crisis and the political and ethical arguments of the sixteenth-century Spanish social reformer Bartolomé de las Casas and …

Ser Americano: The Cost Of Being American, Alejandra Campos

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Over a decade ago, the Dreamer movement began, led by young undocumented Latinx youth. These activists became known as "Dreamers" who continue to advocate for a pathway to citizenship for all immigrants. Through media, speeches, and artwork, Dreamers use the cultural narrative of the "American Dream" to create the boundaries of their American identity. Traditionally, American Identity is studied through 4 schools of thought: ethno-culturalism, liberalism, civic republicanism, and incorporationism. I offer an analysis of two concepts of American identity, meritocracy, and hyperdocumentation, that are mostly missing from the American identity literature. Additionally, I propose social citizenship as a theory …

A Thumb On The Scale: Chinese Investment And Influence In Ecuador And Colombia, Christina Pendergrast

Honors Theses

Over the past two decades, Chinese involvement in the developing world has increased dramatically, raising concerns over the intentions behind the provision of development packages. Critics have accused China of a practice known as debt-trap diplomacy, a method of ensnaring less developed nations by providing more loans than those nations have the ability to feasibly pay back. While China denies that their loan and investment packages are provided with any ulterior motive, the influence held by an investor like China has the potential to impact these partner countries for decades to come. In light of the scope of China’s role …

Propuesta De Indicadores Para Medir Y Evaluar La Gobernanza, Jorge Francisco Aguirre-Sala

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

El objetivo de este artículo es proponer indicadores y un índice para medir y evaluar la calidad de la gobernanza. Para ello responde a las preguntas de investigación: ¿qué es la gobernanza?, ¿en qué se distingue de la gobernabilidad y del gobierno abierto?, ¿qué debe medirse de la gobernanza y cómo ha de medirse? El diseño de la investigación plantea una revisión de la literatura para distinguir entre gobernabilidad, gobierno abierto y gobernanza y establecer qué y cómo se mide la gobernanza. La metodología establece las condiciones de los indicadores (declaraciones de su propósito, descripción, relevancia, fórmula(s), unidad de medida, …

Voluntariado En Latinoamérica: Aproximación A Las Diferencias Entre Países, Arelys López Concepción, Ana Isabel Gil Lacruz, Isabel Saz

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

La participación en actividades de voluntariado es un vehículo de participación en la comunidad de forma que enriquece al conjunto de la sociedad y a las personas que lo realizan. Los datos de las Encuestas de Valores Mundiales (WVS, 2010-2014) evidencian que en Latinoamérica el porcentaje de voluntarios varía de forma relevante de unos países a otros, tal que en Colombia el 65% realizan actividades de voluntariado, frente al 23% de Ecuador. Mientras que el voluntariado ha sido ampliamente estudiado en países anglosajones y europeos, apenas hay estudios para Latinoamérica. La principal contribución de este trabajo radica precisamente en ampliar …

Capital Social Y Sostenibilidad En El Tercer Sector, Maria Del Carmen Zenck, Ingrid Ríos Rivera, Maribel Rodríguez Zapatero

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

Dentro del perfil de empresa social que caracteriza a las organizaciones sin fines de lucro que trabajan en áreas de salud y bienestar, la sostenibilidad institucional sugiere el aprovechamiento de su capital social, es decir redes, relaciones y vínculos con diversos sectores para mantener el acceso y los niveles de servicio a la población más vulnerable, en un contexto de regulación estatal, incertidumbre en los mercados y recursos escasos. Este estudio tiene como objetivo analizar los procesos de gestión para ampliar cobertura y diversificar servicios de atención de una fundación ecuatoriana que presta servicios especializados para personas con limitaciones físicas …

Proceso De Innovación Social En Las Organizaciones De La Sociedad Civil (Osc) Ecuatorianas: Avances Y Desafíos, Jairo Rivera, Wilson Araque, Eulalia Flor

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

Este artículo analiza la evolución y el estado situacional actual del proceso de innovación social en las Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil (OSC) ecuatorianas durante la última década. Dentro de un entorno dinámico se examinan las prácticas de innovación social de las OSC en el país y se detallan dos experiencias emblemáticas. La metodología del estudio incluye información primaria proveniente de dos mesas de análisis, dos talleres y entrevistas a profundidad con representantes de las OSC que laboran en Ecuador. Entre los principales resultados del artículo se encuentra que son varias las acciones que han venido desarrollando las OSC en …

Npos And Their Stakeholders’ Psychological Contracts: The Value Of Implicit Expectations In Bolivia, Maria Renee Barreal, Roland Pepermans, Michael Dooms

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

Managing non-profit organizations (NPOs) in developing countries constitutes a challenge due to the intrinsic hardship of their missions, and the pressure of balancing their stakeholder’s interests and needs. Beyond the explicit challenges NPOs face (e.g., attracting volunteers, retaining employees, accounting to donors), we tackle the implicit obligations and returns that volunteers, employees, and donors hold towards an NPO. By introducing the concept of Stakeholder Psychological Contracts (SPC) and its three currencies (relational, transactional and ideological), we identify how each creates value for these stakeholders in a different way, using data from 409 respondents, representing 7 Bolivian NPOs. Despite the high …

Financiamiento Público E Isomorfismo Institucional En Las Organizaciones De La Sociedad Civil En Yucatán, México, Apocalipsis Raquel Aguilera Troncoso, Mauricio Hernández Estrada

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

Este artículo analiza el financiamiento público a nivel federal y estatal otorgado a las Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil (OSC) de Yucatán, México durante el periodo 2006 – 2017. A partir del enfoque neoinstitucional y del concepto de isomorfismo institucional se abordan las pautas de comportamiento en la asignación de los recursos, las características de las OSC y los montos reportados que permiten conocer la interacción entre las OSC con el gobierno estatal y federal. El estudio empírico descriptivo responde a la pregunta ¿cuál es el comportamiento del gobierno en la asignación de los recursos públicos federales y estatales a …

Presentation. Special Issue. Co-Responsibility In Building The Public Good In Latin America And The Caribbean, Daniel Barragán, Anabel Cruz, Susan Appe

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

No abstract provided.

Editorial. Versión En Español, Nadia Rubaii

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

No abstract provided.