Latin American Studies Commons^™

_Las Vidas Negras_: Examining Identity Among Afro-Latinos In The Us In The Twilight Of Black Lives Matter, Victor Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work seeks to name how the Black Lives Matter movement, and related movements for Black liberation and justice, has had an effect on the self-perception and identities of US-based Afrolatinos. Using survey and interview data, I tease out issues of ethnoracial dissonance, social identity, and the ways that Afrolatinos have used the context of Black Lives Matter to make sense of the antiblackness they have faced. This is a significant investigation because it speaks to the potential for a richer tradition of pan-Africanism taking root in Latin America and among Latin Americans of African descent.

Online Perceptions Of Panamanian Prisons And Incarcerated Persons: An Analysis Of Youtube User Comments, Mahaleth J. Sotelo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to explore and understand the frameworks in which prisons and incarcerated persons are discussed amongst commenters under YouTube videos displaying media on Panamanian prisons. The study incorporates a mixed methods approach by conducting a general content analysis of YouTuber comments to address themes within the discussion. Additionally, these themes were quantified and modeled using predictive variables collected such as number of comment likes, number of comment dislikes, and number of comment replies, alias type (screen name or name-like), presence of profile picture, and profile picture type. The themes found were 1) punitive, 2) justifying …

Book Review Of Eating Nafta: Trade, Food Policies, And The Destruction Of Mexico By Alyshia Gálvez, Laura Kihlstrom

Journal of Ecological Anthropology

This is a book review of the book 'Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico' by Alyshia Gálvez.

This Is It: Latina/X Representation On One Day At A Time, Camille Ruiz Mangual

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the tensions between contemporary Latina/x representations and problematic tropes in the sitcom, One Day at a Time (2017-2020) [ODAAT]. ODAAT centers of Elena, Penelope, and Lydia, three generations of a Latina/x family. Many entertainment reviewers and fans praised the series for its progressive and nuanced portrayals of Latina/x characters. However, I argue that while ODAAT depicts Latina/x characters that transcend some United States mainstream media tropes about Latinas/xs, the series also relies on conventional markers of Latina/x identity as tools with which to communicate progressive messages around identity. I expand upon scholarship in Latina/o media …

Un Rompecabezas Americano: La Identidad Y Los Escritores Hispanos En Estados Unidos, Keren N. Benalcazar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Hispanic immigrant authors in the US portray the process of identity formation in diaspora affected by the act of immigration itself through the analysis of four main themes: cultural identity, language, alienation and the immigrant's experience with borders and border culture. While Hispanic literature of immigrants has evolved over time in the United States, many of its general themes remain the same. Focusing on authors from the 19th to 21st centuries, this thesis covers 18 works ranging from novels, to essays, to poetry to short stories, all by various Hispanic authors, most of them immigrants or …

Neo-Colonial Elites’ Linguistic Violence And Monolingual Haitian Creole Speakers: Language Ideology, The Politics Of Linguistic Pluralism, The Crisis Of National Identity And Culture In Haiti, Frantzso Marcelin

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Language is a very complex matter in Haiti. One of the most pressing issues related to language in Haiti is the aspect of violence. The violence that exists through linguistic means in Haiti today has for its basis the same mechanism that existed during the colonial era in Haiti. The same western concept of colonial social dualities, and unequal distribution of esteemed associates to African and European cultures are still at the forefront of linguistic violence. The only difference being that those ideas of colonial superiority, which informed those recurring acts of violence, are now self-imposed.

In Haiti, the nature …

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, …

İyo Luché!: Uncovering And Interrupting Silencing In An Indigenous And Afro-Descendant Community, Eileen Cecelia Deluca

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this applied project is to uncover and interrupt the silencing of memories through the production of public narratives, specifically, the documentation of heritage of members of an indigenous and Afro-descendant community in Waspán, Nicaragua. The project is informed by interviews with seven women ex-combatants in the Contra War (1980-1990). Oral histories, transcribed interviews, and field notes are the source for the content of a book of heritage stories that I produced as one output about the former combatants utilizing their own words. In this thesis, I argue that the values of the “conquering” group of Nicaragua (i.e. …

A Visit To Cuba: Performance Ethnography Of Place, Adolfo Lagomasino

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Bestowed to the Cuban government in 1956, The Parque Amigos de José Martí in Ybor City, FL is a historical site intended to symbolize the relationship between Tampa and Cuba that facilitated Cuba’s independence. Cuban cultural identity and the sense of Cubaness are confounded by the history of exile and the constraints of the United States Embargo. This project articulates the experience of the Cuban exile community and their descendants through descriptive accounts of visiting the Parque Amigos de José Martí. Visiting a place is framed as a means of identity performance and a method of performance ethnography, enabling discursive, …

Power, Property Rights, And Political Development: A Property Rights Theory Of Political Development And Its Application To The Study Of Development In Honduras And Costa Rica, Ricardo R. Noé

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Following the dissolution of the Federal Republic of Central America in 1838, Costa Rica and Honduras were highly underdeveloped politically and economically, while at the same time lacking a strong conservative presence found in the more politically established and economically developed Central American countries of Guatemala and El Salvador.

However, By the late 20th century Costa Rica established itself as a bastion of democracy in Latin America, supported by a strong middle class. While on the other hand, Honduras would fall victim to a continuous string of coup d’états, with the last being in 2009, by a military that did …

Learning From High Risk Feminism: Emergent Lessons About Women’S Agency In Conflict Contexts, Julia Margaret Zulver

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

While scholars increasingly focus on the gendered elements of genocide, these are not often holistically discussed in the prevention literature. There is a tendency to fall into a gendered binary, whereby prevention is a masculine activity, while peacebuilding is represented as more maternal and feminine. However, women do not always exclusively mobilise for others, nor do they fit neatly within circumscribed categories of victims or peacebuilders. Rather, they have the ability to develop and refine a contextually relevant style of feminist agency that allows them to navigate and make sense of the everyday violences to which they are exposed. This …

The Peruvian Minstrel: An Analysis Of The Representations Of Blackness In The Performance Of El Negro Mama From 1995 To 2016, Ana Lucía Mosquera Rosado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peruvian mass media has failed in addressing and representing the cultural and ethnic diversity of its country, as the presence and representation of ethnic minorities (indigenous and Afro-Peruvian) are almost exclusively reduced to the reproduction of stereotypes in comedy shows, in which they are often racialized and the target of offenses directly related with their ethnic identities. The analysis will focus on the figure of El Negro Mama, a very popular character in Peruvian television thought to be a portrait of the Afro-Peruvian population. Through the use of textual analysis, the paper will explore of this character in order to …

Book Review: The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story Of Indian Enslavement In America, Emily A. Willard

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Resisting Essentialism In Cultural Research: A Participatory Action Research Study Of Parent Involvement In Education Among Spanish-Speaking Students And Families, Michael J. Frank

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The present study aimed to investigate a locally-driven action research project to improve connections between Spanish-speaking Latinx parents and the high school that their children attend. Using Participatory Action Research (PAR), the study sought to create a collaborative research agenda that would empower the participants to study their own culture and practices at the school, and how the two combined to create a home-school partnership. Six parents and two members of the school’s bilingual staff comprised the PAR team, with a total of nine members including the principal investigator. The project began with the creation of a public sphere in …

De Mestizas A Indígenas: Reindigenization As A Political Strategy In Ecuador, Pamela X. Pareja

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The 1990s were a period of intense socio-economic upheaval in Ecuador, in part due to the numerous protests that would come to be known as the Levantamiento Indígena. Notoriously disenfranchised since the bloody conquest of the Americas, peoples of various Indigenous nationalities that reside within Ecuador fought for the constitutional recognition of the nation as both plurinational and multicultural, in order to secure intercultural public policies that would affect patterns of agrarian distribution, indigenous education, health, and overall representation. The prominence of the Indigenous movement and the revalorization of the Indigenous identity throughout Ecuador became an attractive vehicle for which …

Denial In Other Forms, Paul N. Avakian

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Conventional understandings of denial are rooted in the analysis of language used to negate claims of genocide, and shed little light on the effects of denial beyond words heard or read. Is denying the crime only concerned with refuting its occurrence? Is there more at stake in denying genocide crimes than a lack of mutuality over whether it happened? To deny a crime is to deny what is owed those harmed by the crime, and this involves accountability and restitution according to relevant law. Written or spoken words that reject outright, re-characterize, confuse, or shift blame bring harm on an …

Discriminación Racial: Discurso Oficial Versus Realidad En Cuba Postrevolucionaria, Sergio Rojo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

El objetivo de esta investigación es buscar y analizar las causas que han mantenido la discriminación racial dentro de Cuba después de 1959. En mi investigación pretendo examinar cómo la Revolución Cubana no eliminó la continuidad histórica de discriminación racial heredada del pasado. En mi análisis quiero verificar cómo el estereotipo y la imagen política del afrocubano que ha sido formada tras los cambios sociales ocurridos después del 1959, no es más que el resultado de una falacia política montada en nombre de la igualdad.

Muchas de las políticas adoptadas por el estado se hicieron en pos de eliminar la …

Siempre Hemos Vivido Aquí: La Figura Literaria Del Indígena Y La Otra Argentina Posible, Jennie R. Robinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project engages with what various academics in the past twenty years have identified as a “discourse of invisibilization” that effectively erased indigenous presence from the Argentine national discourse. Following the Conquest of the Desert, a military campaign carried out between 1878 and 1879 that sought to eliminate indigenous presence in the Pampas and Patagonia, the common belief was that indigenous peoples no longer resided in Argentina. In reality thousands remained but indigenous identity and presence was effectively erased from the national discourse until the constitutional reform of 1994 which legally recognized indigenous pre-existence and articulated specific rights for the …

Structural Racism: Racists Without Racism In Liberal Institutions Within Colorblind States, Alexis Nicole Mootoo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Afro-Descendants suffer sustained discrimination and invisibility that is proliferated with policies that were once blatantly racist, but are now furtive. This study argues that structural racism is alive and well in liberal institutions such as publicly funded colleges and universities. Thus, structural racism is subtly replicated and reproduced within these institutions and by institutional agents who are Racist without Racism. This study builds on theories from Pierre Bourdieu, Frantz Fanon, Glen Loury and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. The juxtaposition of their theoretical arguments provides a deeper insight into how structural racism becomes a de facto reflexive phenomenon in liberal and progressive institutions …

Latino Subgroups Political Participation In American Politics: The Other Latinos’ Electoral Behavior, Angelica Maria Leon Velez

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the impact of Latinidad in Latino political participation, especially in regard to voting behavior. Although Latinos often have been portrayed as a decisive electoral group, the reality is they have not fulfilled the expectations imposed upon them. Therefore, I argue Latinos with different levels of group consciousness will engage differently in politics, which affects the voting statistics of the ethnicity in Censuses, reports and surveys. The use of pan-ethnic terms and the constant stereotypes of Latinos all being “the same,” has caused separation rather than cohesiveness within the minority group, which has resulted in low political engagement. …

Con Su Propia Voz: Un Estudio De Cinco Mujeres Mexicanas, Matthew Steven Wilkinson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Este estudio se centra en las vidas de cinco mujeres mexicanas—Malintzin, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Leona Vicario, Rosario Castellanos y Julieta Venegas—de cinco etapas históricas diferentes de México—la Conquista, el Virreinato de Nueva España, la lucha por la independencia, la modernidad y lo contemporáneo—al estudiar el uso que cada figura hace de su “Voz” según la época. Empieza presentando y descomponiendo el concepto de “malinchismo” revisando los detalles reconocidos de la vida de Malintzin/doña Marina/la Malinche. Después, continúa con un resumen de ciertos aspectos interesantes de las vidas de cada figura, empezando con Sor Juana y concluyendo con …

Like Watching A Brother Die: Environmental Racism In Bahia, Brazil, Meredith Main

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Until the 1970s, small black fishing communities primarily populated Bahia’s north coast. A recent demand for luxury coastal real estate has radically altered the region’s social and environmental landscape. While Bahia’s population is roughly 80% poor and black, the coast is now a space of exclusivity and whiteness. Sewage infrastructure does not meet the needs of the growing population. Domestic sewage flows directly into urban rivers. Poor black fishers, whose food security and livelihoods depend on access to healthy water resources, suffer most in this context. This dissertation explores two interlinking forms of environmental racism – water pollution and racial …

Access To Health Services And Health Seeking Behavior Among Former Child Soldiers In Manizales, Colombia, Adriana Marcella Dail

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Through the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF), the Colombian government aims to provide comprehensive reintegration for children demobilized from the country’s various armed groups. The reestablishment of rights, including the right to health (guaranteed by the Colombian constitution), is a key factor in successful reintegration. This thesis explores the topic of access to health care and health seeking behavior among former child soldiers in Manizales, Colombia who are over the age of 18 and were previously in the Hogar Tutor program (foster care-based youth reintegration) in Manizales. This thesis utilizes semi-structured interviews (n=9) and body mapping (n=9) with former …

Where Is The Survivor’S Voice? An Examination Of The Individual And Structural Challenges To The Reintegration Of Immigrant Human Trafficking Survivors, Michelle Cristina Angelo Dantas Rocha

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The United States is one of the top destination countries for human trafficking, and Florida has the third highest number of reported cases of human trafficking. Despite the severity of this issue, Florida anti-trafficking legislation, reintegration programs, and awareness campaigns tend to contribute to the invisibility of the victims and undermine their recovery and reintegration into society, especially when the victims are immigrants. This project uses a multi-method approach including content analysis of anti-human trafficking campaigns to argue that portrayals of a “perfect victim” only amplify stigmatization and discrimination against immigrant victims. Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation highlighting the …

Venezuela, From Charisma To Mimicry: The Rise And Fall Of A Televised Political Drama, Rebecca Blackwell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I build on the assumption that collective emotional experience plays an important role in sustaining the group identity central to nation-making processes inspired by charismatic leaders. This analysis is based on a case study of the Venezuelan government after the death of Hugo Chávez. I examine ways in which elements of the leader’s narrative are used by his successors after his death. I also argue that the current political actors of the bureaucratized Revolutionary Government of Venezuela are attempting to sustain popular support by reaffirming a national identity that resonated among the masses largely due to the …

Changes And Challenges In Diplomacy: An Evaluation Of The Ministry Of Foreign Affairs In The Dominican Republic, Yudelka Santana

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research analyzes why diplomacy is failing in the Dominican Republic. In this thesis, I describe how Dominicans construct their foreign affairs, and the limitations that diplomacy has had in the country. In order to achieve these goals, I have analyzed official documents such as the 2013 and 2015 payrolls of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and legal documents including Article 146 from the Constitution, Organic Law 314 from 1964, and the Protocol of Transparency and Institutions. I argue that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Dominican Republic lacks seriousness and is characterized by the following variables: (1) patronage, …

A Comparative Analysis Of Portable X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometry And Stable Isotopes In Assessing Ancient Coastal Peruvian Diets, Theresa Jane Gilbertson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores a cross-cultural analysis of the dietary signatures of four coastal cultures of prehistoric Peru. A combination of elemental analysis based on portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF), testing trace elements presented in 209 individuals’ skulls representing the Nazca (38), Cañete (33), Lima (40), and Moche (98) valleys and/or cultures of the first millennium AD, is weighed in conjunction with isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) to analyze human bone collagen and bone apatite derived from a portion of the individuals represented in the Nazca, Cañete, and Lima cranial samples.

Evidence from the results of both tests are weighed using …

Finding A Home: Latino Residential Influx Into Progress Village, 1990-2010, Christopher Julius Pineda

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Progress Village in Tampa Florida was developed in the late 1950s in response to the dislocation of black families during the construction of Interstate-4. Furthermore this community became an opportunity for many black and more specifically, African American families, to live in a community devoid of racist attitudes and tensions rampant in inner city Tampa at the time. For over thirty years this community’s residential population was overwhelmingly (90 percent) black or African American. In the 1990s though this community would begin to experience the first wave of Latino residents and by 2000 this group would comprise over 2 percent …

What Does Genocide Produce? The Semantic Field Of Genocide, Cultural Genocide, And Ethnocide In Indigenous Rights Discourse, Jeff Benvenuto

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The semantic field of genocide, cultural genocide, and ethnocide overlaps between Indigenous rights discourse and genocide studies. Since the 1970s, such language has been used to express grievances that have stimulated the construction of Indigenous rights in international law. These particular words signify general concerns with the integrity of Indigenous peoples, thereby undergirding a larger framework of normative beliefs, ethical arguments, and legal claims, especially the right to self-determination. Going back to the post-World War II era, this article traces the normative and institutional processes through which this overlapping discourse has emerged. Culminating with the adoption of the …

Narrating Climate Change At The San Juan National Historic Site At The Community Level, Leslie Paul Walker Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While the National Park Service is charged with interpreting and preserving areas designated as park resources, they must also manage environmental issues such as erosion resulting from climate change. This research sets out to narrate how Palo Seco, Puerto Rico, a neighboring community of the San Juan National Historic Site, perceives similar environmental conditions and motivations for addressing these issues. My research sits at the intersection between the park’s charter and understanding community implications of environmental changes that affect local heritage. Using Authorized Heritage Discourse and environmental justice as theoretical frameworks, I suggest that the National Park Service should include …