Latin American Studies Commons^™

El Terror Y El Ritual: Estudio De Los Festivales De Cine De Terror En México, Luis Jesús Quiñones Beltrán

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Esta investigación contribuye al campo de los estudios de festivales de cine, cine de género y representaciones simbólicas del miedo. Analiza el papel de los festivales de cine de terror en México como espacios de construcción simbólica, circulación cultural y resignificación del miedo. A partir de un enfoque cualitativo basado en entrevistas a organizadores de festivales y cineastas colaboradores, se examina cómo estos festivales configuran experiencias colectivas en torno al terror a través de prácticas rituales, afectivas y culturales. Se retoman conceptos como el capitalismo gore, necro-máquina y contra-máquina para contextualizar la investigación. Se utilizan categorías de los estudios de …

Perspectivas De Liderazgo En La Frontera: Un Anã¡Lisis De Las Experiencias De Los Presidentes Y Cónsules De El Paso Y Ciudad Juã¡Rez, Horacio Estavillo

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ciudad Juárez y El Paso son el reflejo de México y Estados Unidos a nivel municipal, sin embargo, esta unión de ciudades a nivel fronterizo abre las puertas a oportunidades únicas al igual que desafíos significativos, los cuales pueden ser el resultado de las relaciones macro de ambos países, pero también de ambas ciudades. Por lo tanto, las ciudades fronterizas son el ejemplo de una amalgama de representación local y binacional, ya que los líderes que se encuentran en estas ciudades; como cónsules generales, y presidentes municipales, reflejan no solo la personificación de la ciudad, sino también el símbolo e …

Border Soundscapes: Latinidad, Belonging, And Sense Of Place In The Paso Del Norte Region., Josã© Manuel Flores Fuentes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores the acoustic ecologies of the Juárez-El Paso border, investigating how soundscapes shape and reflect the cultural identity, sense of belonging, and sense of place within this unique transnational region. Guided by the theoretical lenses of belonging (Kohut, Tajfel, Turner, Hooks), sense of place (Feld & Basso), and habitus (Bourdieu), the research takes a phenomenological approach, informed by Merleau-Ponty's concepts of perception and Ceraso's notion of embodied listening. The study analyzes soundscape samples through Krause's categories of biophonies, geophonies, and anthropophonies, uncovering how these sounds contribute to the development of Latino identity and cultural cohesion in the borderlands.Focusing …

The Role Of Soft Infrastructure In Developing Sustainable Volunteer-Based Healthcare For Transient Migrants In The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Border Region, Daniel Avitia

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Assessing Urban Tree Coverage Along The U.S.-Mexico Border: A Gis Analysis Of Paso Del Norte, Melanie Escobar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In recent years, researchers have extensively studied the spatial distribution of social demographics and urban tree canopy (UTC) in urban cities, but very few, to this date, address U.S.-Mexico border cities. To date, there is no research that assesses the distribution of urban tree canopy (UTC) in the city of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, along the U.S.- Mexico border. Leveraging advanced mapping techniques and GIS tools, the study performs comparisons between countries (Juárez vs. El Paso urbanized areas and intra-country (within each country). It compares land cover classifications, assesses variations in UTC distribution across census tracts and …

Working In The Shadows: The Impact Of Wage Theft Among Undocumented Workers In El Paso, Texas, Christe Cherie Lattimore-Staple

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The documentary film titled "Working in the Shadows: The Impact of Wage Theft Among Undocumented Workers in El Paso, Texas" sheds light on the pervasive issue of wage theft experienced by undocumented workers in the region. Through personal testimonies, interviews with workers, legal experts, and government officials, the film delves into the challenges faced by undocumented workers who are vulnerable to exploitation due to their legal status.Undocumented workers in El Paso face a host of challenges, including unpaid wages, unsafe working conditions, and fear of retaliation if they assert their rights. The film highlights the critical role of community organizations, …

My Little Poetic/Prose Book Of Words, Sayings, And Stories In Broken Spanish And A Little Bit Of German / Mi Libro Chiquito De Poética / Prosa De Palabras, Dichos, Y Historias Español Fracturado Y Un Poquetito Alemán, Sharon Ann Lucero

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I would like to thank Jonathan Taylor and Sarah Thompson for the wonderful job they did in providing me with feedback. I took into consideration all their comments. Their comments aligned with Dr. Powers, and I really took a deeper look into my Spanish/English translations on whether I should have them or not. I found a happy medium for all of it. I also went back and looked at the rest of the class’s comments and made sure that I did not miss any of the details that were pointed out to me the first time …

El Que No Tranza, No Avanza: Exploring The Lived Experiences Of Mexican American Community College Students On The U.S.-Mexico Border In Becoming Philosophers, Manuela Alejandra Gomez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this phenomenological study is to explore the lived experiences of seven Mexican American community college philosophy students in their journeys to becoming philosophers in the U.S.-Mexico border, between El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Philosophy is one of the least diverse academic fields in the United States (Jones, 2020) and often excludes women and people of color (Alcoff, 2013; Ferrer, 2012; Galea, 2017; Haslanger, 2013 Hutchinson & Jenkins, 2013; Leuschner, 2015; Saul, 2012; Wilson, 2012). Therefore, I examine what it means to be a philosopher to these seven Mexican American students and their processes of …

Teachers' Perspectives On Decolonizing U.S. Curriculum For Latinx Through Ethnic Studies Programs At The Middle And High School Levels, Richard Varela

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to understand the implementation of an ethnic studies program with an emphasis on Mexican American Studies at the middle and high school level, in a district located along the Mexican/U.S. frontera. Ethnic Studies are a critical, interdisciplinary academic field of study that acknowledges that race, and racism are embedded in every U.S. system, especially our educational institution. As a critical pedagogy, ethnic studies validate and encourages the voices and viewpoints of the marginalized, while analyzing and criticizing dominant influences that promote â??normalizingâ?? of racialized inequality (de los Rios, 2013). At the center of ethnic …

"Building The Plane As We Fly It": Tesmonios Of First-Time Mexican American Studies High School Teachers During The 2021-2022 School Year In Southwest Texas., Jesse Soledad Arrieta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Mexican American Studies, as a course, was approved by the Texas State Board of Education in 2019. However, there were no provisions on how the course would be implemented or supported by school districts in Texas. Further, in 2021, Texas House Bill 3797 and Senate Bill 3 were passed into law, aiming at the heart of Ethnic Studies - Critical Race Theory (CRT). Utilizing testimonio as methodology and method, I sought to understand the experiences of first-time Mexican American Studies high school teachers implementing Mexican American Studies during the 2021-2022 school year in Southwest Texas. Testimonio interviews with six teachers …

Zapatista Maya Literacies And Decolonial Civic Pedagogies, Juan Moisés García-Rentería

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Zapatista Maya Literacies and Decolonial Civic Pedagogies evaluates an educational outreach project led by an Indigenous grass roots mobilization in the high plateau of central México, the Zapatista movement. Using retrospective narrative inquiry and theoretically informed perspectives, this dissertation shows that the program of the Zapatista escuelita, Spanish for “little school,” is rooted in the Maya educational paradigm of nojptesel-p’ijubtasel, a cultural and political process of socialization at the heart of contemporary Maya peasant families. The research focus of this study offers rhetoric, composition, and literacy studies two interrelated points of insight tied to the overall Maya conception of the …

Family Disruptions And Maternal Health In Covid Times, Donna Maldonado

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

AbstractPrenatal and postpartum women of the border region of El Paso-Ciudad Juarez have been experiencing multiple forms of family disruption due to the twenty-month border closure in an attempt to contain the COVID pandemic, partners having to find jobs far away from home because of economic concerns, and fear of familial disruption due to the threat of deportation of partners or family members. The purpose of the study is to explore the perceived effects of these types of family disruptions and how they are shaping maternal health in COVID times. This project included the analysis of fifteen interviews with pregnant …

Del Arbolito Una Cuadra Al Lago (One Block Away From The Little Tree), Tania Romero

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Del Arbolito Una Cuadra Al Lago (One Block Away From The Little Tree) is a an autoethnographic collection of bilingual/Spanglish short fiction, documentary prose, photography archive, and flash fiction. The work is rooted in my own Central American immigrant experience living in the United States and incorporates a variety of self-exploratory themes including the remnants of post-memory and transgenerational trauma, fractured cultural identity formation, geographical displacement, and the complexities of ideological ambiguities that result from crossing borders. The first half of the collection (Part I and II) is an immigration travelogue complimented with archival family photographs that trace fleeting childhood …

Writing For Research In Brazilian Schools: The Landless Workers Movement's Education Of The Countryside, Ana Maria Doll Ghelere Portas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis, “Writing for Research in Brazilian Schools: The Landless Workers Movement’s Education of the Countryside,” examines pedagogical practices of rural areas in Brazil. More specifically, I analyze writing practices of high school students in public schools co-governed by the state and the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), a grassroots social movement that has fought for agrarian reform in Brazil for over 40 years. I analyze research papers developed in the social movement's research program: autobiographies written by students in their first year of high school and research papers written in the two final years. My analysis looks for connections between …

"If We Run Out Of Water, What Then?" Individual And Shared Agricultural Perspectives On Water Futures In The Middle Rio Grande River Basin, Rebeka Isaac

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This study examines the construction and reproduction of rhetoric concerning water futures amongst the agricultural community of the Middle Rio Grande River Basin. It discusses the reification of potential alternative futures as envisioned through interviews with regional agricultural producers. These interviews center on facilitating the connection between their current decisions and practices as they align with their vision of the future. Also, the interviews will serve to provide the descriptive material needed to construct foresight narratives. Analysis of the foresight narratives collected will be dependent on how farmers perceive uncertain water futures as it affects the building elements of the …

At The Mercy Of The Mexican Supreme Court: The Implications Of Party Capability On Indigenous People's Cases, Alan Cardenas

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Indigenous Peoples in Mexico have long struggled in securing their rights in colonizing states. Applying party capability theory, this paper seeks to empirically understand the Mexican Supreme Court's behavior in cases pertaining to Indigenous Peoples. This paper thus evaluates the degree to which the Mexican Supreme Court is indeed an impartial actor that produces "equal protection under the law" for everyone (Galanter, 1974). Specifically, this paper examines the questions: To what extent does the Mexican Supreme Court protect Indigenous Peoples' rights? Are Indigenous Peoples legally affected by the power disparity perpetuated by the inequality in the country? This paper thus …

Women Legislators & Representation Of The Indigenous Interests: The Case Of Mexico, Michelle Muñoz Cisneros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Elsa Chaney (1979) argued that women legislators in Latin America exhibit a supermadre approach in their legislatures. As a result of this, women legislators are relegated to "less important" committees, such as those dealing with family, children, and social issues. Based on her approach, this Thesis argues that due to gender socialization women legislators create an inclusive political environment in the legislature for minorities and marginalized groups. Specifically, it investigates women legislators' bill initiation behavior regarding the inclusion of indigenous populations' interests. This Thesis analyzes original data gathered from the 2009-2018 Mexican Congress using logistic regression. The findings indicate that …

Walls And Wilderness: Analyzing The Impacts Of Border Barriers On U.S. Government Lands Of The United States - Mexico Border, Bryce Garrett Fugate

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This paper seeks to describe the impacts of physical structures (fences, walls, barricades, etc.) on five selected areas of federally-protected U.S. lands along the U.S.-Mexico border that fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of the Interior. The five selected areas are: Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, Big Bend National Park, Organ Mountains - Desert Peaks National Monument, the Tohono O'odham Nation Reservation, and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The research looks into the historical development of structures put in place on the U.S. - Mexico border, how they have become ever more ubiquitous in the region, and what …

Measuring Integration Achievement In The Americas, Gaspare Genna

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

Measuring Integration Achievement In The Americas, Gaspare Genna

Departmental Papers (PS)

No abstract provided.

The Creation Of The Border Crisis: How The Media Influenced The Situation At The U.S./Mexico Border In 2014, Alejandra Baron

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In 2014, thousands of women and children from Central America trekked across Mexico to reach the United States border in hopes of seeking asylum. As oppose to previous immigration surges, it was the first time that this amount of asylum seekers had reached within a short period of time the border. The media in the United States took an important role in describing the occurrences at the U.S./Mexico border in the rhetoric and dialect used. The polarization of the audience mimicked the partisan government that could not agree on a solution and left the situation at the border in a …

Aquí Se Habla Español: Cultural Identity And Language In Post-World War Ii Puerto Rico, Joanna Marie Camacho Escobar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The following study seeks to understand the process in which language and culture were linked together in order to institutionalize Puerto Rican cultural nationalism. In the decades after 1898, Puerto Ricans went through a U.S.-imposed process of Americanization. What the U.S. originally had in mind was that Puerto Ricans would become American colonial subjects through U.S. control over the curriculum that made English the language of instruction in public schools. With a vague explanation from the U.S. of what Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans meant to the U.S. American nation, Puerto Ricans from various backgrounds debated Americanization practices. However, after …

Agenda Setting And Gridlock In A Multiparty Coalitional Presidential System: The Case Of Brazil, Taeko Hiroi, Lucio Renno

Selected Works Temporary Series

No abstract provided.

Agenda Setting And Gridlock In A Multiparty Coalitional Presidential System: The Case Of Brazil, Taeko Hiroi, Lucio Renno

Departmental Papers (PS)

No abstract provided.

Convergence? The Incursion Of Technology In The United States - Mexico Remittance Corridor, Sam Wilner Simon

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The United States-Mexico remittance corridor finds itself at a crossroads, exacerbated by an amalgam of factors including tapering migration levels, a more mature Mexican economy and higher levels of technological permeation. I identify the individual, governments and service providers as the three main actors in the United States - Mexico Remittance Corridor. I deploy an interdisciplinary set of sources, ranging from academic journals to World Bank datasets to illustrate the logistical hurdles that are delaying changes to what many experts believe, is an unsustainable status-quo. I explore the idea of a Galtung inspired mutually reinforcing triangle as a means of …

Deviant Politics: Hip Hop As A Form Of Resistance Against Hypercriminalization And Structural Violence, Selene Ines Diaz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Deviant Politics: Hip Hop As A Form Of Resistance Against Hyper Criminalization And Structural Violence

Memory, State Violence, And Revolution: Mexico's Dirty War In Ciudad Juárez, Vanessa Claire Johnson

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

After the uprising that took place in Madera, Chihuahua on September 23, 1965, the first armed challenge to the state since the Mexican Revolution, the north became a region of historical significance for understanding the subsequent "Dirty War" that spanned from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. Ciudad Juárez was a key locale in which a wide variety of revolutionary groups conducted both open and clandestine activities. Attempting to rouse the masses, a dedicated few organized protests, counter-meetings, popular assemblies, and launched a prepa popular to reorganize and democratize education. The Mexican state responded to these events with repression, …

Unspoken Prejudice: Racial Politics, Gendered Norms, And The Transformation Of Puerto Rican Identity In The Twentieth Century, Cristóbal A. Borges

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Dissertation uses border theory to craft a comparative study that explores the promotion of the white jí­baro in Puerto Rico throughout the twentieth century and the challenges to that racialized identity that emerged simultaneously. Through a biographical approach that examines the lives of José Julio Henna (1848-1924), Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938), Muna Lee (1895-1965), Juano Hernández (1896-1970), Ruby Black (1896-1957), Luis Muñoz Marí­n (1898-1980), Pura Belpré (1899-1982), Inés Mendoza (1908-1990), and Roberto Clemente (1934-1972) as symbols of Puerto Ricanness and contributors to its definition, the Dissertation analyzes the racial and gendered inequalities that persisted during twentieth century Puerto Rico. …

The Argentine Tango As A Discursive Instrument And Agent Of Social Empowerment: Buenos Aires, 1880-1955, Lorena Elizabeth Tabares

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As an indisputable central element of Argentine popular culture, the tango constitutes much more than an artistic expression or a recreational activity. It is the manifestation of a collective ideology and idiosyncrasy. The development of the tango as a song of the people and social history between the 1880's and the first half of the 20th century, was not merely the result of a matter of identification but more importantly, the fact that it, in its `tridimensionality' comprised of music, dance and lyrics, offered the milieu to the existence of the people that identified with it. In other words, the …

Que No Te Eduque La Rosa De Guadalupe - Stereotypes In Telenovelas, Ana Gomez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Gender-based discrimination and gender-based violence prevail in cultures where sexism and violence are usual. According to feminist organizations our best solution is education from an early age. However, in places where means of formal education are scarce, we may turn to alternative solutions such as television. Television has been examined in multiple studies for its role in the formation of gender, and other type of stereotypes. But also it has been considered a useful tool in challenging traditional notions about gender and in helping to promote social change. For this reason, a textual analysis was conducted on La Rosa de …