Latin American Studies Commons^™

La Santa Muerte And The Characteristic Damage Of Canonization, Ellen Webber

Journal of Global Catholicism

Devotion to La Santa Muerte, a Mexican folk saint who personifies Death, has

been condemned by the Catholic Church for its affiliation with Mexican drug

cartels. This article challenges mainstream interpretations of La Santa Muerte

devotion using the theological framework of characteristic damage, as defined

by Lauren Winner and Paul J. Griffiths. This framework understands liturgy

as celebrated by sinners in a damaged world, and therefore necessarily damaged

itself. As much as liturgy and Christian practice form us for good, they also per-

petuate damage. I argue that the sins present in La Santa Muerte veneration are

an expression of …

Mucho Ruido Y Pocas Nueces? Rethinking Mexico's Judicial Reform In Comparative Perspective, Oscar Serratos

Notre Dame Journal of International & Comparative Law

Mexico's 2024 judicial reform, which made it the first country to elect all judges by popular vote, has generated widespread criticism for allegedly threatening judicial independence and democratic governance. This Article challenges the prevailing narrative by arguing that many of these concerns overstate the reform's practical effect. Through a comparative analysis of Mexico's new constitutional framework and judicial electoral systems in the United States, the Article demonstrates that the reform incorporates structural safeguards—including balanced nomination powers, nonpartisan elections, restrictions on campaign financing, and continued judicial training—that set it apart from comparable American models. While acknowledging legitimate concerns regarding implementation and …

The Untameability Of The Sacred: Votive Traditions At Notre Dame De Lourdes And El Santuario De Chimayó, Gabrielle Bibeau

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article compares divergent votive practices at Notre Dame de Lourdes in France and El Santuario de Chimayó in New Mexico. Lourdes’ embrace of modern aesthetic values—simplicity, order, and functional clarity—has led to the removal and tight regulation of most ex-votos. By contrast, Chimayó’s roots in Latin American Baroque aesthetics, with its emphasis on abundance, drama, and hybridity, create space for a vibrant proliferation of offerings. Drawing on Jacques Rancière’s theory of aesthetics and politics as the “distribution of the sensible,” the article shows how aesthetic judgments intertwine with clerical power to curate, constrain, and authorize pilgrims’ access to the …

Entre Irse Y Quedarse: Sociolinguistic Effects Of The H-2a Program In The U.S. And Mexico, Hayden D. Holman

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation examines stabilized circular migration as a distinct sociolinguistic condition through a study of Mexican participants in the U.S. H-2A temporary agricultural worker program. Whereas much migration scholarship presumes linear settlement and cumulative immersion, the H-2A program institutionalizes repeated cycles of departure and return between specific origin and destination communities. This patterned mobility produces recurrent immersion in an English-dominant environment followed by re-centering in a Spanish-dominant community, creating conditions of cyclical activation and recalibration of linguistic repertoires.

The study investigates two interrelated questions: (1) how sustained participation in stabilized circular mobility shapes participants’ spoken repertoires, contact-induced features, and language …

Testing Tocqueville’S Troops: American Democracy At War In Mexico, Corbin V. Cali

History Theses

This thesis explores Alexis de Tocqueville's theory of democratic armies through the lens of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), testing his predictions about how democratic social conditions influence military institutions and performance. Tocqueville argued that armies in democratic societies would face tensions between egalitarian ideals and military discipline, with citizen-soldiers resisting hierarchy while professional officers, often isolated from civil society, grew dangerously ambitious for war. He predicted that democratic armies would show energetic initiative but struggle with weak formal discipline, and that equality would fundamentally change the relationship between the military and the broader society. The Mexican-American War serves as an …

Mexico's Gender Violence Alerts: Ambiguous, Under-Resourced, And Uneven Impacts On Women’S Human Rights, Molly Ewing

Senior Theses

Mexico has some of the highest rates of violence against women and femicide in the world and these numbers continue to rise. Over the past few decades, Mexico has attempted to address this issue through a series of penal code reforms, social campaigns, and comprehensive legislation, but the impacts of such measures are undercut and unevenly felt due to a series of under looked contributing factors. Mexico is the first in the world to implement the Gender Violence Alert Mechanism (AVGM), which was established under the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free from Violence (LGAMVLV) of 200. …

Elected To Die: The Effect Of Municipal Assassinations On Remittances In Mexico, Victor M. Mendez Robles

Latin American Studies Honors Projects

This paper looks at localized violence in Mexico through both a qualitative and quantitative approach. Looking at some motivating factors behind violence against political institutions at the municipal level in Mexico. In addition, this paper looks at the relationship between assassinations of municipal mayors in Mexico to see if their assassination leads to changes in remittances in those municipalities in the following periods. This paper uses various difference in difference models to come to its conclusion. There is suggestive evidence of a relationship between remittance growth in municipalities in the periods following an assassination of a mayor currently in office.

Simulated Recovery: Measuring The Impact Of Structural Adjustment On Economic Development In Latin America, Daniel Espinal

Business and Economics Honors Papers

This paper uses synthetic control analysis to assess the long-term effects of structural adjustment policies on economic development. Focusing on Mexico as a case study, the findings indicate that these policies may have contributed to economic stagnation and widening inequality. By comparing actual outcomes with a synthetic counterfactual, the analysis reveals a notable divergence in performance over time. Reforms intended to stabilize the economy and promote growth—such as austerity, liberalization, and privatization—often led to reduced public investment, weakened institutions, and increased social vulnerability. The results support broader critiques of structural adjustment, suggesting that the costs of such interventions can outweigh …

Suspended Agency And The Habitus Of Waiting In A Migrant Shelter In Tijuana, Liam K. Ogden Iii

Senior Theses

This thesis explores idea of suspended agency and the development of a habitus of waiting within a women and children’s migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. Relying on ten days of participant observation and an interview with a shelter director, I examine the lived experiences of residents, workers, and myself as a researcher navigating humanitarian space. Shelters are designed to be short term spaces, but migrants are often forced into long-term, uncertain stays due to restrictive border policies and structural barriers, resulting in a social stasis defined by boredom, anxiety, and monotony within the shelter. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus …

[Review Of The Book The Two Faces Of Fear: Violence And Fear In The Mexican Metropolis, By A. Villarreal], Francis Adams

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

[First paragraph] Mexico has long been a transhipment point for illegal narcotics between South America and the United States. Clashes among drug cartels over territory and trafficking routes have caused insecurity and violence in parts of Mexico for decades, especially along the U.S. border. When Filipe Calderón became president in 2006, he declared a "war on drug traffickers" and deployed thousands of federal troops to combat the cartels. Over the next decade, violence in Mexico dramatically escalated, with tens of thousands of people killed or disappeared. Violence also became more generalised throughout the country, impacting areas that had previously been …

Cultural Model Of Indigenous Custom Marriage, Maria G. Stapleton

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines and documents the tradition of Indigenous Custom Marriage (ICM) practiced in a semi-rural community in central Mexico. The arrival of Spaniards to Mesoamerica during the sixteenth century brought new forms of marriage to the region, those of the Christian religion and of the Spanish crown’s laws. While these new forms slowly gained acceptance, the traditional pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican form of getting married has endured over the intervening centuries up through the present. This traditional form of marriage is not monolithic, but shows variation across the diverse ethnic groups, communities, and geographic regions of Mesoamerica. The community studied, Tlanalapa, …

Venezuela's And Mexico's Oil Industries: Policy Making Sets The Course, Camila Gimenez Valero

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The puzzle of Venezuela's crisis is one that researchers often try to understand. How did one of the richest nations in the world become one of the poorest? Venezuela is nowadays seen as a country with political unrest, where people struggle to get by and with a corrupt government. However, this was not always the case. Throughout the 20th century Venezuela had remarkable economic stability. Having discovered the world's largest known oil reserves, the nation's economy quickly developed, and the country also became known for its long-standing democracy. After the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998, Venezuela began to decline …

Us-Mexico Relations: Addressing Challenges At The Border, The Brookings Institution

Brookings Mountain West Special Events

Mexico’s president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum will begin her six-year term in October as the U.S. presidential campaign enters its final stretch. How the next U.S. administration and Congress manage relations with new leadership in Mexico will affect border security, immigration policies, trade and energy relations, and counter-narcotics and anti-crime cooperation. What tools can policymakers in both countries use to advance positive outcomes? What are the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for the United States and Mexico?

The Brookings Foreign Policy program in partnership with Brookings Mountain West at UNLV hosted a discussion on the state of U.S.-Mexico relations. Panelists analyzed …

Mobilizing Online, Marching Offline: Familias Unidas Por Nuestros Desaparecidos’ Strategic Use Of Social Media, Iara Gonzalez Ascencio

International Studies (MA) Theses

How do civilian women strategically steer their nonviolent social movements in reaction to the terrifying phenomena of forced disappearances under narco-violence? As a form of resistance, civilian women in Mexico have organized and joined groups to locate their missing family members and friends in response to risks posed by the pervasiveness of drug-related violence and the absence of official security services. Existing studies explore the role of women in peacebuilding initiatives to resist violence and obtain social change in Latin American countries. Still, there is limited research on the role of digital feminism in marginalized local collective groups, particularly under …

Exploring The Factors That Influence Female Offending In The U.S. And Mexico, Dana Villasenor

CMC Senior Theses

Hollywood has painted a picture of the criminal woman as a sexy, sneaky, and often psychotic female fatale. This is because men run Hollywood. Much like movies, research on why women offend had historically focused on men as their stellar. However, towards the turn of the century and with the disproportionate rise in female incarceration, literature caught up to the fact that women and men do not experience the same socialization, standards, or reality and, therefore, have different reasons for and ways of offending. This research explores those reasons for women in the U.S. and Mexico and paints the picture …

Ambigú Trashumante Barra De Café Ambulante Ambigú Trashumante Barra De Café Ambulante, Augusto Martin Rivero

Master's Projects and Capstones

Ambigú Trashumante Barra de Café Ambulante is an applied research project which took shape over the course of a calendar year from May 2022-2023. A six-person team evolved including the personified project itself, united as one communal entity in collaboration. The project entailed creation of a bicicargo, or cargo bike–useful art becoming a mobile coffee bar and literal vehicle embodying justice through coffee offered freely in México, as facilitated through decolonized ethnography and Mesoamerican Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR). The project’s theoretical framework centers on Bruguera’s (2012) arte útil conceptualization. Five core patterns emerged, including the right to thrive in …

The Evolving Role Of Women In The Sinaloa Cartel: An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Drug Trafficking Organizations, Female Agency, And Economic Mobility, Catherine Page, Kennady Leigh Hertz

Honors Theses

Exploring the role of women in Mexican drug trafficking organizations is a topic that has gained significant traction in the past 30 years. Despite the increase of literature on the topic, few papers theorize as to why women participate. This product sought to explore the various reasons why women participate in Mexican drug trafficking organizations, either willingly, or against their wishes. We hypothesized that women join drug trafficking organizations for two primary reasons: a) they are coerced by male figures in their life, and b.) they participate willingly in an effort to gain economic mobility. To test our hypothesis, we …

War Over Measure: Latin American Cultural Policy And The Pedagogy Of Neoliberal States, D. Bret Leraul

Faculty Journal Articles

This article recovers the link between cultural and educational policy in Latin America to understand the neoliberal state’s discursive institution of culture as capital. It does so by studying the form and function of Mexican and Chilean cultural bureaucracies. The calculability and accountability of culture in Chilean cultural policy and the incalculability of Mexico’s culture of favor cultural policy are but two sides of one coin issued by the same neoliberal state form. Both depend on the discursive institution (from above) of culture as cultural capital and labor as human capital reflected (from below) in the formation of Latin American …

Narcommunication: The Messaging, Marketing, And Murder Of Organized Crime, Philip L. Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Criminal actors are widely assumed to maintain a low profile, exerting power through corruption, coercion, and clandestine networks. Scholarship that addresses public action on the part of criminal actors focuses almost exclusively on acts of violence. However, an ample empirical record demonstrates that criminal actors also communicate publicly to broad audiences. To better understand this practice, this project focuses on the phenomenon of narco-messaging in Mexico. The project asks: what do criminal actors say when they speak publicly, and why do they say it?

The core data for this project comes from an original collection of 6,178 narco-messages that appeared …

Protección Social A La Infancia Y La Covid-19. Implicaciones Normativas E Institucionales De La Respuesta Del Gobierno De La Ciudad De México, Jorge E. Culebro, Janeth Hernández

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance

El propósito del estudio de caso es analizar la respuesta del gobierno de la ciudad de México a la crisis derivada de la COVID-19 y, en particular, la forma en que ha afectado la protección social de la infancia durante los primeros meses de la pandemia. Se analiza diseño institucional normativo de la protección social a la infancia en México, y particularmente en la Ciudad de México, así como las actividades del gobierno de la ciudad de México para disminuir el impacto de la crisis en la infancia. Teórica y metodológicamente el artículo sigue la estrategia de estudio de caso …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings, …

Re-Imagining Design For Affordable Housing In Mexico, Kenza Fernandez Dominguez

Scripps Senior Theses

Since the presidency of Enrique Peña Nieto, affordable housing developments in Mexico have been produced in a massive, unsustainable scale. The speed at which these developments are produced equates to the carelessness that goes into their planning. At large, the developments’ monotonous design is aesthetically dehumanizing and fails to promote a sense of community. These developments lack basic infrastructure, and their residents have abandoned them, which has incentivized increased criminal activity.

In this paper, I will be looking at successful models of affordable housing globally, exploring the histories of communal living, and function of architectural collages. Based on my findings …

Gender And Remittances: Lived Experiences Of Women In Oaxaca, Mexico, Araby Smyth

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation project analyzes the ways that migration and remittances, the money that migrants send to people in their place of origin, intersect with the political and social dynamics in an Indigenous community in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, Mexico. Drawing on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork, which included semi-structured interviews and participant observation alongside historical archival investigation, this dissertation examines the following questions: What international organizations, national government, and private sector policies govern remittances? How does Indigenous collective work and communal governance shape remittance management? How do the responsibilities of family members shift with migration and how …

Responding To Violence From Abroad: The Mexican Diaspora Mobilising From Brussels And Paris Through Art-Based Strategies, Larisa Lara-Guerrero

Peace and Conflict Studies

Over 150,000 people were intentionally killed in Mexico since 2006, after the Mexican government decided to openly combat organized crime. Against the backdrop of the security crisis, members of Mexican society have developed national and transnational strategies to contribute to the respond to the rampant violence in their homeland.

By introducing a transdisciplinary approach and peacebuilding theories, this paper argues that Mexican migrants living in Brussels and Paris have been able to orchestrate transnational art-based strategies to contribute to the violence alleviation in their country of origin. In particular, this empirical paper argues that Mexican migrants living in these two …

A Treacherous Journey Through Latin America: The Plight Of Black African And Haitian Migrants Forced To Remain In Mexico, Zefitret A. Molla

Master's Theses

The growing presence of Black African and Haitian migrants in Mexico poses a new set of challenges to a country that is already struggling to recognize the presence of Afro-Mexicans and where mestizaje still dominates the national discourse on race. Due to restrictive U.S. and Mexican immigration policies since 2016, many of these migrants have found themselves forced to remain in a country they had only intended to transit through on their journey northward to the U.S. Mexico has only recently taken the necessary steps to recognize its Afro-Mexican population which had been marginalized and erased from history. This paper …

Soda, Water, And Convenience: An Evaluation Of The Mexican Soda Tax, Benjamin Hager

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to evaluate the Mexican soda tax of 2014 by exploring the reasons for the tax and the underlying factors that the tax seems to ignore. This soda tax, in particular, was implemented to address obesity by curbing the consumption of sugary soft drinks due to the large quantities consumed by the Mexican populous. However, as this thesis shows there are some potential pitfalls in this type of obesity prevention policy. By exploring potable water data from the World Bank, the rural and urban noncommunicable disease rates of two Mexican states, and the penetration of levels of the …

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.

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 …

“The Gifts Of Enemies”: The Acteal Massacre, Sociedad Civil Las Abejas And Mexico’S Ejército Zapatista De Liberación Nacional And Humanitarian And Development Aid During The Low-Intensity War, 1997–1999, Maria R. Hart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about a faction of the Sociedad Civil Las Abejas who, as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), were housed at the INI IDP camp in San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, in 1997-99 after the Acteal massacre on December 22, 1997. This faction is of interest because they protested the remaining members of Sociedad Civil Las Abejas (Civil Society The Bees) social movement at Acteal and the EZLN (Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional, often better-known as the Zapatistas), because the movement required them to reject governmental humanitarian aid and development programs or lose their membership in the social …

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 …