Latin American Studies Commons^™

Finding Latino/As: Library Tools To Discover And Mine Social Data And Statistics For Latino/Hispanic Populations In The United States, Marisol Ramos, Shikha Sharma

UConn Library Presentations

The purpose of this presentation is to clarify the difference between Data Mining from Mining for Data when searching for information about the United States Latino/Hispanic American population and what tools are available at the Homer Babbidge Libraries for our faculty and students doing this type of research.

This presentation was part of the Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Institute's Terturlia series, March 31, 2010.

The Social Strategy Game: Resource Competition Within Female Social Networks Among Small-Scale Forager-Horticulturalists, Stacey L. Rukas, Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan, Jeffrey Winking

ESI Publications

This paper examines social determinants of resource competition among Tsimane Amerindian women of Bolivia. We introduce a semi-anonymous experiment (the Social Strategy Game) designed to simulate resource competition among women. Information concerning dyadic social relationships and demographic data were collected to identify variables influencing resource competition intensity, as measured by the number of beads one woman took from another. Relationship variables are used to test how the affiliative or competitive aspects of dyads affect the extent of prosociality in the game. Using a mixed-modeling procedure, we find that women compete with those with whom they are quarreling over accusations of …

Conceptions Regarding Children’S Health: An Examination Of Ethnotheories In A Sending And Receiving Community, Maria Rosario De Guzman, Jennifer Deleon, Gloria Gonzalez-Kruger, Rodrigo Cantarero

Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies: Faculty Publications

Ethnotheories are beliefs that adults hold about children and the factors that impact upon their development. Scholars suggest that “ethnotheories” serve as cultural models that underlie motivations for parenting practices and the way adults organize children’s early experiences. This study examines Mexican adults’ ethnotheories about children’s health in two communities that are linked by transnational migrants and serve as sending and receiving communities for workers. Forty-four Mexican adults in six focus groups discussed well-being issues affecting children in their communities. Qualitative analyses using grounded theory revealed a complex conception of children’s health issues that included physical, psychological, and behavioral components …

Brazilians In The United States, 1980—2007, Laird W. Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines demographic and socioeconomic factors concerning Brazilians in the United States between 1980 and 2007.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The wave of migration from Brazil which began in the 1990s in all likelihood will continue into the future, economic fluctuations in the U.S. notwithstanding. In part this is due to the relatively high rates of educational attainment …

Learning Sustainable Development: Chimeneas De La Esperanza, Miriam V. Mollan Gundersen

Social Sciences

Social inequality and environmental degradation are motivating informed young people into action and connecting impoverished regions of the world with students in more developed nations. This Social Sciences senior project is to analyze an alternative development model designed by a group of Californian university students. The project, named Chimeneas de la Esperanza, is designed to help impoverished Nicaraguan women start a ceramics business. The major hurdle of this mission is to establish a market for the ceramics product. Energy efficient ceramic stoves and smoke ventilating chimneys would benefit the community and avoid an impacted crafts market. The project encompasses ideas …

Privatization Of Water In Latin America: A Case Study In Bolivia, Jason Segers

Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

“Diversity”—Demography, Culture, And Education For A Changing New York, Pedro Caban

Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies Faculty Scholarship

An Introduction written by Pedro Cabán of the book chapter titled " 'Diversity' - Demography, Culture, and Education for a Changing New York". The book is titled "SUNY at Sixty: The Promise of the State University of New York" ed. by Bruce Leslie, and others.

Climate Change And Indigenous Peoples In Latin America, Amy C. Rademacher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research focused on the detrimental effects of climate change on indigenous peoples in Latin America. Indigenous peoples throughout the region tend to live subsistence livelihoods, which tie them closely to their land and the surrounding environment. This close relationship often means that indigenous peoples acutely experience the effects of climate change and are more susceptible to its negative outcomes than other populations. Further, indigenous peoples in the region lack the mitigation and adaptation capacities to deal with damaging climatic effects.

This research was designed to view the impacts of climate change on indigenous peoples through a human rights framework, …

Book Review: The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers And African Slaves In Cuba, Donna Chollett

Anthropology Publications

Lisa Yun's book The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba is an extraordinary exemplar of scholarship that examines the under-investigated and often misunderstood phenomenon of Chinese coolie servitude in Cuba. The book interrogates liberal philosophies and modernist epistemologies, and offers new theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that shatter long-held notions of the labor "contract." Yun's analysis explores a unique body of 2,841 testimonies and petitions by Chinese coolies compiled in the 1876 Report of the Commission Sent by China to Ascertain the Condition of Chinese Coolies in Cuba.

The House In The Market: How Q’Eqchi’ Market Women Convert Money And Commodities Into Persons And Personhood, Sarah Ashley Kistler

Faculty Publications

Recent research argues that globalization in Latin America sometimes results in the homogenization of culture and loss of indigenous identity. This paper, however, explores how Q’eqchi’-Maya market women in San Juan Chamelco, Guatemala, generate Q’eqchi’ personhood by embracing the conflicts of value introduced by the confrontation of globalization with longstanding Q’eqchi’ values. I argue that in Chamelco, market women are mediators of value who participate in global capitalism to reinforce the categories that structure indigenous life. Q’eqchi’ women engage in marketing activities not only to accrue capital resources, but also to maintain local values, centered on the junkab’al or “house,” …

La Charca (1894) Y La Consagración Del Subalterno Puertorriqueño: Una Mirada Desde El Siglo Xxi Al Naturalismo De Manuel Zeno Gandía, Tania Carrasquillo Hernández

Faculty Publications

This article analyzes the representation of coffee plantation societies in the novel La Charca (1894) by Manuel Zeno Gandía (1855-1930). This literary text is a Puerto Rican classic and is one of the four novels included in Las Crónicas de un Mundo Enfermo (Chronicles of a Sick World). The author examines the political and economic structures developed in Puerto Rico during the nineteenth century, as portrayed in the novel. Carrasquillo Hernández pays close attention to the relations between social classes, the coffee oligarchy’s struggle, and the subjugation of workers by the hacendados (landowners) in order to promote and …

Introduction: Thoughts And Ideas On The Intersectionality Of Identity, Theodorea Berry, Michelle Jay, Marvin Lynn

Faculty Publications

An introduction to the journal is presented which the editor discusses an article on critical race feminism by Venus E. Evans-Winters and Jennifer Esposito, a report on critical race theory and critical pedagogy and a review of literature on the educational experiences of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S.

Transnational Students' Perspectives On Schooling In The United States And Mexico: The Salience Of School Experience And Country Of Birth, Edmund T. Hamann, Víctor Zúñiga, Juan Sánchez García

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

Students in Mexican schools with previous experience in US schools are transnational students. To the extent their Mexican schooling does not recognize or build on their US life and school experience and their American school experience did not anticipate their later relocation to Mexico, these students are incompletely attended to by school. Yet these students, like all students, are agentive and have some control over how they make sense of their schooling.

As schooling becomes an increasingly common institutional presence across the world and as decided majorities of children now attend at least some version of primary school, it is …

Steve C. Ropp On Human Rights In Latin America: A Politics Of Terror And Hope. By Sonia Cardenas. Philadelphia, Pa: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. 256pp., Steve C. Ropp

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Human Rights in Latin America: A Politics of Terror and Hope. By Sonia Cardenas. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. 256pp.

How Does Foreign Direct Investment Affect Growth In Developing Countries? An Empirical Investigation, E. M. Ekanayake, John R. Ledgerwood

Publications

This paper analyzes the effects of foreign direct investment on the economic growth of developing countries. The study uses annual data on a group of 85 developing countries covering Asia, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean for the period 1980-2007. We explore the hypothesis that foreign direct investment can promote growth in developing countries. We test this hypothesis using panel data series for foreign direct investment, while accounting for regional differences in Asian, African, Latin American, and the Caribbean countries as well as the differences in income levels. While the findings of previous studies are generally mixed, our results …

Migration, Food And Cultural Production Across Changing Afro-Ecuadorian Geographies, Amelia J. Swinton

Honors Theses

The human geography of Ecuador is changing. Urban Afro-Ecuadorians now outnumber those living in the two rural regions that have been the ancestral homelands of the population. This physical transformation assaults Ecuador's historically racialized geography, which conflated cities, modernity and white-mestizo identity. Though Afro-Ecuadorians living in the rural north had previously been physically and figuratively located outside of the national project, Ecuador’s new constitution has sought to reverse this institutionalized exclusion. National belonging has been reframed through the concept of interculturality, which recognizes diversity and equality at the same time. I conducted two periods of fieldwork in the north-central Chota …

Mujeres Haciendo Frente Al Desplazamiento Forzado / Women Confronting Forced Displacement, Rocio Clarisa Lemus

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The main question of this research whether or not a relationship exists between gender and forced displacement. More specifically, my interest is to document the experiences that women undergo when they are forced to leave their places of origin due to the Colombian War. The present research looks both to study the current condition of women who live in displaced condition in Bogotá and to contribute to the discussion regarding the concept of ambivalent empowerment. The analysis of the information is enriched by the Intersectionality Theory of Patricia Hill Collins . The research method and design used in this research …

Bilingual Visual Culture In New York : Socially-Engaged Latina Artists And The Discourse Of Hybridity, Solmerina Aponte

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The purpose of this dissertation is to analyze the aesthetic visual discourse of hybridity manifested in the works of contemporary socially-engaged Latina artists of the New York diaspora. For Latin America and the Caribbean, regions where sociopolitical history has generally exhibited a tumultuous trajectory, the arts have provided a formidable venue for addressing the social concerns engendered by this turbulent history and for studying the creative ways in which artists interpret them. The symbiotic bond created between art and politics would become a cultural force and tradition in the history of struggle that characterizes the countries that are part of …

A Comparative Study Of Chinese And Mexican Immigrants' Economic Incorporation In The United States, Miao Chunyu

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation research is a comparative study of the economic incorporation of the unskilled Chinese and Mexican immigrants in the United States. This comparative approach is justified by the fact that these two groups share striking similarities in human capital, social networks, and immigrant flow patterns, whereas they also differ significantly in their migration cost, transnational practice, and reception in the U.S. labor market. This research investigates three specific aspects of their labor market experience: participation in self-employment, job transition, and earnings growth. Essentially I hope to find out whether these immigrants can achieve economic mobility over time and in …

Immigration, Ethnicity, And Marginalization: The Maya K’Iche Of New Bedford, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce, Gissell Abreu-Rodriguez

Trotter Review

On Tuesday, March 6, 2007, more than 300 armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 361 presumed undocumented immigrant workers at the Michael Bianco Inc. factory in New Bedford, Massachusetts. More than half of the workers detained were from Guatemala, the majority belonging to the Maya K’iche (we will use K’iche) community, an ethnic group originally from the mountains of western Guatemala whose members began arriving in the New Bedford area from Providence, Rhode Island, where there is an older K’iche community, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, at the height of a violent confrontation in Guatemala between …