Browsing by Subject "Caribbean"
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Item Archival dissonance in the Cuban post-exile historical novel(2009-12) Helmick, Gregory Gierhart; Salgado, Cesar Augusto; Arroyo-Martinez, Jossianna; Lindstrom, Naomi E.; Shumway, Nicolas; Wylie, Harold A.This dissertation investigates a common methodology of staging Cuban and Cuban exile historiography in three novels by Roberto G. Fernández (b. 1950), Antonio Benítez Rojo (1931-2005), and Ana Menéndez (b. 1970). This methodology develops a counterpoint between, first, the diagetic (strictly fictional) stories of characters who attempt to research or write Cuban history from exile and, second, the extradiagetic (extra or non-fictional) use of actual sources and tendencies of Cuban, Caribbean, and U.S. historiography structuring the narrative fiction. Reinforcing the density of the discursive field, the authors additionally incorporate works of Spanish, Latin-American, Caribbean, and/or Cuban literatures as constitutive elements of their fictions’ extradiagetic “noise.” I make the case that Fernández’s, Benítez Rojo’s, and Menéndez’s U.S.-produced historical novels develop a critical and investigative approach to the politics of Cuban exile and diaspora historiography. As such, they participate in the emergence of a post-exile Cuban literature, in dialogue with broader Caribbean and Latin American literatures. I analyze what I call archival dissonance in (1) the first, paradigm-setting novel in the body of historical fiction narrated from the frame of a dystopian future by Roberto G. Fernández, La vida es un special; (2) in Ana Menéndez’s use of reader response and archival research methods to critically recast a history of family division under the Cuban Revolution as popular romance fiction in Loving Che and (3) in the only novel Antonio Benítez Rojo lived to write in the United States, Mujer en traje de batalla (about the accidental arrival to New York City of the “first female Cuban physician” Enriqueta Faber, 1791-1827). Departing from the methodology presented with the narrative structure of each of the novels, in which a diagetic process of a character’s reading and/or writing Cuban history from a site of exile is countered by extradiagetic documentary and metaliterary information, I examine each novel’s metacritical approach to the politics of exile and diaspora historiography, as well as toward Cuban, Caribbean, Latin American, and/or U.S. literary textual economies.Item The artist among ruins: connecting catastrophes in Brazilian and Cuban cinema, painting, sculpture and literature(2013-12) Lopes De Barros Oliveira, Rodrigo; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Litvak, Lily, 1938-; Afolabi, Niyi; Davis, Diane; Fierro, Enrique; Salgado, CésarThis work is an attempt to create a constellation. In a constellation, some stars are greatly apart from each other. However, they appear on the same plane to our eyes. This method is derived from Walter Benjamin. Here I have, as my objet petit a, the pictorial, sculptural, cinematic and literary production of Brazil and Cuba from 1959 and beyond. As a barrier for creating meaning of such a vast content, I chose the theme of ruins, expanding when possible to its relatives: decay, catastrophe, debris, death, war, the lost paradise, the garden, intellectual thinking, utopia, dystopia, dreamworlds, rot, hope, human destruction, homelessness, and more. I work with figures of those two geographic regions, in which I think ruins—being inorganic, organic or abstract ones—have a major role in the work of: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Glauber Rocha, Orlando Jiménez Leal, Sabá Cabrera, Nicolás Guillén Landrián, Rogério Sganzerla, Néstor Almendros, Antonio José Ponte, Ramón Alejandro, and Francisco Brennand. This effort led me to reevaluate the classical concept of ruins in Western thought, which I think was relatively in force until World War I and which underwent a radical transformation after the advent of twentieth-century concentration camps, the domination by humans of atomic power, and the establishment of extremely high speeds for travels. I also propose that modern ruins acquire their full significance especially in the Third World. For, to the contrary of the central nations of capitalism, the Third World cannot be turned into ruins. It has already been born as such a thing. The aforementioned events just made this state of existence clearer.Item Caribbean Precipitation in Observations and IPCC AR4 Models(2012-10-19) Martin, Elinor RuthA census of 24 coupled (CMIP) and 13 uncoupled (AMIP) models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report (AR4) were compared with observations and reanalysis to show varied ability of the models to simulate Caribbean precipitation and mechanisms related to precipitation in the region. Not only were errors seen in the annual mean, with CMIP models underestimating both rainfall and sea surface temperature (SST) and AMIP models overestimating rainfall, the annual cycle was also incorrect. Large overestimates of precipitation at all SSTs (and particularly above 28 degrees C) and at vertical circulations less than -10 hPa/day (the deep convective regime) were inherent in the atmospheric models with models using spectral type convective parameterizations performing best. In coupled models, however, errors in the frequency of occurrence of SSTs (the distribution is cold biased) and deep convective vertical circulations (reduced frequency) lead to an underestimation of Caribbean mean precipitation. On daily timescales, the models were shown to produce too frequent light rainfall amounts (especially less than 1 mm/day) and dry extremes and too few heavy rainfall amounts and wet extremes. The simulation of the mid-summer drought (MSD) proved a challenge for the models, despite their ability to produce a Caribbean low-level jet (CLLJ) in the correct location. Errors in the CLLJ, such as too strong magnitude and weak semi-annual cycle, were worse in the CMIP models and were attributed to problems with the location and seasonal evolution of the North Atlantic subtropical high (NASH) in both CMIP and AMIP models. Despite these discrepancies between models and observations, the ability of the models to simulate the correlation between the CLLJ and precipitation varied based on season and region, with the connection with United States precipitation particularly problematic in the AMIP simulations. An observational study of intraseasonal precipitation in the Caribbean showed an explicit connection between the Madden-Julian oscillation (MJO) and Caribbean precipitation for the first time. Precipitation anomalies up to 50 percent above (below) the annual mean are observed in phases 1 and 2 (5 and 6) of the MJO and are related to changes in the CLLJ, that is also modulated by the MJO. Considerable progress has been made on identifying both problems and successes in the simulation of Caribbean climate in general circulation models, but many areas still require investigation.Item Destabilizing racialized geographies : the temporality of Blackness in Puerto Rico(2016-05) Machicote, Michaela Andrea; Arroyo, Jossianna; Leu, LorraineIn this thesis I analyze the way in which the de-colonial construction of Puerto Rico, and subsequent acquisition by the US as a territory, came to inform and create a whitened identity through the confinement, historicization of African influence, and erasure of Puerto Rico's Black population/heritage component via the narrative of mestizaje and mulataje. I look specifically at Loíza; Loíza is a city celebrated by Puerto Rico as a site of authentic Blackness and exemplifies efforts by the state to commodify and restrict the movements of Black Bodies. It is in these marginalized and racialized spaces that I explore the possibility of self-making and Black identity in Loíza, Puerto Rico.Item Empire’s angst : the politics of race, migration, and sex work in Panama, 1903-1945(2013-08) Parker, Jeffrey Wayne; Guridy, Frank Andre; Levine, Philippa; Makalani, Minkah; Mckiernan-González, John; Twinam, AnnThis dissertation explores the negotiations and conflicts over race, sex, and disease that shaped the changing contours of the nightlife in Panama from 1903 to 1945. It investigates why sexual commerce on the isthmus evoked an array of masculine anxieties from various historical actors, including U.S. officials, Panamanian authorities, and Afro-Caribbean activists. I argue that the conflicting cultural encounters over sex work remained at the heart of U.S. imperial designs, Panamanian nationalism and state-building efforts, and Afro-Caribbean visions of racial advancement during the first half of the twentieth century. Moreover, these global visions of manliness generated at the local level also took shape in dialogue with each other. This interconnected discourse on manliness highlights the intertwined histories of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean in the early twentieth century. Migrant women at the center of the drama, however, became particularly adept at navigating the multiple structures of patriarchal control. They manipulated the legal system, resisted abuses of power, participated in labor organizations, pursued economic opportunities, pressed moral claims, demanded respect, and highlighted injustices. Women embroiled in controversy selected from an array of ideas circulating the region. They also played off competing understandings of manhood in order to achieve their own ends. Often these various strategies of negotiation had contradictory outcomes. Active engagement with patriarchal institutions could simultaneously reinforce gender and racial norms while challenging the material reality of daily life. Nevertheless, the failure by the U.S. and Panamanian governments to curtail sexual deviancy and venereal disease underscored the limits of imperial power at a key global crossroads in the Americas.Item Evolution of Ligia Isopods in three Geologically Dynamic Regions(2013-09-27) Santamaria Masironi, Carlos AThe oniscidean genus Ligia has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring mainly in rocky supralittoral habitats, although a few species are found in tropical mountain freshwater habitats. The long-distance dispersal potential of the coastal Ligia isopods is very limited, due to a series of biological characteristics, which contributes to a high isolation of their populations. Consistent with this, high levels of allopatric differentiation have been detected for coastal Ligia in different parts of the world, with phylogeographic patterns exhibiting signatures of past geological and oceanographic events. In this dissertation, we used mitochondrial and nuclear gene sequences to infer phylogeographic patterns of Ligia isopods in the Hawaiian archipelago, and the region comprised by the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific coast of Colombia and Central America. We also conducted geometric-morphometric analyses to determine whether differences in overall body shape exist between divergent lineages in coastal Ligia from the Hawaiian archipelago and from the region between Central California and Central Mexico, including the Gulf of California. We observed that Ligia populations from the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific coast of Central America and Colombia, as well as those from the Hawaiian archipelago, harbor highly divergent lineages, suggesting that the Ligia species recognized for these regions represent cryptic species complexes. Phylogeographic patterns suggest that passive overwater dispersal has been an important factor shaping the evolutionary history of Ligia in these two regions. Geometric morphometric approaches uncovered morphological differences between highly divergent genetic lineages of Ligia isopods in the Hawaiian archipelago and the region between Central California and Central Mexico, including the Gulf of California. Large overlap in body shapes occur, however, suggesting overall body shape evolution is somewhat constrained and this character is unreliable for taxonomic distinction of these lineages.Item Exit over voice in Dominican ethnoracial politics(2015-12) Contreras, Danilo Antonio; Madrid, Raúl L.,; Philpot, Tasha; Dietz, Henry; Brinks, Daniel; Mahon, JimWhat explains why ethnoracial identity is of low salience in elections in Latin America, particularly in Afro-Latin America? Marginalized individuals in ethnoracially diverse societies, especially stratified ones, would seem most likely to mobilize politically along ethnoracial lines. I argue that, under certain conditions, individuals will deal with ethnoracial discrimination and stratification through exit rather than voice. That is, they will reclassify their way out of marginalized ethnosomatic categories instead of voting for candidates and parties that share their ethnoracial identities. This tends to be the case where ethnoracial group identity is inchoate and group boundaries are permeable. High levels of stratification combined with low degrees of ethnoracial group consolidation will typically prevent the activation of ethnoracial identity in elections. Whereas ethnoracial stratification provides the incentive structure for individuals to switch ethnoracial categories, inchoate ethnoracial group identity and permeable ethnoracial boundaries lower the transaction costs to doing so. I also argue that individuals may emphasize national origin over race or ethnicity where ethnoracial group loyalties are weak and immigration is widespread. I test my argument against competing approaches using quantitative, qualitative, and experimental evidence from the Dominican Republic. The evidence suggests that the confluence of stratification and inchoate ethnoracial group identity indeed has prevented the activation of ethnoracial cleavages in elections in the DR. This same combination, however, has not impeded the activation of national origin in elections. Rather than strengthening the salience of ethnoracial cleavages in elections, nationalism has helped to redirect those cleavages.Item Let the waters flow : (trans)locating Afro-Latina feminist thought(2013-12) Zamora, Omaris Zunilda; Arroyo, JossiannaWhen thinking specifically of transnationalism, African diaspora and the fluidity of identity: Where do we locate Afro-Latina women? The answer for this question would seem to come from a Black or Chicano feminist thought, nonetheless, these theoretical frameworks have static spaces where fluid subjectivities like that of Afro-Latina women are not recognized. This report frames a theoretical conversation between these two frameworks through a dialectic discussion of their empty spaces or limits and proposes a new approach to Afro-Latina feminism based on the processes and intersections of Black consciousness, sexuality, and the knowledges that are created through the body and its fluidity. More importantly, paying close attention to the roles of translocation, transformation, and the fluidity of identity. In furthering this theoretical conversation, under the theme of Afro-Latina women, this report takes on the case of Dominican women’s transnational experiences and their different dimensions as represented in novels like, Nelly Rosario’s Song of the Water Saints and Ana Lara’s Erzulie’s Skirt. Looking specifically at the relationships between women and women, and women and their bodies as being transformed through the sacred, this report concludes that the centrality of Afro-Latina women’s experience is in recognizing that the body as an archive, is a place from where knowledges are re-created and disseminated creating a feminist epistemology for themselves.Item Once you go you know : tourism, colonial nostalgia and national lies in Jamaica(2012-05) Wint, Traci-Ann Simone Patrice; Gordon, Edmund Tayloe; Franklin, MariaJamaica is rich in contradictions. Life, like the landscape, is made up of great highs and lows, a wealth of beauty paralleled by intense desperation. This report explores these contradictions through an examination of the image of Jamaica packaged and presented to the world as a consumable tourism product. In 2012 as Jamaica prepares to celebrate 50 years of (in)dependence, the small nation finds itself battling (neo)colonialism, dependence, dispossession. Tourism is Jamaica’s main source of revenue and the industry is a major employer. The island’s role as a premier tourist destination is thus inseparable from Jamaicans’ daily lives. The current marketing slogan says to tourists ‘Once you go, you know”, I argue that this assertion is representative of the form tourism takes in Jamaica. By literally and figuratively granting understanding and ownership of the island and its resources to foreigners, the construction of Jamaica’s tourism product systematically commodifies Jamaica, its people, and culture. I seek to interrogate the role of tourism in Jamaica’s continued exploitation and to question the presence of secrecy, colonial nostalgia and national lies in how Jamaicans self identify and in how we are portrayed.Item Parasitism and Fatty Liver Disease in the Invasive Red Lionfish, Pterois Volitans (Linnaeus), Along the Gulf of Mexico(2017-11-14) Fails, Danielle M.; Cook, Tamara; Smith-Herron, AutumnInvasive species are detrimental to both the economy as well as to environmental stability. One of the most successful to date is the red lionfish, Pterois volitans, which first invaded the western hemisphere around 30 years ago. Lionfish have decimated native fish populations at roughly 7,500 lbs. per acre per year, have no natural predators, and seem fairly resistant to parasitism. Few species (<50) of parasites have been found in lionfish. Not only is parasitic prevalence low in lionfish, but they also seem to exhibit resistance to the effects of fatty liver disease. This research provides an updated parasite survey and reports six species of parasites, three of which are parasite species reported for the first time in lionfish; (1) one Cymothoid isopod: Olencira praegustator, (2) one Corallanidae isopod: Excorallana truncata, and (3) an acanthocephalan: Serrasentis sagittifer. Overall parasite prevalence and intensity was low for all hosts, and were significantly higher in males. A baseline study of fatty liver analysis in lionfish revealed that >85% of examined fish displayed evidence of fatty liver disease, and most exhibited moderate degrees of disease. Sex, location, and standard length of lionfish did not play a significant role in degree of disease, though slight disease differences were observed among locations. Outward condition (i.e. skin/scale integrity, coloration, observed mass) of specimens observed in relation to fatty liver disease and parasitism seemed relatively unaffected.Item Persistent borderland: freedom and citizenship in territorial Florida(2009-05-15) Smith, Philip MatthewFlorida?s Spanish borderland was the result of over two hundred and fifty years of cooperation and contention among Indians, Spain, Britain, the United States and Africans who lived with them all. The borderland was shaped by the differing cultural definitions of color and how color affected laws about manumission, miscegenation, legitimacy, citizenship or degrees of rights for free people of color and to some extent for slaves themselves. The borderland did not vanish after the United States acquired Florida. It persisted in three ways. First, in advocacy for the former Spanish system by some white patriarchs who fathered mixed race families. Free blacks and people of color also had an interest in maintaining their property and liberties. Second, Indians in Florida and escaped slaves who allied with them well knew how whites treated non-whites, and they fiercely resisted white authority. Third, the United States reacted to both of these in the context of fear that further slave revolutions in the Caribbean, colluding with the Indian-African alliance in Florida, might destabilize slavery in the United States. In the new Florida Territory, Spanish era practices based on a less severe construction of race were soon quashed, but not without the articulate objections of a cadre of whites. Led by Zephaniah Kingsley, their arguments challenged the strict biracial system of the United States. This was a component of the persistent borderland, but their arguments were, in the end, also in the service of slavery and white patriarchy. The persistent border included this ongoing resistance to strict biracialism, but it was even more distinct because of the Indian-African resistance to the United States that was not in the service of slavery. To defend slavery and whiteness, the United States sent thousands of its military, millions of its treasure, and spent years to subdue the Indian-African alliance and to make Florida and its long shorelines a barrier to protect whiteness and patriarchy in the Deep South.Item Slavery, war, and Britain's Atlantic empire : black soldiers, sailors, and rebels in the Seven Years' War(2009-12) Bollettino, Maria Alessandra; Sidbury, James; Brooks, Joanna; Eastman, Carolyn; Kamil, Neil; Olwell, RobertThis work is a social and cultural history of the participation of enslaved and free Blacks in the Seven Years’ War in British America. It is, as well, an intellectual history of the impact of Blacks’ wartime actions upon conceptions of race, slavery, and imperial identity in the British Atlantic world. In addition to offering a fresh analysis of the significance of Britain’s arming of Blacks in the eighteenth century, it represents the first sustained inquiry into Blacks’ experience of this global conflict. It contends that, though their rhetoric might indicate otherwise, neither race nor enslaved status in practice prevented Britons from arming Blacks. In fact, Blacks played the most essential role in martial endeavors precisely where slavery was most fundamental to society. The exigencies of worldwide war transformed a local reliance upon black soldiers for the defense of particular colonies into an imperial dependence upon them for the security of Britain’s Atlantic empire. The events of the Seven Years’ War convinced many Britons that black soldiers were effective and even indispensable in the empire’s tropical colonies, but they also confirmed that not all Blacks could be trusted with arms. This work examines “Tacky’s revolt,” during which more than a thousand slaves exploited the wartime diffusion of Jamaica’s defensive forces to rebel, as a battle of the Seven Years’ War. The experience of insecurity and insurrection during the conflict caused some Britons to question the imperial value of the institution of slavery and to propose that Blacks be transformed from a source of vulnerability as slaves to the key to the empire’s strength in the southern Atlantic as free subjects. While martial service offered some Blacks a means to gain income, skills, a sense of satisfaction, autonomy, community, and even (though rarely) freedom, the majority of Blacks did not personally benefit from their contributions to the British war effort. Despite the pragmatic martial antislavery rhetoric that flourished postwar, in the end the British armed Blacks to perpetuate slavery, not to eradicate it, and an ever more regimented reliance upon black soldiers became a lasting legacy of the Seven Years’ War.Item The Rincon Astrolabe Shipwreck(Texas A&M University, 2006-04-12) Garcia Ortiz, Gustavo AdolfoOn 30 December 1986, a local fisherman incidentally discovered the remains of a seventeenth-century merchantman off the coast of Rincon, a small municipality on Puerto Rico's west coast. Some days later, he and some acquaintances extracted objects from the site and stored them in a nearby restaurant. The assemblage of artifacts recovered included, among other items, pins, scissors, ordnance, pewter ware, woodworking tools, a myriad of concretions and a nautical astrolabe. It is from the last that the wreck site took its name. The operation continued for months until local authorities, alerted by a member of the salvage group, issued a cease and desist order. At that point, the whole affair entered a legal process that on the summer of 2005 had not reached its conclusion. The purpose of this thesis is twofold. First, the author presents the story of the shipwreck from the moment it was found until the court ruled regarding ownership of the artifacts. Since this was the first time ownership of a shipwreck was debated in Puerto Rican courts in recent history, this gives the reader an idea of how legal precedence was established concerning the island's submerged cultural resources. Second, based on what was popularly perceived to be the site's most remarkable find, a study was developed on the sea or mariner's astrolabe, a navigation instrument that played a fundamental role in the process of European maritime expansion during the late fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The reader of this text will learn that, during the fifteenth century, Portuguese navigators saw the need to gradually depart from the traditional Mediterranean navigation technique known as "dead reckoning." As their explorations along the West African coast forced them to sail far into the Atlantic Ocean for prolonged periods, a new method was developed that consisted of measuring the angle of certain heavenly bodies above the horizon in order to determine the latitude of the observer with reasonable precision. For this purpose, instruments that traditionally belonged to the field of astronomy were adapted to be used by seamen. Among them was the astrolabe, which became the most popular by the turn of the sixteenth century. After discussing the instrument's origin and development, the author analyzes how a renewed interest on the nautical astrolabe, which emerged in Portugal in the early twentieth century, introduced the instrument to the field of modern scholarly research. This work also presents a catalogue of sixteen sea astrolabes, some of which have never been published. The catalogue shows statistics and other relevant information, while placing the artifacts in the context of the previously existing data.