Browsing by Subject "Central America"
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Item Burden of the Cold War: The George H.W. Bush Administration and El Salvador(2012-02-14) Arandia, Sebastian ReneAt the start of the George H.W. Bush administration, American involvement in El Salvador?s civil war, one of the last Cold War battlegrounds, had disappeared from the foreign policy agenda. However, two events in November 1989 shattered the bipartisan consensus on US policy toward El Salvador: the failure of the FMLN?s largest military offensive of the war and the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter by the Salvadoran military, the FAES. Despite more than one billion dollars in US military assistance, the war had stalemated, promoting both sides to seek a negotiated political settlement mediated by the United Nations. The Jesuit murders demonstrated the failure of the policy of promoting respect for democracy and human rights and revived the debate in Congress over US aid to El Salvador. This thesis argues that the Bush administration sought to remove the burden of El Salvador from its foreign policy agenda by actively pushing for the investigation and prosecution of the Jesuit case and fully supporting the UN-mediated peace process. Using recently declassified government documents from the George Bush Presidential Library, this thesis will examine how the Bush administration fundamentally changed US policy toward El Salvador. Administration officials carried out an unprecedented campaign to pressure the FAES to investigate the Jesuit murders and bring the killers to justice while simultaneously attempting to prevent Congress from cutting American military assistance. The Bush administration changed the objective of its El Salvador policy from military victory over the guerrillas to a negotiated political settlement. The US facilitated the peace process by pressuring the Salvadoran government and the FMLN to negotiate in good faith and accept compromises. When both sides signed a comprehensive peace agreement on January 16, 1992, the burden of El Salvador was lifted.Item Forced into exile : conflicts of space, gender and identity among young Salvadoran deportees(2015-05) Gutierrez, Miguel Jr.; Rodriguez, Néstor; Roberts, Bryan R., 1939-The focus of this thesis is on male, Salvadoran deportees, aged 20-35, who after spending their formative years in the United States, are faced with the task of reintegrating into Salvadoran society. Overall, Salvadoran males account for 90% of detainees and deportees to El Salvador (UCA, 2015). Through this sample, I explore the experience of young deportees in the growing call-center sector, and explore the consequences of gendered, transnational narratives, and the impact of deportations on their identity. The backdrop for this study is El Salvador's growing call-center industry, as this is the site where I interviewed participants, and one that was continuously framed as a site of criminality by local Salvadorans. The way young deportees maintain bonds with their former communities in the United States, perform their identities, and self-identify can greatly influence the manner in which they interact with Salvadorans in their new society. Consequently, these former aspects can greatly affect how deportees reconstruct their lives in a foreign context.Item Guatemalan diasporic fiction as refugee literature : an analysis of Héctor Tobar’s The tattooed soldier and Tanya Maria Barrientos’s Family resemblance(2014-05) Mills, Regina Marie; González, John MoránDespite a large influx of Guatemalans to cities such as Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., their narrative has largely been subsumed in the traditional Latino/a immigrant narrative. The importance of the historical specificity and traumatic nature of Guatemalan immigration, as a consequence of the Central American revolutions, has only now begun to be studied by scholars such as Arturo Arias and Claudia Milian, though the field of Latino/a studies is still largely focused on immigrants from Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Thus, through an examination of two novels by Guatemalan-American authors, Héctor Tobar’s The Tattooed Soldier (1998/2000) and Tanya Maria Barrientos’ Family Resemblance (2003), I compare how each novel differently positions Guatemalan diasporic identity around traumas surrounding the Guatemalan civil war and diaspora. Ultimately, I argue that Tobar establishes Guatemalan diasporic fiction as a kind of refugee literature, while Barrientos attempts to fit the Guatemalan diasporic narrative into a traditional Latino/a immigrant narrative using the genre of chica lit, thus flattening out the unique historical experience of the Guatemalan civil war while also highlighting the constraints of the chica lit genre for Central American-American women writers.Item Latino children of immigrants : identity formation at the intersection of residency status(2013-12) Godinez Ruiz, Dolores Elizabeth; Palmer, Deborah K.; Urrieta, LuisThis qualitative study addresses the interrelation of residency status, ethnic identity formation and schooling among young children of immigrants from Mexico and Central America in mixed legal status families in Central Texas. Through critical case studies, the researcher worked with Latino children of immigrants and undocumented immigrant mothers. The dissertation examines the following question: What is the interconnection between immigration experiences, residency status, and ethnic identity for children in mixed status families from Mexico and Central America? Informed by identity formation theories, Critical Race Theory, LatCrit theory and Chicana Feminist epistemology, this study shows how undocumented immigrant mothers support the development of an ethnic identity development in their children. A reason to work towards understanding identity formation among children of Latino ancestry is to open a space where their unique experiences are valued just as much as those of mainstream students. Latinos in the United States are not a homogenous group; we have diverse social, cultural, racial, and linguistic backgrounds. Schools and communities have inadvertently overlooked Latino children of immigrants by classifying them with the 1.5 and 2nd generation Mexican American students, but this classification does not acknowledge their unique needs and their particular familial experiences. This study also brings to light the experiences of undocumented immigrant mothers as important to the analysis of the phenomenon of immigration itself. This project is relevant to the growing field of immigration studies, education, educational administration, and anthropology of education, among other fields because it concentrated on young children ages 7-10, what the researcher considered an under researched population. The intention of this research is to disrupt monovocal, discriminatory discourses about Latino immigrants. Preliminary findings suggest the need to reframe Latino children of immigrants as individuals with rich, complex lives composed of different elements such as legal status, English/Spanish languages, immigration experiences/traumas, cultural traditions, and family composition. We need to work at the intersections of these different dimensions of identity and experience as well as to consider how each aspect is relevant for the education of children of immigrants of Latino descent.Item Local believers, foreign missionaries, and the creation of Guatemalan Protestantism, 1882-1944(2012-05) Dove, Stephen Carter; Garrard-Burnett, Virginia, 1957-; Kamil, Neil; Butler, Matthew; Tweed, Thomas; Sullivan-González, DouglassThis dissertation examines how Guatemalan converts transformed missionary Protestantism into a locally contextualized religion in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Using archival materials from local religious groups and public archives in Guatemala alongside missionary documents from the United States, this research identifies how converts adopted certain missionary teachings but reinterpreted or rejected others. This selective application not only altered the definition of Protestantism in Guatemala but also affected the early growth of the movement by creating contextualized forms of Protestantism that attracted more interest than foreign versions. The first section of the dissertation analyzes the theologies and goals that early missionaries brought to Guatemala and explains the intramural conflicts that created the first Protestant communities in the country. Between 1882 and 1921, five North American Protestant denominations and several independent missionaries entered Guatemala, each with particular ideas about how to improve the country both spiritually and materially. This internal diversity provided new converts with the ability to choose between multiple versions of Protestantism, but more importantly it also taught them how to carve out their own space between imported religious ideologies. The second section of the dissertation analyzes how local believers reinterpreted Protestantism within those spaces by pursuing four important areas of innovation: theological primitivism, Pentecostalism, political involvement, and nationalism. Despite protests from many foreign missionaries, between 1920 and 1944 numerous Guatemalan Protestants adopted variations of these four themes in attempts to create a culturally and socially relevant religious product. As new converts opted for these new local communities over missionary-led options, these four themes became defining hallmarks of Guatemalan Protestantism, which by the twenty-first century was practiced by one-third of the country’s population. This dissertation argues that these contextualized challenges to missionary ideas in the early twentieth-century made Protestantism an attractive local product in Guatemala and sparked the movement’s growth. It also demonstrates how poor and working class Guatemalans in the early twentieth century used Protestantism as a tool to participate in national conversations about race, gender, and class.Item Productivity and Quality of Brown Midrib (bmr) Sorghum Varieties to Producers in Central America(2013-05-01) Portillo Rodriguez, Ostilio RolandoThe improved dry matter digestibility of the brown midrib (bmr) sorghum cultivars is attributed to constitutive deficiencies of the lignin biosynthesis pathways which results in lower lignin concentrations. The lower lignin concentrations are expressed only in a homozygous recessive genotypes and it is phenotypically identified by a brown to tan vascular coloration present in the mid-rib of the leaf blades. Utilizing this trait increases forage consumption and productivity of both dairy and beef production. There is a need to extend this trait into more forage production systems, including those in Central America where forages constitute a major portion of the ruminants? diets. To achieve this goal, the bmr12 gene was incorporated via conventional breeding, into 16 lines derived from commonly used Central American sorghum varieties. These experimental lines were tested for agronomic performance during 2010 and 2011 in the Central American region. In addition, grain and biomass composition were estimated using near-infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) whereas the dry biomass digestibility was evaluated using an in vitro approach. The combined analysis indicated the bmr trait increased in vitro dry matter digestibility and reduced acid detergent lignin and acid detergent fiber levels. This combination results in improved sorghum forage quality. Furthermore, negative traits typically associated with bmr mutants such as plant height reduction, delayed flowering, and lodging problems were not observed and the bmr trait had no effect on grain composition. Additionally, post hoc tests identified CI0947bmr as the best experimental line for dry both biomass and grain yield across multiple environments. Stability analysis, identified CI0947bmr as the most stable genotype for both traits. Finally, the ?which-won-where? biplot analysis graphically identified CI0947bmr as the best bmr inbred for Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua across several environments.Item Re-centering Central America : women writers undisplaced(2013-05) Boxwell, Regan Amanda; Arias, Arturo, 1950-"Re-centering Central America: Women Writers Undisplaced" endeavors to unpack and unravel the meaning, genealogy and implications of the US's patriarchal relationship with Central America, formative of a jumble of misconceptions of "otherness" on a global scale. This legacy is mirrored in the region's cultural production. Central American discourse itself has long ignored or marginalized "other" subjectivities. I trace a genealogy of Central American narrative discursivities by women to interrogate questions of female subjectivity and the inadequacy of hegemonic identitary formulations that often elide gender, ethnicity, and other regulatory trajectories in subject-formation. My dissertation is the first project in the US to examine how an undercurrent in which colonially derived social relations underwrite contemporary Central America is interrogated and re-visioned in literature produced by women. I focus on six Central American authors: Yolanda Oreamuno (Costa Rica), Claribel Alegría (El Salvador), Carmen Naranjo (Costa Rica), Rosario Aguilar (Nicaragua), Gloria Guardia (Panamá), and Jacinta Escudos (El Salvador). No systematic study has looked at how literary techniques and representations by these authors articulate a literary counter-statement to the patriarchal legacy informing Central American modernity between 1949 and the present, as well as to traditional formulations of subordinate subjectivities in which norms, rhetorics and assumptions of machismo and social exclusion of women inhabit and still animate the US's understanding of its inhabitants. My dissertation tracks the continuity between these authors' work to establish a problematization of sovereign subjectivity by refiguring the nature of the speech act as in flux, so as to eliminate authoritativeness and open up space for contestatary speech and agency. Judith Butler establishes that agency is achieved when the subordinated subject expropriates the "sovereign conceit" of the speech act, revealing discourses capable of destabilizing and even dismantling the epistemologies of the so-called "sovereign subject." By establishing a broad definition of sovereignty as any identitary construct that presupposes integral subjectivity or that attempts to impose such myths on subordinate subjects, I analyze the implications of these authors' narratives in destabilizing and revealing the farce of sovereign subjectivity.Item Representations of Central Americans in CISPES-sponsored Texts during the Central American peace and solidarity movement(2014-08) Centeno-Meléndez, José Alfredo; Guidotti-Hernández, Nicole MarieThis study examines the representations of Salvadorans and other Central Americans in film, visual, and written texts used by the Dallas chapter of CISPES during the eighties. Drawing from Susan Sontag’s scholarship on the ideological workings of war photography and Elizabeth Barnes’s work on sentimental literature, I show that pamphlets created and distributed by CISPES relied on over-saturated images and written descriptions of state-sanctioned physical violence inflicted on Central Americans in order to generate sympathy for the other. While the representations of Central Americans in CISPES pamphlets as feminized and docile subjects were strategic in showing the oppressive conditions that the U.S. helped fund, these images also overlooked the fact that Central Americans played essential roles in their fight against their countries repressions and U.S. foreign policies. As such, I turn to a medium where Salvadorans had the opportunity to speak out about their own experiences during the U.S.-backed civil war. I analyze the Dutch documentary film El Salvador: Revolution or Death? (1980) and argue that individuals showed their subjectivities and agency even when introduced as victims of state-sanctioned violence. This documentary did not solely rely on over-saturated images of violence on the Central American other—it provided peasants with an international platform to represent themselves, albeit still through a mediated form. In-between harrowing scenes showcasing dead and brutalized bodies were also instances where Salvadorans challenged assumptions of their political ineptness and reminded U.S. residents of their own prominence within the Central American solidarity movement.Item A study of remittances from Central American and Mexican labor migrants in the United States : a family-level approach to economic well-being(2013-08) Held, Mary Lehman; Padilla, Yolanda C.Central America and Mexico are characterized by high levels of poverty. In response, labor migration has emerged as a major strategy among families through the sending of earnings (or remittances) to households back home. Large amounts of remittances are sent, with over $13 billion to Central America and more than $23 billion to Mexico in 2011. While remittances to Mexico have been studied extensively, much less is known about the factors associated with remittances to Central America. This mixed methods study examined remittance sending and use patterns of Mexican and Central American labor migrants to the United States. Data on remittance behaviors were drawn from two major surveys, the Latin American Migration Project and Mexican Migration Project. Quantitative analyses were conducted using multiple regression to examine family-level predictors for the decision to engage in labor migration, whether remittances were sent, amount of remittances sent, and the purposes for remitting. Qualitative analysis involved focus group interviews of Mexican and Central American migrants in the United States who currently remit to their families back home. These interviews helped to discern the meaning of remittances for migrants and their families. The quantitative results suggest that top purposes for remitting include food and daily maintenance, education, health, and housing. Additionally, remittance sending patterns differed by region of origin. Mexican migrants were more likely to send remittances and to remit larger amounts. Additionally, individuals from Mexico had increased odds of sending funds for housing expenditures while Central Americans had greater odds of remitting for education and consumer goods. According to respondents who participated in the qualitative study, increasing costs of food, health, and education coupled with limited employment options contribute to a reliance on labor migration in both regions. For many, remittances have emerged as an essential source of income for economic wellbeing and even survival. A key implication for social work of this study on the larger population patterns on remittances is that at the family level, migrants carry a dual responsibility to settle into a new country while also maintaining the economic wellbeing of family left behind.Item The Post-Dictatorial Thriller Form(2012-07-16) Powell, Audrey BryantThis dissertation proposes a theoretical examination of the Latin American thriller through the framework of post-dictatorial Chile, with a concluding look at the post civil war Central American context. I define the thriller as a loose narrative structure reminiscent of the basic detective story, but that fuses the conventional investigation formula with more sensational elements such as political violence, institutional corruption and State terrorism. Unlike the classic form, in which crime traditionally occurs in the past, the thriller form engages violence as an event ongoing in the present or always lurking on the narrative horizon. The Chilean post-dictatorial and Central American postwar histories contain these precise thriller elements. Throughout the Chilean military dictatorship (1973-1990), the Central American civil wars (1960s-1990s) and the triumph of global capitalism, political violence emerges in diversified and oftentimes subtle ways, demanding new interpretational paradigms for explaining its manifestation in contemporary society. In Chile, however, despite a history ripe with the narrative elements of the thriller, a consistent thriller novelistic tradition remains underdeveloped. My research reveals that contemporary Chilean ? and by extension, Latin American ? fiction continues to be analyzed under the aegis of melancholy and the tragic legacy of dictatorship or revolutionary insurgency. Therefore, a theoretical examination of the post-dictatorial/postwar thriller answers the need to not only move beyond previously established literary and political paradigms toward a more nuanced engagement with the present, but to envision a form of thinking beyond national tragedy and trauma. This dissertation analyzes samples of the post-dictatorial detective narrative and testimonial account, which constitute the mirroring narrative components of the thriller. The detective texts and testimonial writings analyzed in this project demonstrate how the particular use of the detective story and testimonial account mirror one another at every fundamental level, articulating what I am theorizing as the thriller structure. Using the theoretical approximations of John Beverley, Brett Levinson, Alberto Moreiras, Jon Beasley-Murray, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Carl Schmitt and Carlo Galli, this project makes an original inquiry into why the thriller emerges as the most apt narrative framework for exploring the forms of violence in present-day Latin America.Item Undocumented women in the shadows(2015-05) Murguia, Blanca Lucia; Alves, Rosental C.; Timms, EdThe report focuses on the experiences of three undocumented Mexican women who fled to the United States because of political persecution and economic insecurity in their home country. The purpose is to humanize the struggles, persecutions, and dangers that five million undocumented women living in the U.S. face coming from Mexico and Central America. Not only are they escaping countries that offer them little or no protections, their status as undocumented women working in the U.S. makes them vulnerable to exploitation, rape, and economic disparity. They seek a better future, not for themselves, but for their children. But the discord on Immigration Reform, the demand for low-wage labor, and the lack of legal protections in the U.S. keep these women afraid, oppressed, and in hiding.