Browsing by Subject "Puerto Rico"
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Item An experience construct: San Juan, Puerto Rico([unknown]) Gardner, Richard L.Item Cuerpos resonantes : sonidos y voces en la poesía del Caribe y el Cono Sur 1930-1980(2016-05) Staig Limidoro, James Christian; Cárcamo-Huechante, Luis E.; Arroyo, Jossianna; Borge, Jason; Robbins, JillIn the present research I approach the sonic materiality in the works of poets of the 20th Century from Chile, Argentina, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. I analize the works of Gabriela Mistral (1889–1957), Nicolás Guillén (1902–1989), Néstor Perlongher (1949–1992) and Pedro Pietri (1944–2004); all of them presenting particular approaches to the production, consumption, and representation of sound through poetry. This research works with notions of sound studies, performance, animal, sex-gender, and cultural studies, to explore the different forms in which these authors use sound as part of a poetic-politic of the spoken word. I explore also how in their uses of sound they problematize notions of cultural identity, political revolution, nation building, censorship and belonging. In the present study I propose that these four poets—Mistral, Guillén, Perlongher, and Pietri—use their sound production as a tool for a political and aesthetic exercise that materializes notions of identity, agency, and belonging. Also, I claim that each poet presents a sonic conscience, bot in the production of sound and hearing.; that is, from their behalf there is a performatic notion of their work as sound and voice. This allows them to explore topics of gender, race, politics, diasporas, and aesthetics that amplify their “resonance” no only in writing but also in the sono-sphere of language and body. Thus, I explore the recording of their voices and performances as archives in which is possible to practice a critical, material, and bodily listening. Together with that, on methodological terms, I propose mi own reading as part of a escucha profunda, in dialog with the elaborations of close listening by Charles Bernstein and an attention to the effects of “resound” (Jean-Luc Nancy) that leads the poetic phenomenon in a sense level, physical experience and perception (Don Idhe).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 Digitizing ethnonational identities : multimediatic representations of Puerto Rican soldiers(2012-05) Avilés Santiago, Manuel Gerardo; Kumar, Shanti; Mallapragada, Madhavi; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Rivero, Yeidy; Fuller, JenifferThe silence and invisibility of Puerto Rican soldiers in fictional and non-fictional representations of U.S. Wars has motivated me to look for alternative spaces in which these unaccounted voices and images are currently being produced, stored, circulated, and memorialized. Within this framework, my dissertation explores the self-representation of Puerto Rican servicemen and women in social networking sites (SNS), (i.e. as MySpace and Facebook), in user-generated content (UGC) platforms, (i.e. YouTube), and also in web memorials. I am interested in understanding how Puerto Rican soldiers self-represent their ethnonational identity online within the overlapping of second-class citizenship. The theoretical framework proposed for this research will apply theories such as 1) articulation; 2) the notion of contact zone; and 3) colonial/racial subjectivities. To complete this goal, my research method draws on online ethnography, textual, and critical discourse analysis. Firstly, I will discuss the limited repertoire of images of Puerto Rican soldiers in TV and film. My argument is that, besides the massive omission of this history, the images and motifs that do escape de facto social censorship will be in conversation with the self-representations. The second chapter is the result of four years of the process of online ethnography on which I analyze the instances of self-representation of Puerto Rican soldiers in SNS. My interest was seeing how those spaces were inflected by an ethnonational subjectivity. The third chapter explores the ways Puerto Rican soldiers, embedded in mash-up cultures, uses UGCs platforms to upload videos that transform the soldiers from passive consumers of images to active producers of content, which tend to disrupt dominant narratives of power. The last chapter explores the emergence of web memorials dedicated to the Puerto Rican soldiers. My main argument is that these instances of self- representation in online spaces are in conversation with the moments of silences and misrepresentations of Puerto Rican soldiers in traditional media, but also have become acts of enunciation in which the particular Puerto Ricanness of the Puerto Rican soldier is affirmed within complex, layered histories of imperialism, racism, heterosexism, and second-class citizenship.Item Distances and proximities : Havana and San Juan from the point of view of literature and oral histories(2015-05) Mercado Diaz, Mario Edgardo; Salgado, César Augusto; Merabet, Sofian, 1972-Cuba y Puerto Rico have for long been considered sister islands, fighting together against the influences of the Spanish Empire and the United States. The decade of the 1950s, however, proved to be the splitting point for both islands, sending them into very different trajectories of development. In their shared experience of Spanish colonization and USA interventions, how do San Juan and Havana residents perceive and use space today in their particular socio-political contexts and how does this affect the resident's sense of citizenship? I closely engage with the different urban spaces using ethnographic data and photographs taken during my recent fieldwork, creative texts describing said spaces and case studies examining the formation of racial, gender and class identities. Focusing on a specific place on the Malecón, Havana's iconic esplanade, I examine how practices of leisure, intimacy (e.g. erotic homosexual and heterosexual encounters), and self-expression challenge the revolutionary rhetoric of "sameness" (i.e. absence of race, class, crime or gender violence). As for San Juan, I dissect the layers of significance in public visual representation, as exemplified in the artwork painted over an abandoned house in Santurce, the site for queer, artistic and marginal expression. The scene, two black women drinking on the porch, rescues a sense of citizenship lost to the class and racial polarization, fragmentation, and the "ruination" of San Juan. Finally, I argue that an archipelagic city, composed of the descriptions of specific places in different cities, has been created in the sea, a space of crossing, endurance and death, within these inter-capillary exchanges of people, cultures and habits. This archipelagic city, not spoken about directly but referenced semantically, aids in the construction of trans-national identities and perspectives, specific perceptions on time and space, and the production of media and cultural forms of expression. My goal is to tie together these narrative strands linking trans-oceanic places into an urban map surpassing its own geographical context.Item El lamento borincano : Puerto Rico, the United States and 100 years of "unjust and unintelligent" policies(2007-05) Jimenez, Monica Alexandra; Levinson, Sanford, 1941-The United States took possession of Puerto Rico in 1898 with the end of the Spanish American war. Since that time, U.S. policies toward the island have been predicated on notions of race and the other and on confused interpretations of Constitutional and federal law. This work attempts to provide a broad legal and historical examination of the United States-Puerto Rico relationship and to flesh out some of the inherent confusion and lacunae left by U.S. court decisions. The later part of the work focuses on the applicability of the federal death penalty on the island as a case study of problems that arise when United States federal law is applied to Puerto Rico in the face of a Puerto Rico constitutional ban.Item Farming and resistance : survival strategies of smallholder farmers in Puerto Rico(2014-12) Avilés-Vázquez, Katia Raquel; Knapp, Gregory W.; Doolittle, William; Butzer, Karl; Torres, Rebecca; Carro-Figueroa, VivianAgriculture in Puerto Rico has declined sharply since industrialization of the island in the early part of the 20th Century. Rural towns withered as people migrated to the cities, and the landscape was transformed with forested areas increasing as agricultural land decreased. Reduction in the farming population and loss of agricultural lands in concert with increases in forested areas has led to a discourse that agriculture is a thing of the past and antagonistic to economic progress. This dissertation draws from cultural and political ecology, as well as critical ethnography and rural sociology, to analyze the present-day status of small holder farmers in Puerto Rico and ascertain some of the production strategies and tactics utilized by these farmers. I worked with agricultural organizations in order to determine the networks and adaptations that farmers employ in adapting to an increasingly difficult socioeconomic environment. The greatest threats to these smallholder farmers are a lack of access to land, loss of community networks and knowledge, and one size fits all policies designed for larger land holdings and based on antiquated economic systems that depend on “cheap”, heavily subsidized labor. To survive, small-scale farmers have: (1) redistributed their social capital, (2) diversified both the use of their farms and household income, (3) expanded the geographic reach of their networks using tools such as the internet, and (4) created new marketing chains to access consumers directly. On the landscape, smallholder farmers are intensifying their use of small plots of land while leaving larger tracts in reserve. I use the findings and observations of this research to present recommendations for breaking out of the cycle of subsistence poverty. Finally, just as small-scale farmers are adapting the ways they interact among themselves and with the land, the findings of this study suggest that the way farmers are viewed and defined must be reconsidered in order to create policies that serve the agricultural sector.Item La subjetividad femenina y la modernidad en Puerto Rico y Brasil (siglos XIX y XX)(2013-05) López, Juan Carlos, active 2013; Arroyo-Martínez, JossiannaMy dissertation, Feminine Subjectivity and Discourses of Modernity in Puerto Rico and Brazil (19th and 20th century), explores the construction of modern feminine subjectivities during the social, cultural and industrial modernization of Puerto Rico and Brazil throughout the 19th century. With this investigation I analyze, from the perspective of gender studies and recent analyses of modernity, the construction of the idea of "woman" that derived from marginal discourses focused on notions of progress. For this purpose, I will analyze the works of the following writers from Puerto Rico: Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1826-1882) and Ana Roqué de Duprey (1853-1933), and from Brazil: Joaquim M. Machado de Assis (1839-1908) and Julia Lopes de Almeida (1862-1934). Studying these writers and their literary production, I will be able to contribute to current debates on how modernization generates new forms of feminine subjectivity. Moreover, these new forms rearrange and transform the process of modernization from a feminine perspective. This approach is essential to the understanding of the cultural production of the modern woman within one of the more complex periods of Latin America's history. In the first part of the dissertation, I explore the novels of Tapia y Rivera and Machado de Assis. These writers present different aspects of spiritualism regarding women. With the work of these two male intellectuals, I will focus on how spiritualism influences femininity while simultaneously participating in new economic forms. In the second part, with the novels of Roqué de Duprey and Lopes de Almeida, I study the dynamics between rural and urban zones and how this impacts the configuration of gender. As a result of these processes of modernization, a modern feminine subjectivity emerged, yet it was one that did not necessarily share the new social and cultural ideals of progress. On the contrary, this subjectivity combined traditional cultural patterns with new ones. This contradiction generates different visions of modernity than that proposed by intellectuals and politicians. This shows how, in Puerto Rico and Brazil, the role of women in modernity allows for new interpretations in this period of crisis and national changes.Item Late Quaternary seismic stratigraphy and structure of the western insular shelf margin of Puerto Rico(2006-05) Hanzlík-Valentín, Martín; Mann, Paul, 1956-The modern insular shelf and slope of western Puerto Rico is characterized by reef carbonate and siliciclastic sedimentary environments controlled by the complex interplay of tectonic arching and faulting, vigorous erosion of the elevated island of Puerto Rico, fluvial incision and sedimentation pulses, reef growth, and rapid late Quaternary eustatic sea-level changes. For this study, I interpret 725 km of high-resolution, single-channel seismic lines that were collected over the western insular shelf and slope by the RV Isla Magueyes in 2000 to better understand tectonic, erosional, and eustatic controls on late Quaternary history. The seafloor geology of the western shelf and slope area of Puerto Rico has been well studied and mapped mainly from grab and short cores collected by geoscientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagü̈ez. Because of low tectonic uplift rates from the western coast of Puerto Rico, the onland late Quaternary sedimentary history is not recorded in Quaternary coastal outcrops. The results of my seismic interpretation and correlation with multi-channel seismic data collected in 1972, reveal four main units defined by characteristic stratal reflection terminations and seismic facies. These units include: Unit 1 (basement) - a gently folded and faulted basal section correlated to the Oligocene-early Pleistocene carbonate shelf of Puerto Rico; deeper penetration, industry multi-channel seismic lines show that these rocks are deformed in a broad east-west-trending arch; Unit 2 (lowstand systems tract, LST) - chaotic channel fill deposits filling deep (~ 30 meter) incisions formed during the Last Glacial Maximum about 20 ka; Unit 3 (transgressive system tract, TST) - poorly stratified deposits truncating the top of Unit 2 and deposited during early Holocene transgression of the shelf margin; Unit 4 (highstand system tract, HST) - late Holocene, highly stratified deposits related to aggradation as the Holocene transgression began to slow. The base of unit 4 is a downlap surface interpreted as a maximum flooding surface likely formed about 8 ka. East-northeast-striking faults are observed that offset the late Quaternary units in three separate zones off the west coast of Puerto Rico. Because of a lack of wells and long cores from the shelf and slope area, age estimates for the four units are based on correlations with sea-level curves derived from dated coral samples in the Caribbean and western Atlantic region. All four units are deformed by faulting that should be considered active and possibly hazardous for the rapidly developing west coast of Puerto Rico. In one area, a large, late Holocene-slump (~ 0.016 km³) is mapped using seismic, sidescan sonar and bathymetric data. Onland continuations of these faults are likely, but have not been identified due to cultural overprint of natural scarps on late Quaternary floodplains.Item Patterns of abundance, species richness, habitat use and morphology in tropical terrestrial molluscs: effects of disturbance and elevation(Texas Tech University, 1997-08) Alvarez, JavierSpatial variation resulting from natural disturbances and elevational gradients is of particular importance to the distribution and abundance of organisms that are sessile or of low vagility. This study examined the influence of disturbance, in the form of canopy openness, and elevation on the terrestrial mollusc fauna of the Luquillo Experimental Forest (LEF) of Puerto Rico. Of 14 species of terrestrial molluscs collected in the LEF, only Polvdontes acutanqula and Platvsuccinea portoricensis responded to canopy openness. Moreover, significant responses to canopy openness did not diminish with increasing elevation. This limited response to canopy openness by particular species was reflected in the absence of significant differences in species richness between categories of canopy openness. Nonetheless, significant differences in abundance associated with elevation were detected in all but one species, Alcadia striata. Regardless of elevation, densities of all species of land molluscs, except for Gaeotis niqrolineata were higher in the wet than in the dry season. Mean species richness also increased significantly from the dry to the wet season, peaking at an elevation of 400 m in both seasons. The elevational pattern in species richness of land molluscs appears to be related to changes in temperature. Mean elevational range size increased with elevation. Land molluscs in the LEF, particulahy G. niqrolineata. exhibited a strong affinity for the palm, Prestoea montana. Seasonal and elevational differences in substrate associations of land molluscs also were detected. Finally, the relationship between body size and elevation differed among species of land molluscs. Of those with ranges spanning the entire elevational radient (200 m to 1000 m), most showed a positive relationship between body size and elevation.Item The popular in Puerto Rico : archive and repertoire in the performance of bankarization and the identitarian(2012-05) Corrada, Rosa María; Gordon, Edmund Tayloe; Hale, Charles R.; Ali, Kamran; Arroyo-Martínez, Jossianna; Godreau, Isar P.At the turn of the 19th Century, Puerto Rico, like other places of the world, served as a stage for the inauguration of a new form of organization of capitalism, dominated by finance capital. I name this process: bankarization. During the 19th Century, the bankarization was made visible through the foundation of different banks; among these was Banco Popular de Puerto Rico. This dissertation examines how Banco Popular, founded in 1893, has acted as protagonist in the bankarization of Puerto Rico. It also maps how in Puerto Rico, Banco Popular, together with the government, strategically appropriates the popular/lo popular through its will to performance, thereby producing the state identification effect. This dissertation studies the performance of Banco Popular and its intervention in three stages: 1) the economic elite, from its foundation, the different banking mergers and the construction of the ciudad bancaria. 2) the governmental, by showing how porous is the border between the public-government and the private-bank. 3) the popular, by making visible the different moments of performance that show the formation of the banca-pueblo as an effective mean to make capitalism “popular.” In addition, by paying attention to a television video series by Banco Popular that began in 1965 and serve as a strategy to produce the identification effect. This research combines ethnography and performance analysis to generate a critique about the intervention of capital and the State in the production of the national imaginary and the assumption of a common Puerto Rican subject. It examines the particular proposal about identity and the performative means that Banco Popular chooses in its intervention to produce the identification effect. I propose that Banco Popular validates and promotes Hardt and Negri’s identitarian formula of “love of the same” by referencing the racial mix that silences, homogenizes, harmonizes and banalizes. This scenario serves to promote particular political and economic interests which in turn reproduce social relations of power.Item Preservation of urban design : the story of Paseo de Diego(2006-05) Merheb-Emanuelli, Ely Marie; Long, Christopher (Christopher Alan), 1957-The original design of Paseo de Diego, inaugurated in 1981 as the first full pedestrian mall in Puerto Rico, vanished with the consent of the agencies in charge of historic preservation in the island. Lack of maintenance and other management issues, rather than the architecture itself, led to a revitalization project that erased a vibrant and distinctive example of modernist urban design by a notable Puerto Rican architect in the barrio of Río Piedras, which is currently being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places. The story of Paseo de Diego recounts the mall's development and recent replacement with a redesign that raises serious questions about age, preservation of rich urban layering, and the policies and regulations protecting significant historic urban fabric.Item ¡Saludando al tambor! : el nuevo movimiento de la Bomba puertorriqueña(2015-05) Abadía-Rexach, Bárbara I.; Gordon, Edmund TayloeDrawing upon Critical Race and racialization theories, this dissertation aims at providing a different approach to “The New Puerto Rican Bomba Movement”. Bomba is a musical genre of African roots developed in Puerto Rico upon the arrival of African populations during the slave trade in the sixteenth century. In the last two decades, a proliferation of Bomba groups and schools performing and teaching this peculiar rhythm has taken place. Through the study of Bomba, I seek to contribute to the understanding of racial dynamics in Puerto Rico, and their intersectionalities with class, gender, and national discourses. Through extended participant observation of Bomba performances, unstructured and structured interviews with Bomba musicians, teachers, and scholars and archival research, my purpose is to question and explore constructions of race in Puerto Rican music, and show how processes of racialization operate both socially and politically in the island. In this sense, Bomba will allow me to analyze how Puerto Rican national identity has been constructed in recent years, which elements have been adopted as a national heritage and which have been forgotten or rejected. At the same time, it will shed light on how national discourse aligns or deviates from current social conditions and racial relationships. Through the case study of “The New Puerto Rican Bomba Movement”, I attempt to unravel two interrelated paradoxes: (1) despite hegemonic discourses on Puerto Rican nationalism, which portray the Puerto Rican subject as mixed race, most Puerto Ricans self-identify racially as white or Black. (2) Based on the assumption of a racially mixed national subject, Puerto Rico reaffirms itself as a racial democracy, “The great Puerto Rican family”. This discourse contrasts with daily speeches and practices that emphasize racial exclusions and inequalities. Paradoxically, despite the fact that Puerto Ricans are considered a racially mixed nation, in the 2000 Census, 80.5 % self identified as white, whereas 8 % chose to identify as Black. A decade later, the results of the 2010 Census showed that 12.4 % of the population identified as Black and 75.8 % as white.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.Item Visual Representations of Puerto Rico in Destination Marketing Materials(2012-10-19) Davila Rodriguez, Mary AnnIn the last thirty years, a large number of studies have researched the destination image that visitors, travel industry representatives, students, and general consumers have of tourist destinations. However, few studies have analyzed the perceptions that local residents have of their own countries as tourist destinations. Local residents can provide valuable information about their countries as tourism destinations and can help tourism marketers determine how to represent local culture in more authentic and sustainable ways. Local residents can also provide valuable information about how to improve tourism development based on their experiences living in the area. Residents can further provide information and services to visitors and are themselves an integral part of tourism at a destination. This study focused on understanding how destination marketing portrays the people and places of a destination and how residents perceive the visuals used in destination marketing and promotion. Using a visual qualitative approach, the study analyzed the images of recent promotional campaigns employed by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company. The study then interviewed Puerto Rican residents regarding their attitudes toward tourism development in general and toward the specific imagery used in the campaigns. Overall, residents had rather positive opinions of tourism in Puerto Rico. They also had largely positive attitudes toward the visual imagery used to market the destination. However, they felt the portrayal was incomplete and did not reflect the modern way of Puerto Rican daily life.