This study investigates the imbrications and porosity between journalism and narrative fiction in Latin America. It examines how three journalist-writers, Afonso de Lima Barreto (Brazil), José Marín Cañas (Costa Rica) and Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) write in a fluid double-sided process of textual creation during the twentieth century. In their journalistic production, these writers include characters or situations that are false or imagined and, at the same time, while working in newspapers, write novels based on their journalistic reports. This discursive dialogism results in works with different degrees of hybridity that relativize the argument of those who see rigid boundaries between journalism and literature in Latin America. The literary figure of the journalist-writer, who produces narrative fiction while simultaneously working full-time for newspapers, magazines and news services, is a deeply rooted tradition in Latin American letters. In this study, special attention is given to the complex deployment of reference, hyperbole, deception and lying. During the twentieth century, when Latin American newspapers wanted to appear less political and more commercial to their readers, the journalist-writers continually masked their political views under the cloak of a fact-oriented journalistic discourse. This dissertation analyzes genre borders and develops concepts like "favela de las letras" ("Favela" in contradistinction to the Republic of Letters) and "diarismo magico" ("magical journalism"). The dissertation also examines the conundrums of verisimilitude raised by the imbrication of journalism and literature referred to above. The notion "magical journalism," which echoes "magical realism" yet structurally is more akin to the ambivalence that Tzvetan Todorov detects in the fantastic, produces its effect by the doubt that arises from the tangle of two principles of decoding: the realist, naturalist one that is expected of journalism and the preternatural. The latter is not the realm of the supernatural, as in marvelous verisimilitude, but ensues from apparently immeasurable political power, which in the texts of these writers is presented not only in a realist mode but coded through literary devices like allusion, allegory, hyperbole. In this way, the texts both refer to a concrete reality and simultaneously register it in a literary mode that produces astonishment, consternation and a range of effects of verisimilitude. / Romance Languages and Literatures

This thesis explores the role played by Welsh-language newspapers in y Wladfa (the Welsh settlement in Argentine Patagonia) from its inception in 1865 until 1933. The newspapers are analysed to assess in which manner they contributed to creating and maintaining a particular kind of Welsh identity whose preservation was the founding principle of the Patagonian settlement, and how that particular sense of Welshness evolved through time. The various publications produced by the Welsh in Patagonia will also be used to identify whether there were any challenges from within the Welsh community to the values, culture and identity that the newspapers promoted. Of special interest is analysing the interaction of the Welsh settlers with the Argentine Central Government and its representatives in the Chubut Territory. The reactions of Welsh-Patagonian newspapers to the complexities of the socio-political and cultural changes that Argentina underwent towards the end of the nineteenth century until the 1930s will be identified in order to understand how the Welsh experience in Patagonia fits in with the designs of the Government to effectively incorporate the Patagonian region into the fold of the Republic, and how the nationalistic policies of the Argentine Government impacted on the Welsh community and its press. This thesis also looks at how the Welsh-Patagonian newspapers interacted with an international network of Welsh-language publications from a distant corner of Patagonia. This research thesis intends to be a contribution to the studies of the ethnic press, studies of the experiences of the Welsh overseas, and studies in the field of immigration and ethnic communities in Argentina –more specifically in the context of the Patagonian region.

Chile allowed therapeutic abortion (cases in which the mother’s life was in danger) from 1931 until 1989, the last year of the Pinochet military dictatorship. After Pinochet stepped down, Chile underwent a democratic transition in 1990 that was heavily reliant on a moral fundamentalist mentality, primarily influenced by the Catholic Church and conservative political parties. It has been widely argued that after the democratic transition, the previously strong and united women’s movement lost much of its visibility and cohesiveness due to its progressive fragmentation. This thesis holds that the women’s movement in Chile is not dead, but instead there are numerous small movements that apply different methods in an attempt to change abortion legislation in Chile. Through the dissemination of secondary research and first-person interviews conducted over a period of six months in Chile, the results show that Chilean third-wave feminists have re-shaped the women’s movement in an effort to introduce innovative ideas and tactics to advance abortion rights. Nonetheless, these new voices have also created tensions between new and old feminists further dividing the movement and limiting their ability to effect real change in regards to the abortion debate in Chile.

El presente volumen de la "Pluralidad de Discursos" abarca una vasta gama temática entroncada en temas propiamente teatrales como la espectacularidad, la teatralidad, la escenificación, pero a la vez ubicada en parámetros de la teoría de la cultura, particularmente de la postmoderna y postcolonial. Dentro de este marco epistemológico resalta el trato de fenómenos como aquellos de la hibridez, alteridad, identidad y del género, de aspectos mediales, históricos, políticos, antropológicos y transculturales. Además, el término "teatralidad" se configura como punto central en todas las publicaciones.

Mein Thema – zu dem ich heute nur einige wenige Überlegungen anstellen und eine Reihe von Fragen formulieren möchte – hat erstens mit dem Versuch zu tun, den in der postkolonialen Debatte bis heute zentralen und weitverbreiteten Begriff der Hybridität zeitlich zu entgrenzen und diesen somit zu historisieren, um aus bestehenden Polarisierungen innerhalb der Chronikforschung herauszukommen und neue Perspektiven zu eröffnen. Ich betrachte die von mir im Rahmen der Sektion "Hybriditätsdiskurse in Lateinamerika: Von der Eroberung bis zum 21. Jahrhundert" auf dem 14. Deutschen Hispanistentag (6.-9. März 2003 in Regensburg) vorgeschlagene und mittlerweile auf breite Zustimmung gestoßene zeitliche Entgrenzung und Historisierung der Hybridität deshalb als einen zentralen Aspekt, weil gleich zu Beginn von Entdeckung und Eroberung eine neue Konstruktion des Fremden und des Eigenen bzw. der Andersheit begann, die bisher mehr oder weniger – mit Ausnahme von Todorov – nur am Rande oder gar nicht beschrieben worden ist, insofern das Faktische (die Zerstörung der amerikanischen Kulturen) alles andere überdeckte.

In this thesis I relate the work of both Arendt and Habermas concerning the public sphere to Moscovici's theory of social representations. I propose a distinction between social representations in and of the public sphere to show that (i) social representations are forms of symbolic mediation firmly grounded in the public sphere, and (ii) public life plays a constituent role in the development of representations and symbols. Drawing on Winnicott's concept of potential space, I show that the constitution of social representations and public life rests neither upon the individual nor upon society, but upon those spaces of mediation that link and separate them at the same time. The concept of public sphere is operationalised along two dimensions: the space of the streets and the arena of politics. The research comprises three empirical studies: (i) content analyses of the Brazilian press, (ii) focus groups with street children, taxi drivers, policemen, professionals, students and manual workers, and (iii) narrative interviews with Brazilian parliamentarians about the impeachment of the former president. The roles of the media, of conversation and of narratives in the shaping of both social representations and public life guide the analyses. The findings suggest that the blurred character of the relationship between self and other in Brazil lies at the very heart of social representations of public life. Threat and fear on the streets and corruption in political life are anchored in older metaphors of corrupt blood and a contaminated, ill, social body. The results suggest that the workings of social representations are inseparable both from the historical features of the society in which they develop and from the processes whereby a community struggles to maintain an identity, a sense of belonging and a location in the world.

Financial dollarization, defined as the substantial presence of foreign currency denominated assets and liabilities in the balance sheets of the main sectors of an economy, is a widespread phenomenon among developing economies, especially in Latin America and Turkey. Since financial dollarization often causes financial fragility and limits the effectiveness of monetary policy, the causes and consequences of it and dedollarization strategies have been placed at the forefront of policy debates especially in developing countries. The purpose of this study is to analyse the determinants of corporate sector asset and liability dollarization in ten Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela) and Turkey for the period 1990-2001. To this end, this study considers the effects of monetary policy stance (exchange rate flexibility and adoption of a de facto inflation targeting regime), institutional structure (governance) and macroeconomic stance variables (volatilities of inflation and real effective exchange rates) on financial dollarization. The results based on panel data estimations suggest that high and volatile inflation and depreciation of domestic currency induce a switch to dollar denominated assets and liabilities. Furthermore, exchange rate regime flexibility appears to reduce liability dollarization and encourage asset dollarization. Finally, the empirical analysis supports the hypothesis that adoption of inflation targeting regime and strengthening the institutional structure are significant in decreasing the level of financial dollarization.

The global financial crisis has been catalogued as one of the worst economical recessions since the Great Depression in 1930’s. The history in Latin America has shown that the region has been turbulent in respect of economic crisis. They were three main channels, which are divided in contagion and/or interdepended to Latin America; first the remittances saw a drop, the smallest countries like the Central Americans countries were the most affected by this channel. The second channel was in the export with the freeze in the international trade market. And the third channel was the financial shock with global finances and credit constraint. For the seven biggest economies; Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela; the second and third channel were the ones that most affected them. There is not proof that within the region toxic assets were acquired; this is the main raison that we have take macroeconomics variables to measure the impact of the crisis. Thanks to the propitious economic circumstances in the past years made Latin American countries had a great economic growth, this helped them to grow their international reserves and have a healthier fiscal system. Those two tools were fundamental to fight against the crisis with counter cyclical policies. Also most of the countries have started to diversify they exports to other regions, focusing more in Asia especially the gigantic Republic Peoples of China. Some countries apply this strategy more aggressively than others, and as a result they bounced back quicker than other countries. It has been said, that this kind of economic depressions only happens once every one hundred years. Latin America suffered as the entire world did, but they were better prepare and their strategies worked to reactivate their local economies. Some countries have been economically performing better and have kept their inflation and unemployment rates at the same level as before the crisis started.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 183-196).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Queen's University (Kingston, Ont.), 1992. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 412-424).