North American railways were crucial to the integration of national territories from the mid-1850s through the 1920s. In the US, Canada, and Mexico, their development supported population settlement, resource extraction, industrialization, and the expansion of markets to regional and national spatial scales. From the 1920s, rail's dominance in transportation declined as highways and trucking developed. Strict railway regulation and direct government ownership, motivated by earlier rail firm abuses, limited railways' strategic adjustment to trucking competition and aggravated the problems of falling revenue and decreasing profitability. From the 1970s, however, a dramatic shift began as three prongs of economic liberalization were implemented: deregulation of the industry, privatization of state-owned firms, and the liberalization of controls on foreign direct investment. This dissertation characterizes the liberalized governance regimes that have emerged, evaluates changes in the industrial and geographic organization of the freight rail industry, and examines significant episodes of regional rail restructuring involving the dominant Class I firms. Shifts in governance are examined by outlining pre-reform regulatory regimes in the US, Canada, and Mexico, then discussing the step-wise sequence of changes enacted in each country that significantly reduced restrictions on freight rail firms' business options (Chapter III). Liberalized governance enabled changes in the industry's organization, including its firm-size distribution, privatization of state-owned firms, and consolidation, as firms employed hitherto restricted strategies to restructure their assets and activities (Chapters III and IV). Case studies of regional restructuring, designed to highlight the interplay of regulatory governance, intra-industry competition, and firm strategies, include: the consolidation of firms in the Eastern US and the privatization of Conrail (Chapter V); the consolidation of firms in the Western US and the impact of increased rail container traffic on infrastructure and operations (Chapter VI); the expansion of freight rail ownership, investment, and traffic patterns integrating the NAFTA countries (Chapter VII); and comparison of the strategies adopted by CPR and CN, the dominant Canadian firms (Chapter VIII). Research materials included official and trade organization statistics, corporate reports, the trade press, and mapping datasets of rail lines. Numerous maps illustrate the changing geography of the North American freight rail industry.

The U.S. Customs Border Patrol reported a total of 67,339 children crossed the Mexican border illegally into the Unites States in the 2014 fiscal year. The Office of Refugee Resettlement found 34% came from Honduras, 32% from Guatemala and 29% from El Salvador. The United States has been strained with the task of finding, providing and funding adequate housing, health care and education amongst other things for these minors while they wait for court immigration proceedings. The purpose of this research was to explore the barriers social and human service agencies face in finding a safe, stable and nurturing environment for Central American unaccompanied undocumented minors in the United States. A qualitative method to understand the phenomenon was taken. This study revealed six common themes: 1) barriers in providing a safe, stable and nurturing environment was lack of the English language in the children and stigma surrounding immigration 2) barriers in education were lack of English language, financial situation and lack of transcripts or history of the child’s educational background, 3) barriers in health care was the limited access to health care 4) barriers in housing were crowded living situation, lack of affordable housing and placement in foster care, 5) barriers in language were the child’s limited knowledge of the English language, lack of bilingual providers, lack of educational material in Spanish, child’s limited knowledge of Spanish language, 6) other barriers not inquired about were the participants lack of knowledge of available resources for the children and the child’s immigration status.

Studies of political parties in Latin America have often been descriptive and not directed to link a theoretical foundation about political parties with qualitative or quantitative empiricism. This was in part because parties in the region were usually perceived as rather unimportant in the political arena. This study attempts to correct this often unjustified proposition by focusing on the development of political parties in five Central American countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The analysis focuses particularly on the relationship between party fragmentation, party polarization, the level of democracy, and socio-economic modernization. The quantitative analysis uses a cross-national longitudinal research design and tries to overcome shortcomings in prior descriptive approaches based on case studies. The overall findings show that party fragmentation and party polarization are positively related to the level of democracy in Central America.

Since World War II the five historic Central American nations, Costa Rica, EI Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, underwent a period of aggregate economic growth which was followed by a collapse of dramatic proportions. All five countries experienced an economic downturn in the latter 1970s which led to several years of declining GDP and GDP per capita, together with an economic and social disarray which is typically referred to as "la crisis" in Central American literature. The intent of this study is to present an argument for the position that the economic collapse of the five Central American nations was due in considerable part to their failure to pursue economic development in a manner which would generate sustainable increase. Based on a conception of modern economic growth and the statistical studies of Simon Kuznets and others since the 1940s, a set of indicators was selected for the purpose of clarifying the structural transformation referred to as economic development. This formulation of economic development was then used to distinguish the process from the simple aggregate expansion known as economic growth. The economic development indicators were also applied to the statistical records of two east Asian economies which were comparable in many respects to the Central American nations shortly after World War II. Both Taiwan and South Korea, like the nations of Central America, emerged from the 1940s as dominantly agricultural, dualistic, importers of manufactured consumer goods. The study begins with an examination of the growth versus development issue in economic theory, proceeds to discussion of the historical record of the two sets of nations, consideration of the indicators, evaluation of the data, and conclusions based on the data. The development indicators clearly distinguish the records of the Central American nations from those of the east Asians. Whereas both Taiwan and South Korea illustrate the expectations of structural transformation in economic development as defined by Simon Kuznets, the Central American nations obviously do not. Conclusions are drawn that the policies which were followed by the two east Asian nations generated the complex structural transformation which characterizes an industrialized economy. The strictly market driven policies of Central America, on the other hand, generated simple aggregate growth for a number of years without a change in the structure of the economy. The study presents evidence that the Central American nations avoided structural change during the post-World War II period in anticipation of receiving the benefits of growth without undergoing the costs of a change in structure. Such a change in structure would have required reorganization of long-standing historic patterns of national social, economic and political interaction.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the relationship between educational attitudes and certain background features of Native Americans, in particular, where they were raised and what type of school they attended. The sample used consisted of 120 completed mail out-mail back surveys that were used primarily as a Needs Assessment for the Portland Indian Health clinic. The sample was randomly selected from the Portland Indian Health Clinic client/patient mailing list. The findings of this thesis indicate that the attitudes of Native Americans toward education in general are positive. The findings also indicate that older Native Americans who experienced being sent to a B.I.A. boarding school off the reservation have the least positive attitudes towards Indian Education programs. Implications and recommendation for further research are discussed.

acase@tulane.edu / La presente investigación analiza la literatura salvadoreña y guatemalteca escrita tras el fin de las recientes guerras civiles (1980-1992 y 1960-1996 respectivamente). Comenzando desde un análisis literario, esta tesis buscar desarrollar una reflexión política sobre la llamada postguerra. En pocas palabras, esta investigación explora cómo el trabajo del duelo y las nociones de comunidad se han articulado en la narrativa reciente, particularmente en el trabajo de las salvadoreñas Claudia Hernández y Vanessa Núñez Handal, y en los guatemaltecos Denise Phé-Funchal, Javier Payeras y Eduardo Halfon. Mi hipótesis es que la narrativa centroamericana contemporánea utiliza el trabajo del duelo inacabado como una forma de exigir justicia por los crímenes cometidos por el estado. Así, propongo que esta literatura desarticula el concepto de comunidad nacional como el principal espacio de inscripción política y critica el proyecto liberal que ha dominado a ambos países desde la fundación de las repúblicas en el siglo XIX. / 1 / Ignacio Sarmiento Panez

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