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This dissertation is a cultural-historical reading of the text entitled Las Mercedes y La Escala Mistica written by Isabel Flores de Oliva, later canonized as Santa Rosa de Lima. The purpose of the present study is to analyze her iconolexic discourse as a unique type of mystic text within the realm of colonial Latin American feminine Literature. The first chapter describes, simultaneously, the discursive masculine tradition in the New World immediately following the Conquest, and the lack of discursive and written testimonies of women of the same era. Furthermore, we approach Santa Rosa's work with the help of Walter Mignolo's theory about colonial semiosis and its applicability to pictorical, oral and other cultural discourses. The second chapter centers its study on the socio-historical elements that surrounded Rosa at the time of her life and all those ideological and cultural variables that shaped her, allowing her to become the most venerated and beloved saint in the Americas. The third chapter focuses on the critical and analytical study of Santa Rosa's Mercedes and Escala Mistica. It shows the kind of strategies and conventions that the Saint employed in her texts. The dissertation concludes by desmitifying erroneous ideas about the saint, and demonstrating the fact that Santa Rosa was indeed the first mystic writer of colonial Peru and why she should be studied as such.

This study examines caste paintings, an art form unique to eighteenth century colonial Mexico. Hundreds of caste paintings were produced, following a compositional template that remained fairly uniform throughout the century. The distinguishing characteristic of these images is their depiction and labeling of Mexico's racially mixed population. A broad discussion of the caste genre places these works in the context of hierarchical colonial society. Focus is on select images by prominent Mexican artist Miguel Cabrera, and the changes Cabrera brings to the caste template. This study places particular emphasis on the women of Cabrera's first two caste paintings, using examples from portraiture and other art forms for contrast. The noble cacique Indian woman of the first image is used as a way to highlight and explore representation of the European and Indian cultures that comprised the major dichotomy of New Spain's social organization.

This study presents a historical survey of Protestantism in Ecuador from 1895 to the 1980s. Topics discussed include the reasons for Protestant growth; the connection of evangelization to political struggle; identity, achievements, and limitations of several Protestant groups; and the Ecuadorean reaction. Among the important groups studied are the Gospel Missionary Union, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Methodist Episcopal Church, HCJB Radio, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and World Vision. Also analyzed is the Pentecostal movement which became increasingly important after the Cuban Revolution in 1959. / For many Ecuadoreans, the influx of Protestants, primarily fundamentalists from the United States, was an alarming threat to the prevailing culture and tradition. This was particularly true for the Catholic church and indigenous peoples. Most relevant was the role Protestants played in the removal of lowland Indians from their traditional territories. In that case, Protestants worked hand in hand with the Ecuadorean government and multinational corporations to open those lands for petroleum exploitation. / The Catholic church and indigenous peoples responded in various ways to Protestant evangelization. For the Church "Liberation Theology" became increasingly important as a counter to the Protestants. Indigenous groups responded by establishing a unifying Indian confederation. Indigenous groups also linked the Protestant influx to five hundred years of foreign conquest and colonization. / This study uses Ecuador to illustrate how Protestantism made inroads in Latin America over the last one hundred years. Protestantism expanded by connecting itself to political, social, and economic development. As the Ecuadorean case demonstrates, Protestantism filled the void which stemmed from weaknesses within the Catholic church. Protestantism also took advantage of social distress resulting from poverty, foreign debt, increased landlessness, and political crisis. It provided much worthwhile education, health care, communications, and disaster relief. However, there was a cost for many Ecuadoreans in the relinquishing of national sovereignty and traditional ways of life. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 51-05, Section: A, page: 1739. / Major Professor: Darrell E. Levi. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1990.

In the 1920s a new generation of Cuban artists broke with the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Alejandro (Academy of San Alejandro) in Havana, and initiated a movement which adapted modern European art and theories to the artistic interpretation of their native land. This study focuses on the work of the so-called vanguardia (vanguard) artists and on their synthesis of modernism and nationalism to affirm a sense of personal and collective identity. / The first part of the dissertation introduces the artists, defines their period of activity (1920s-1940s), and reviews the state of research on early modern Cuban painting. A review of the literature reveals that critics and art historians have emphasized the influence of the School of Paris on the vanguardia painters' styles, and the impact of Cuba's natural and cultural environment on their subject matter. However, the all important relationship between modernism and nationalism in modern Cuban art has not been fully addressed. Moreover, recent interest in the vanguardia painters has concentrated on the work of the individual artists, at the expense of examining their collective contribution to Cuban art and culture. / The main body of the dissertation analyzes the relationship between the art of the vanguardia painters, European modernism, and Cuban nationalism in the second quarter of the twentieth-century. It explores such a relationship in the context of Cuban history and culture, generational ideology, and artists' biographies. The study concludes that the vanguardia painters consciously re-casted and/or invented lasting, if mythical, symbols of national ethos. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-03, Section: A, page: 0648. / Major Professor: Robert Hobbs. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

<p>On 23 January 1958, Marcos Pérez Jiménez was ousted in a "democratic revolution" whose emblematic images featured a vast public housing project built by the dictator in the heart of in downtown Caracas, next to the Presidential Palace, Ministry of Defense, and Congress. Officially named "2 December" to memorialize the coup that consolidated his rule, the neighborhood and its residents suffered harshly was renamed the "23 January" (23 de enero) in honor of the 1958 revolution. This study investigates the relationship between this parish and the Venezuelan democratic system that would, over the following decades, be praised for its stability and was believed to have made the urban popular sectors dependent on party and state. This study disrupts such an interpretation by exploring how oppositional politics, forms of street protest, and voting combined to produce evolving understandings of political participation and legitimate contestation. </p><p>Three key moments anchor the story told in this dissertation: the transition to electoral democracy during the 1958 revolution and its aftermath; the late 1970s and early 1980s period of structural crisis that lead to dramatic seizures of public vehicles; and the 1989 Caracazo massacre in which Venezuela's newly elected President shocked the nation by ending the country's largest urban protest with a massacre that killed hundreds. The dissertation ends with reflections on the continuity of in political and protest behavior in el 23 under former military rebel Hugo Chávez who was elected to the presidency in 1998. While the urban popular sectors' are depicted by some as having been awoken to national politics under Chavez, this study establishes powerful continuities going back to 1958 in this stronghold of Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution."</p><p>A comprehensive and systematic canvas of thirty years' of newspaper and periodical sources on el 23 provides a firm foundation for the narrative. It also draws on primary sources from the Banco Obrero, the US National Archives, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, while making extensive use of polling data and electoral statistics from 1958 to 1989. This archival work allowed for the success of extensive oral histories and ethnographic observation carried out in the 23 de enero over ten months between 2004 and 2005.</p> / Dissertation