<p> This dissertation examines how West Indians utilized the conception of black internationalism&mdash;the idea that blacks across the world were part larger global community regardless of country of origin&mdash;to inform and give meaning to their struggles in Panama. West Indians were active participants in Marcus Garvey's international Pan-African organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and joined it in droves. Through participation in the UNIA and a strong belief in Garveyism, West Indians started schools and opened businesses to support the community, all the while envisioning themselves as part of a worldwide community of blacks. The dissertation also discusses how in the 1930s and 1940s black internationalism lost sway among West Indians due to shifting social and political contexts. As second generation West Indians&mdash;those born in Panama&mdash;came of age, they no longer embraced black internationalism. Second generation West Indians (or criollos) sought to integrate into Panamanian society by embracing Spanish and participating in national politics. The main tenets of black internationalism failed to resonant among criollos, who had a more internal and national focus than their parents. Still, race played a large role in criollo efforts to become part of Panamanian society. Criollos embraced their racial heritage and fought for consideration as both Panamanian and black. </p><p> This dissertation also offers the most in-depth look at the West Indian community in Panama to date, and foregrounds their history within the overall history of Panama. West Indians had a major influence on Panamanian history, most notably during the 1930s and 1940s when racist, anti-West Indian political parties and politicians rose to prominence. These politicians, most prominently Arnulfo Arias, pledged to expel West Indians from Panama. This dissertation offers a thorough overview of Panamanian history from 1920 to the 1940s, but it does so using the experience of West Indians as the jumping off point. </p>

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This dissertation analyzes the social function of native art in colonial New Spain through the examination of a genre of maps painted by Indian artists known as Land Grants or Mapas de Mercedes. Land Grant maps constitute the response of the native population to a Spanish land distribution practice implemented in the sixteenth century to allocate the territory among its dwellers in an orderly fashion and prevent the illegal occupation of the land. One remarkable feature this program adopted in New Spain was its strong visual component; the viceroy requested a painted map as part of each lawsuit's evidence. This is unique to the viceroyalty of New Spain and did not happen anywhere else in the Americas. It is reflective of the Indigenous deep-rooted tradition of thinking visually and dealing with everyday matters through the use of painted manuscripts. It was also stimulated by the Spaniard's belief in the truth-value of native pictorials. The result was a vast production of maps of which approximately 700 have survived. Since they were produced for the specific context of land grants and have their own distinctive characteristics, it is possible to say that this was also the birth of a new artistic genre. The present work examines how Indians in the colonial period created these artworks that enabled them to negotiate with the colonizers, defend their rights, and ultimately attain a more favorable position in society. This project demonstrates that the Indians took up this opportunity to design maps that were an essential component of their defense strategy. My research is based on a thorough examination of the originals at the National Archives in Mexico. I combined visual analysis with the transcription and paleography of the case’s files, and a review of primary and secondary historical sources. This interdisciplinary approach enabled me to demonstrate that native artists not only described the contested site in their maps but also translated their own ideas about this space into visual form. My research underscores Indian agency and illustrates how they used Spanish laws to their advantage in preserving their possessions, sometimes to the twenty-first century. / History of Art and Architecture

<p> <i>We Support Our Troops</i> is a series of three mural sized prints in panoramic format. The images can be described as Rochester urban landscapes in which the commercial images of the billboards were replaced with images of Latin American resistance movements. The title is an appropriation of the United States pro-war slogan twisted into the support context of these movements. The prints are made in the contemporary and non-toxic printmaking technique <i>4 Color Inversion Intaglio-Type</i>, developed by Master Printmaker Keith Howard. The Intaglio-Type techniques are the ones in which the photopolymer film ImagOn^&reg; is used. </p><p> A technical and historical approach is used in this written document. Included is a detailed explanation of the process with descriptions of the photographic equipment and software used for the image capture and creation of the landscapes. A step-by-step description of the <i>4 Color Intaglio-Type </i> technique follows, from making the plates physically to the printing process. This technical walkthrough illustrates why this Intaglio-Type technique is the optimum fusion of the digital imagery with traditional printmaking techniques. Also, the description highlights the large format printing difficulties overcome in this research, with new possibilities yet to discover with the Akua Colors^&reg; inks.</p><p> The Latin American resistance movements referenced in this work are: The <i>EZLN</i> (National Zapatista Liberation Army) from Chiapas, Mexico; the <i>APPO</i> (Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca), from Oaxaca, Mexico; the <i>EPB</i> (Popular Boricua Army) or <i> Macheteros</i> from Puerto Rico; and the <i>Piqueteros</i> from Argentina. A historical overview of each of these movements is included. </p><p> Through this thesis I intend to shed light on the economic disparity between the United States and Latin American countries caused by their political relationship. To identify myself with a political movement, rather than to educate or criticize the status quo. In order to effectively make this statement, the images were carefully worked in terms of composition, color and content. These elements included in the large panoramic format are strong enough to entice the viewers to stop, look, enjoy and ultimately reflect on the meaning behind the images.</p>

After providing a survey of related literature and of Protestant antecedents in Colombia during the colonial and early national periods, the dissertation examines the expansion of foreign missions in Colombia during the early twentieth century. The main body of the work describes various aspects of Protestant life after 1930, including life stages, self-image, construction of community, and societal responses. Although many Colombians reacted adversely to Protestants, a general atmosphere of tolerance is evident. Protestants suffered greatly during the mid-century Violence, but not to an unusual extent in comparison to Colombians in general. However, the Protestants' oppositional religious identity and their sense of vulnerability during that period made their psychological experience of the Violence somewhat unusual. Through the end of the twentieth century, Protestantism provided an oppositional space in which many Colombians found a sense of security, empowerment and optimism in the face of tremendous challenges in a violent land.

This dissertation examines the lives of indigenous women in early colonial Peru, residents of the cities of Lima and Trujillo as well as nearby rural regions, between 1532 and 1700. It does so by interweaving two major thematic concerns. On one level, it includes historical investigations, based upon archival records (in particular some two hundred indigenous women's wills from these two cities), into the multiplicity of economic, political and social roles that made up women's daily lives. Their possessions, occupations, values, social networks and strategies for survival are compared, discussed and placed in historical context, without inappropriately generalizing or universalizing their experiences. On another interconnected level, the dissertation examines the hybridity of colonial relations, taking the cultures and institutions of colonial society as fields of contestation and power and investigating them genealogically. By counterpointing chronicles of conquest, notarial documents, and legal and bureaucratic records, the work develops a strategy for reading colonial history that is not predicated upon a neat but false distinction between “European” and “traditional” societies. The contribution of this dissertation is thus not only a rich base of information about colonial women but also the expectation that any such investigation must be creative and open-ended. The five chapters include analyses of the political causes and effects of representations of prehispanic indigenous society in the chronicles of conquest and early histories of Peru; the role of weaving and the development of a gendered division of labor in the colonial economy; urban women's economic roles and networks according to their wills; the cultural significance of their possessions, especially indigenous and European-style clothing; legal and extra-legal strategies regarding property and inheritance; and a genealogy of the “cacica,” indigenous women who held elite office during the colonial period via their claim to continuity with prehispanic political traditions.

This dissertation evaluated the interactional dynamics of emerging social inequality and the economics of basic necessities during the early development of Lowland Maya civilization. Basic necessities, including clothing, shelter, and utilitarian tools, were all affected in some way by the changes in access to and distribution of resources, technology, and information. This study focuses on one specific relationship: that between increasing social inequality and the procurement and distribution of animal resources. This research problem is addressed using faunal remains from the site of Colha in northern Belize. The faunal assemblage (totaling 14,553 bones/bone fragments) was recovered from Preclassic Period (1,000 B.C.-A.D. 250) residential deposits. The 1,250 years represented in the assemblage cover the time when the Maya shifted from small autonomous communities to hierarchically ranked centers, many of which specialized in the production and/or exchange of goods for regional consumption. The faunal data from Colha were evaluated against the changes in social complexity documented for this period. A distinct patterning in the use of faunal resources during the Preclassic was observed. The early settlers of Colha (roughly 1,000-600 B.C.) utilized low-bush terrestrial, wetland, and aquatic species nearly equally. The prominent use of wetland and aquatic resources suggests that wetland agriculture may have been used. The five hundred years that followed saw a gradual shift toward a heavier use of wetland and aquatic resources, probably due to wetter conditions and to the biodegradation caused by land clearing and heavy faunal exploitation. In the Late Preclassic there was a marked change in faunal use, beginning approximately 100 B.C. This includes a heavier reliance on terrestrial species, an increased use of dog for food, and a greater utilization of distant habitats, such as marine and high-forest environments. These changes required modifications in the social aspects of food procurement and distribution, including exchange relationships, and not simply an intensification of past strategies. It is proposed that households could use their elevated status (and accompanying accumulation of wealth and power) to shift from a strategy of direct food procurement to one in which food could be acquired indirectly through exchange and/or tribute.

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Long-time friends, Americans and Canadians share many world-views and values. Yet, important differences exist. This study examines one foreign policy where these differences are striking. The United States and Canada have had very different policies toward Cuba, especially since Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959. Canada's policy of constructive engagement stands in marked contrast to the isolationist solution adopted by the American government. Much of the current literature offers traditional economic or domestic interest group explanations for the two policies. This study challenges these conventional narratives. By examining each country's policy toward Cuba in tandem this study demonstrates that there is far more than domestic political or economic calculations involved in the formulation of these foreign policies. Adopting a constructivist approach, this study will show that differences exist over Cuba because the two countries are different in other ways—they have their own identities, values and perceptions that contribute to the formation of very distinct approaches toward this island regime. Canadians and Americans perceive Cuba through different lenses. The American identity as an exceptional country and their corresponding view of Cuba as inferior as well as the perception that Cuba is within the American sphere of influence has affected the relationship between the United States and Cuba since the days of the Monroe Doctrine. The American identity as the guardian of freedom and democracy helped to construct American policy. After 1959, Cuba was seen to be an anathema to everything the United States represented. In contrast, the Canadian identity as “not American” and the need to assert this in foreign policy, as well as their identity as a good international citizen with its emphasis on values such as dialogue and compromise have greatly influenced the Canadian perception of Cuba. In sum, the examination of identity and its related values, perceptions, and norms offers an alternative way of making sense of US-Cuban and Canadian-Cuban relations. These two case studies reveal how these variables influence foreign policy and enable us to better understand Canadian and American foreign policy as well as international relations.