Although he did not write copious novels, endless essays, or long poems, Jorge Luis Borges is considered one of today's best modem writers. His works have never been more than ten pages long. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate that the willing use of concise expression in Borges's writings is inscribed in a poetic worldview of great implications. This view is based on the synthesis of philosophical, literary, and cultural issues that Borges interprets, discusses, refutes, and re-elaborates with a new conjectural approach. This dissertation is based on a methodological review of all his current scholarly work and on a thorough examination of the four volumes of his Complete Works, edited by Emece, in 2002. His pantheistic vision, the epiphanic moments, and his love/hate relationship with language, conform an aesthetic of resounding silence that enlightens the hidden aspects of his brief masterpieces. Even though Borgesian studies flood the library he once imagined, they have been presented in an isolated manner. This dissertation establishes a link among the various aforementioned aspects as studied by Borges scholars, and demonstrates the powerful influence of Borges's illuminating and precise vision. Paradoxically, the poetry of brevity in Borges's works is filled with allusions to the things that Borges silences, because, from a panoramic pantheism, his words almost reach an epiphanic enlightenment that flashes between preterit and future nothingness. By replacing extension with intensity, and mastering the art of omission, Borges's laborious work reaches power and concentration that only the very greatest talents can achieve. His delicate verbal conciseness provides his readers with a virtually infinite freedom of imagination because it exposes them to the chaotic world of mythical probabilities, where an instant encompasses etemity.

The 1993 Colombian health reform act, known as Law 100, is an on-going process aimed at implementing substantive changes to universalize coverage and correcting well-documented deficiencies in the health sector. The purpose of this study is to assess to what extent the reform has achieved its goals in terms of four indicators: equity, efficiency, quality, and sustainability by means of implementing Pan American Health Organization's Methodology for Monitoring and Evaluation of Health Sector Reform in Latin America and the Caribbean. This appraisal is a measure of the four indicators in two cross-sections of the population both before and after the reform. Data have been collected from primary and secondary sources including regulatory and steering agencies in Colombia. One of the main achievements of Colombian reform is the establishment of a subsidized system to cover the poorest segment of the population. The system's coverage in social security in health increased from 23% to 57% in the period 1993-1997. The public health insurance agency -the ISS- continues being the largest single insurer due in iv part to unfair competition strategies implemented by the ISS which in turn have increased the cost of health services in that agency. Finances of public hospitals still depend on national budget allocations made by the Ministry of Health. The productivity of human resources is low at all levels of the health system although hospitals have increased their funding from provision of healthcare services. Several studies have documented problems of evasion and underreport of contributions that in the case of self-employees reach 92.6 percent, which threatens the sustainability of the system. In spite of having the highest freedom of choice in Latin America, the Colombian health system evidences low levels of technical quality and client satisfaction. Despite the increases in coverage and efficiency, assessment of quality and sustainability requires future research depending on the maturation of the system, and the concomitant development of data.

This study seeks to account for the ungrammaticality of nominal ellipsis with definite articles, pre-nominal possessives, and quantifier todos ('all') and elucidate the role post-nominal adjectives and possessives, prepositional phrases headed by de ('of), and clauses headed by que ('that') play in facilitating ellipsis in otherwise ungrammatical environments. The theoretical approach combines syntax and semantics and intertwines notions of semantic identity, accent placement, entailment, and feature theory as proposed in Merchant (2001) and Schwarzchild (1999). The main claim is that licensing and identification of Spanish nominal ellipsis is three-fold and requires semantic identity between the antecedent and the ellipsis, a two-way entailment of the phrases containing the antecedent and the ellipsis site, and a feature-checking operation. The findings show that definite articles, pre-nominal possessives, and quantifier todos breach (some of) these requirements, while elements such as post-nominal adjectives reverse the effects of some of these violations, facilitating ellipsis.

The social scripts that are deeply involved in cultural production by AfroCuban identified artists in Miami, during the late nineties to the present, participate in a climate that is informed by and feeds from the so-called Latin Explosion of this time period. More specifically, varying historical, socioeconomic, and geopolitical trajectories have placed Africa and African-based religion and cultural production (via music and theatre) at the center of Cuban national identity. The purpose of this study is to facilitate a discussion of the experiences of AfroCuban performance artists and the climate for production, given the aforementioned dynamics, in mass media. These experiences are directed by a study of transnational structures for cultural production (including the more recent memory-shadow of hip-hop culture in Cuba) and discourse that engages theories of modernity, authenticity, and resistance. Through the interventions of artists, producers, and distributors via their art and business, the text identifies and resists the pervasive oppression of stereotype, dehumanization (Othering), and essentialism.

The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the central question: "How the institutional factors, sustainability aspects, marketing and green markets condition the potential for chicle commercialization to increase incomes and to contribute to tropical forest preservation in Quintana Roo, Mexico?" I reviewed general literature on chicle, Non Timber Forest Products, institutions, sustainability , marketing and green markets. During the summer of 2001 I held forty semi-structured interviews with relevant actors in Quintana Roo. Main findings were that producers need to increase control over the production process. Under current extraction practices ecological sustainability is likely to be maintained, but underutilisation of the resource leads to an economic unstable situation. In marketing organic chewing gum health aspects need to be emphasized to improve the effectiveness of marketing. It was concluded that green markets offer potential, institutional problems need to be addressed and emphasis on connecting to the emerging organic markets and marketing messages is necessary.

Using Kenneth Roberts’ (2002) party-society linkages framework, this study examined the reasons for the decline of the political party system in Bolivia after 2000. The political party system that emerged in 1985 was connected to society primarily through clientelist-based linkages. The economic and political model adopted after the transition to democracy severely debilitated the party system’s capacity to forge linkages with society beyond clientelism. Using interviews, survey data, and primary and secondary documents, the study demonstrated that prolonged economic recession and social change revealed the weaknesses of the linkages connecting the political party system with Bolivian society. It concluded that the party system in Bolivia went into decline because it could not adapt to the country’s changing social landscape after 2000. The highly limited nature of clientelist-based linkages in Bolivia suggests that they were ill-suited to withstand economic recession and social crisis.

This dissertation argues that urban neoliberal programs currently formulating in the Global South are unprecedented in historical México as well as in examined practices of gentrification and globalization. In this dissertation I specifically focus on the Programa de Rescate – an urban policy being amassed in México City’s Centro Histórico as a nexus of processes of gentrification, neoliberalization, and globalization. This work re-theorizes how gentrification functions when it is implemented in the Global South – as the neoliberalization of space.

This thesis is a study of La Nacion, the largest circulating newspaper in Costa Rica. The purpose of this study is to examine whether claims made by La Nacion regarding their fairness and balance of news coverage are justified.

Exceptions to Costa Rican Exceptionalism attempts to locate the complex relationship between tourism and inequality in Costa Rican society across intersections of race and class at multiple levels of Costa Rican society. I examine the power dynamics between “the tourist” and the object of the tourist gaze, Costa Rica and Costa Ricans, Costa Rican citizen-nationals and “peripheral” racial minority citizens, and the peripheral citizen and the undocumented national “other.” This study seeks to arrive at a more complex understanding of how racial and class hierarchy is constructed in Costa Rica by analyzing the role of Costa Rica’s large-scale international tourism campaign in perpetuating that construction. I argue that Costa Rica’s national identity formation depends upon the racialization of “exceptional” political, economic, and social achievements, thereby drawing the boundaries of national belonging and citizenship according to certain features of race, gender, and class. As one of the largest economic sectors in Costa Rican society, tourism plays a significant role in the reproduction and dissemination of the “exceptionalist” construction of Costa Rican identity.

Esta tesina indaga cuestiones conectadas con el Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, un texto médico azteca que constituye la primera descripción de la materia médica americana. El marco médico de los azteca se entraña profundamente con la cultura misma, y se basa en la investigación empírica además de fuentes sociales y religiosas. Aspectos de este marco médico—particularmente sus aportes culturales y botánicos—se presentan todavía en la medicina mexicana folk contemporánea. La época pos-conquista en que el Libellus fue producido constituye un ámbito complejo y agitado, un fundamento que demuestro a través del aparato sociopolítico que dirigió la producción académica de aquella época. Sin embargo, demuestro que la integridad y la originalidad de la materia médica azteca ha prevalecido. El primer capítulo abarca el marco folclórico de la salud y la medicina azteca, además de los aspectos teóricos y logísticos de la etiología, el diagnóstico, y la terapéutica. Con esta base, planteo la cuestión sincrética de la conquista y las intersecciones entre la medicina europea y la medicina nahua. Por el segundo capítulo—que aborda temas de la traducción—demarco y problematizo cuestiones de la autoría, la pluralidad, y el mestizaje lingüístico. A través del tercer capítulo, realizo mi propia traducción del Libellus desde el español al ingles para indagar intensivamente cómo se acerca este proceso de traducción. Luego, al resumirlo y analizarlo, junto las cuestiones teóricas de la traducción y la materia médica azteca con mis propias experiencias como traductora contemporánea.