This dissertation examines how the work of four Puerto Rican poets – Julia de Burgos, Clemente Soto Vélez, Martín Espada, and Naomi Ayala – demonstrates a poetics of resistance. While resistance takes a variety of forms in their poetic discourse, this project asserts that these poets have and continue to play an integral role in the cultural decolonization of Puerto Rico, which has been generally unacknowledged in both the critical scholarship on their work and the narrative of Puerto Rico’s anti-colonial struggle. Chapter One discuses the theoretical concepts used in defining a poetics of resistance, including Barbara Harlow’s definition of resistance literature, Edward Said’s concepts of cultural decolonization, and Jahan Ramazani’s theory of transnational poetics. Chapter Two provides an overview of Puerto Rico’s unique political status and highlights several pivotal events in the nation’s history, such as El Grito de Lares, the Ponce Massacre, and the Vieques Protest to demonstrate the continuity of the Puerto Rican people’s resistance to oppression and attempted subversion of their colonial status. Chapter Three examines Julia de Burgos’ understudied poems of resistance and argues that she employs a rhetoric of resistance through the use of repetition, personification, and war imagery in order to raise the consciousness of her fellow Puerto Ricans and to provoke her audience into action. By analyzing Clemente Soto Vélez’s use of personification, anaphora, and most importantly, juxtaposition, Chapter Four demonstrates that his poetry functions as a dialectical process and contends that the innovative form he develops throughout his poetic career reinforces his radical perspective for an egalitarian society. Chapter Five illustrates how Martín Espada utilizes rich metaphor, sensory details, and musical imagery to foreground issues of social class, racism, and economic exploitation across geographic, national, and cultural borders. Chapter six traces Naomi Ayala’s feminist discourse of resistance that denounces social injustice while simultaneously expressing a female identity that seeks liberation through her understanding of history, her reverence for memory, and her relationship with the earth. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that Burgos, Soto Vélez, Espada, and Ayala not only advocate for but also enact resistance and social justice through their art.

Historians have enhanced our understanding of United States foreign policy in Asia, Latin, and Central America. My dissertation contributes to this literature by exploring U.S. foreign relations in the Caribbean by taking a close look at Haiti. While both nations achieved independence during the Age of Revolutions, by the turn of the 20th century, the U.S. occupied Haiti from 1915–1934. In investigating the history of U.S. and Haitian diplomacy, one figure appeared repeatedly in my archival research and fieldwork in both nations, Charlemagne Peralte. During the U.S. intervention, Peralte rose as a leader of a Haitian guerrilla group known as the cacos who positioned themselves as nationalists fighting for Haiti's sovereignty. Under Peralte's direction, the cacos battled the occupying forces and also promoted their cause as a global call for democracy. Though Peralte died in 1919, his significance to Haitians assumed epic proportions as Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata of Mexico, Augusto Sandino of Nicaragua, and Che Guevera in Cuba. Haitians on the island and across the Americas in the Diaspora revive Peralte's history and meaning throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Drawing on unexplored primary sources, marines' records, and oral histories, etc, my study seeks to move Charlemagne Peralte from the margins to the center in historiography surrounding 'bandits,' rebels, and national leaders. The work first traces U.S. and Haitian relations from their revolutions to the various events leading to the occupation in 1915. It then captures the tenor of the early occupation years by analyzing the various modes of resistance that erupted because of the intervention. Embedded in this protest against imperialism were Peralte and the actions of the cacos. The dissertation also reflects on the post-occupation years from 1948 to 1986 to examine the nations' foreign relations. Finally, the work documents the apotheosis of the cacos leader to examine the meaning behind the ongoing historical preservations of Peralte in Haiti and amongst the Haitian Diaspora community in the U.S. and Canada. The study documents how Peralte's story, and the historical remembrances of him, shed light on U.S. and Haitian diplomacy from the 19th through the 20th centuries.

The main purpose of this dissertation is to understand the emergence of Afro Hispanic American Literature and the causes that delayed its emergence at the end of the twentieth century. I study this process through three novels written in the last decades of the twentieth century as works representative of three national literatures that develop concurrently. These novels are Changó, el gran putas (1983) by Afro-Colombian writer Manuel Zapata Olivella, Jonatás y Manuela (1994) by Afro-Ecuadorian writer Luz Argentina Chiriboga and Malambo (2001) by Afro Peruvian writer Lucía Charún Illescas. The study of these three novels from within their own literary contexts allows for the tracing of national and international developments that made possible the emergence of these minority voices. On the other hand, by placing these texts in a broader historical context allows us to chart a cartography of African roots that although begins in the Caribbean; its horizon expands beyond the Caribbean proper and into the continent. Thus, each novel represents a moment in the African saga in the Americas, a new vision of its history and complex social landscape; and finally a new proposal for the future. Zapata Olivella proposes mestizaje as the ontological base in which Latin American reality was founded and points towards the existence of an African consciousness that is transcontinental. Luz Argentina Chiriboga presents us with the intimate side of history through the tale of two women: Manuela Sáenz and Jonatás, her slave, that represent two sides of the story. Lucía Charún Illescas reconstructs life in Malambo an old slave barracks in colonial Lima and through it unveils hidden worlds in our history. Each novel reconstucts hidden recesses of our history and thus force us to engage in a meaningful dialogue with it and with ourselves.

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo a análise do comportamento dos países no Conselho de Direitos Humanos (CDH) da ONU com principal foco no grupo regional dos Estados da América Latina e do Caribe (GRULAC). O Conselho de Direitos Humanos é o principal órgão de promoção e proteção dos direitos humanos do sistema ONU. O trabalho verifica hipóteses relacionadas à influência do pertencimento ao grupo regional, da divisão Norte-Sul e do nível de democracia no comportamento dos países no CDH. Para tal, os métodos empregados são análise estatística descritiva dos dados, estimação de pontos ideais (NOMINATE) e análise de regressão logística. Os dados coletados incluem as votações realizadas durante as 33 primeiras sessões regulares do CDH (2006-2016), bem como as submissões e os copatrocínios de propostas apreciadas durante este período. Os resultados obtidos oferecem um panorama sobre a participação dos países latino-americanos e caribenhos neste órgão e mostram que eles votam mais próximos aos países do Sul Global e distribuídos no que seriam dois conjuntos de países dentro do grupo regional, ao invés de se posicionar como um único grupo coeso. Adicionalmente, os resultados indicam que o nível de democracia e de violações de direitos humanos estão associados ao comportamento em votações de resoluções sobre situação de direitos humanos em países. Contudo, o posicionamento dos países nas votações destas resoluções se distingue conforme o país foco da resolução. / The purpose of this research is to analyse countries\' behaviour in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) focusing on the regional group of the Latin American and Caribbean states (GRULAC). The Human Rights Council is the main body for promoting and protecting human rights within the UN system. This research verifies hypotheses related to the influence of belonging to the regional group, the North-South divide and the level of democracy on how countries behave in the UNHRC. Methods employed in this study are descriptive statistics analysis, ideal points estimation (NOMINATE) and logistic regression analysis. Data collected include roll-call votes that took place during the 33 first regular sessions of the UNHRC (2006-2016) as well as submissions and cosponsorships of proposals analysed by the Council during this period. Results offer an overview of the Latin-American and Caribbean countries participation in this body and show that they vote closer to the countries of the Global South and are distributed in two sets of countries within the regional group, instead of one single cohesive group. Additionally, results suggest that the level of democracy and human rights violations are associated with the voting behaviour on resolutions about human rights situations in specific countries. However, countries\' position on these resolutions differs according to the concerned country.

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo a análise do comportamento dos países no Conselho de Direitos Humanos (CDH) da ONU com principal foco no grupo regional dos Estados da América Latina e do Caribe (GRULAC). O Conselho de Direitos Humanos é o principal órgão de promoção e proteção dos direitos humanos do sistema ONU. O trabalho verifica hipóteses relacionadas à influência do pertencimento ao grupo regional, da divisão Norte-Sul e do nível de democracia no comportamento dos países no CDH. Para tal, os métodos empregados são análise estatística descritiva dos dados, estimação de pontos ideais (NOMINATE) e análise de regressão logística. Os dados coletados incluem as votações realizadas durante as 33 primeiras sessões regulares do CDH (2006-2016), bem como as submissões e os copatrocínios de propostas apreciadas durante este período. Os resultados obtidos oferecem um panorama sobre a participação dos países latino-americanos e caribenhos neste órgão e mostram que eles votam mais próximos aos países do Sul Global e distribuídos no que seriam dois conjuntos de países dentro do grupo regional, ao invés de se posicionar como um único grupo coeso. Adicionalmente, os resultados indicam que o nível de democracia e de violações de direitos humanos estão associados ao comportamento em votações de resoluções sobre situação de direitos humanos em países. Contudo, o posicionamento dos países nas votações destas resoluções se distingue conforme o país foco da resolução. / The purpose of this research is to analyse countries\' behaviour in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) focusing on the regional group of the Latin American and Caribbean states (GRULAC). The Human Rights Council is the main body for promoting and protecting human rights within the UN system. This research verifies hypotheses related to the influence of belonging to the regional group, the North-South divide and the level of democracy on how countries behave in the UNHRC. Methods employed in this study are descriptive statistics analysis, ideal points estimation (NOMINATE) and logistic regression analysis. Data collected include roll-call votes that took place during the 33 first regular sessions of the UNHRC (2006-2016) as well as submissions and cosponsorships of proposals analysed by the Council during this period. Results offer an overview of the Latin-American and Caribbean countries participation in this body and show that they vote closer to the countries of the Global South and are distributed in two sets of countries within the regional group, instead of one single cohesive group. Additionally, results suggest that the level of democracy and human rights violations are associated with the voting behaviour on resolutions about human rights situations in specific countries. However, countries\' position on these resolutions differs according to the concerned country.

Made available in DSpace on 2013-01-07T15:55:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 1748 bytes, checksum: 8a4605be74aa9ea9d79846c1fba20a33 (MD5) 11.pdf: 1003659 bytes, checksum: 93e4dc64d449d41d8154423cc7c5366b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / A dissertação examina a gênese e os primeiros anos de funcionamento da Biblioteca Regional de Medicina - Bireme, da Organização Pan-Americana de Saúde - Opas, hoje Centro Latino-Americano e do Caribe de Informação em Ciências da Saúde. Discute os antecedentes, a sua instalação em 1967 e as gestões dos seus dois primeiros diretores, Amador Neghme e Abraham Sonis, no período compreendido entre 1969 e 1982. Ao fazê-lo, caracteriza a Bireme, simultaneamente, como aparato e como arena de negociação, inscrita nos processos mais gerais do desenvolvimento, da informação em C&T, da cooperação internacional e das políticas de saúde no contexto latino-americano, assim como expressão das posições presentes no movimento de expansão e reforma do ensino médico na região. Este percurso histórico tem como marco inicial a concepção de uma biblioteca regional de medicina para a América Latina, segundo um modelo que foi simultaneamente proposto, pela biblioteconomia médica norte-americana, para a constituição de um sistema de bibliotecas nos Estados Unidos, sob a liderança National Library of Medicine - NLM.