<p>This dissertation examines the role that scandals and print media played in Mexican politics between 1960 and 1988. It argues that, while political corruption was commonplace, journalists determined which transgressions would become flashpoints for public protest. By creating scandals, print journalists shaped political decision-making and debates about Mexico's democracy during the decades commonly associated with the country's political opening. As scandals circulated through Mexico City media, they catalyzed critical reassessments of legitimacy and gave public opinion greater weight in shaping processes of political decision-making. By forging new linkages between reading publics and ruling elites, reporters created an increasingly mediated form of Mexican citizenship. This dissertation also reveals that scandals not only reflected elite dissent, but also sharpened internal party divisions that eventually led to organized opposition in 1988 against the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the political party that held the Mexican presidency and most public offices for seventy-one years. </p><p>A history of print journalists sheds new light on how Mexico's one-party regime consolidated and retained power. Scholars increasingly emphasize the coercive aspects of the PRI's rule. However, this research indicates that the regime was divided, responsive to public opinion, and even contributed to the opening of Mexico's public sphere. This work also intervenes in the literature on Mexico's political transition. Scholars identify economic crisis as the catalyst for popular mobilizations and elite defection. This dissertation argues, however, that economic hardship was not new and would have failed to assume a larger political meaning without journalists' contributions. It was they who elevated quotidian episodes of political corruption by assigning them the significance of a rupture. Finally, this research highlights the blurred boundaries between civil society and the state. Journalists acted as intermediaries between ordinary Mexicans and political elites. At different moments reporters were civic protesters, while at others they acted as arms of the state. This history of journalists, then, offers new ways of imagining Latin American politics and the everyday practices of governance.</p><p>This study makes use of materials from Mexican journalists' private archives. New sources, such as leaked documents, correspondence, and newsroom memoranda and meeting minutes, challenge the pervasive image of a reactive and supine press. Congressional records, official meeting minutes, printed public relations ephemera, and domestic intelligence reports illustrate the ways in which ruling elites reacted to scandalous press articles. Political scandals sparked intense debate and sharpened internal party rivalries. These sources reveal that print journalism represented a key site of dissent, debate, and division during Mexico's political opening.</p> / Dissertation

In the decades following the Revolution, government officials and industrialists attempted to strike a balance between preserving a unique national identity and asserting Mexico's place in global affairs as a competitive, modern nation. Veneration of the aviators' bravery and technological mastery cut across political and cultural boundaries, setting standards for the model citizen of a modern world. The symbolic figure of the pilot proved an adept vessel for disseminating the values championed by the country's ruling party. Aviators validated the technological determinism that underpinned the government's development philosophy to domestic audiences, while projecting an image of strength abroad. This study explores the spectacle of aviation in cultural events including film, airshows, goodwill flights, and state-sponsored funerals, connecting the history of aviation to often-conflicting discourses of Revolutionary nationalism and modern cosmopolitanism that were espoused by both national and regional elites.

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Operation Pedro Pan, as labeled by a Miami journalist, was a program backed by the Unites States federal government and executed by the Catholic Church which brought over 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban minors to the U.S. between December 1960 and October 1962. I knew about this wave of immigration because my maternal grandparents were two of these children. I was surprised to find that most scholarship on Cuban immigration to the U.S. either neglects to mention the children’s exodus or only briefly references it in passing. This was even more surprising to me when I learned that Operation Pedro Pan was and still is the largest exodus of children in the Western Hemisphere. I was curious as to why it has been left out of a significant amount of scholarship on Cuban immigration, and in searching for answers, I instead came upon more questions. The most glaring of which was why there seemed to be two contrasting narratives about the history of Operation Pedro Pan.

Esta tesis utiliza la interseccionalidad como lente para hacer un análisis de los textos culturales y activistas para explicar cómo se manifiestan las ideas feministas en estos dos períodos cruciales de avance del feminismo en España: el primer cuarto del siglo veinte y las primeras décadas del siglo veintiuno. La interseccionalidad sirve como una prisma de análisis que permite entender los sistemas hegemónicos de poder. Esta tesis analiza ejemplos de textos y demandas que ilustran las preocupaciones y aparatos ideológicos que sustentan diferentes aproximaciones al feminismo en estas dos épocas. Un interés específico, en especial en la segunda parte, es el diálogo teórico y político del feminismo interseccional con el feminismo blanco y hegemónico en términos de exclusión de las comunidades marginadas. El objetivo al hacerlo es elevar las voces de las identidades marginadas que de otro modo se silencian por el discurso contemporáneo que no contempla sus experiencias.

The adjustment and assimilation achieved by Cuban-Americans who arrived in Oregon during the 1960s was notable for its rapidity. Little contact existed between the state and the island prior to the resettlement efforts begun by the Charities Division of the Portland Catholic Archdiocese, where a group of concerned administrators meshed their activities with a nation-wide program created and encouraged by the united States government and private agencies.

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<p>"For Better or Worse: Divorce and Annulment Lawsuits in Colonial Mexico (1544-1799)" uses petitions for divorce and annulment to explore how husbands and wives defined and contested their marital roles and manipulated legal procedure. Marital conflict provides an intimate window into the daily lives of colonial Mexicans, and the discourses developed in the course of divorce and annulment litigation show us what lawyers, litigants and judges understood to be appropriate behavior for husbands and wives. This dissertation maintains that wives often sued for divorce or annulment not as an end in itself, but rather as a means to quickly escape domestic violence by getting the authorities to place them in enclosure, away from abusive husbands. Many wives used a divorce or annulment lawsuit just to get placed in enclosure, without making a good faith effort to take the litigation to its final conclusion. "For Better or For Worse" also argues concepts of masculinity, rather than notions of honor, played a strong role in the ways that husbands negotiated their presence in divorce and annulment suits. This work thus suggests a new way to interpret the problem of marital conflict in Mexico, showing how wives ably manipulated procedural law to escape abuse and how men attempted to defend their masculine identities and their gendered roles as husbands in the course of divorce and annulment lawsuits.</p> / Dissertation

Drawing from oral histories which I gathered while living in Bolivia, this thesis tracks the start, growth, and development of the political movement led by women from the Bolivian mines from 1961 to 1987. This movement helped create a new political culture that recognized the importance of women’s participation in politics and human rights. Today, this culture lives on. Bolivia has not experienced a coup since 1980, and the nation’s human rights record has improved dramatically since the 1980s as well. Prior to the mid-1980s, Bolivia was often under the control of oppressive military regimes that resorted to many different types of coercion in attempts to silence resistance in the mining centers, the national government’s main source of conflict. This uneven power struggle between working class activists and the national government motivated many women to challenge gender roles and involve themselves in politics. After establishing their political organization called the Housewives’ Committee, women activists organized and acted collectively to challenge political oppression and mitigate the effects of extreme poverty. They frequently employed compelling tactics, most commonly hunger strikes, to win attention for their issues. They also involved themselves in many other diverse projects and demonstrations depending on their communities’ need. Women’s political development resulted in a number of personal transformations among those who participated: it awakened a political consciousness and also enabled women to recognize the importance of their paid and unpaid work in the mining economy. These changes eventually altered women’s understanding of how women’s oppression fit into the broader struggle of working class activism by convincing them of the deep connection between women’s liberation and the liberation of their community. These transformations led to the acceptance of women as political activists and leaders, which continues in the present. This work also tracks the United States’ impact on the relationship between the mining centers and the state. This analysis serves to remind us that as United States citizens we must be very critical of our nation’s impact; because of our ability to enormously affect small land-locked countries like Bolivia, we must also hold ourselves accountable to understanding our historical impact so that we can make informed decisions in the present.