No início da Guerra da Secessão (1861-1865), os Estados Unidos promoveram negociações internacionais que pretendiam transferir seus afrodescendentes, em diversas condições de escravidão e liberdade para diversos países independentes da América Latina e possessões coloniais no Caribe. Ainda que tais negociações não tenham resultado de fato na realocação de homens e mulheres afro-americanos, as trocas diplomáticas, bem como outras fontes documentais, revelaram interessantes debates sobre escravidão, raça, construção nacional e o trabalho dependente no pós-abolição, que fazem do tema uma espécie de microcosmo que abrange questões substanciais que marcaram as mudanças nos mundos do trabalho no século XIX. Os projetos de colonização, como então foram chamados, para população afroamericana foram propostos e negociados por Washington com os seguintes países e colônias abrangidos pelo presente trabalho: Brasil, Equador, atual Panamá (pertencente, à época, à atual Colômbia), Costa Rica, Nicarágua. Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Belize (Honduras Britânicas), Guiana Britânica, Suriname (colônia da Holanda), na ilha dinamarquesa de Santa Cruz, Haiti e Libéria. / In the early years of its Civil War, the United States Government proposed to resettle African- Americans throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Though these schemes did not ultimately come to fruition, the intentions of the United States and the responses of negotiating nations reflected broader debates on slavery, race, nation building and indenture labor in the post abolition era. These colonization projects, as they were then called, aimed to resettle African-Americans in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, present-day Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, present-day Belize, British Guiana, Surinam, St. Croix Island, Haiti and Liberia.

This dissertation studies the emergence of literary history and criticism in the Americas during the eighteenth century. It focuses upon the study of 1.) Natural history as a matrix of literary history and criticism; 2.) The geopolitical functions of literary history and criticism in the periodical press; and 3.) The recovery of manuscripts as a residual product of modernity. Texts associated with a hegemonic Enlightenment, such as “Disertación sobre el derecho público universal” by Francisco Javier de Uriortúa, are analyzed. Next, we study modern historical-critical thought as emphasized in the periodical press of Bogotá and Quito. Finally, the circulation of manuscripts is studied as an indicator of the participation of Spanish American authors in discussions about the Enlightenment. For the latter, the dissertation analyzes the development of theories of good taste in El Nuevo Luciano de Quito by Eugenio Espejo and in the Plan elementál del buen gusto en todo genéro de materias by Manuel del Socorro Rodríguez de la Victoria. The study challenges the epistemological conflict provoked by the handwritten condition of a considerable portion of scholarship from the eighteenth century, in which the projects of an American modernity become subjugated by the power of European print.

Contrary to nationalist teleologies, the enslavement of Native Americans was not a small and isolated practice in the territories that now comprise the United States. This thesis is a case study of its history in Louisiana from European contact through the Early American Period, utilizing French Superior Council and Spanish judicial records, Louisiana Supreme Court case files, statistical analysis of slave records, and the synthesis and reinterpretation of existing scholarship. This paper primarily argues that it was through anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity and with the utilization of socially constructed racial designations that “Indianness” was controlled and exploited, and that Native Americans and their mixed-race Black-Native descendants continued to be enslaved alongside the larger population Africans and African Americans in Louisiana. Lacking a decolonized lens and historiography inclusive of the enslavement of Indigenous peoples, the American story ignores the full impact of white settler colonialism and historical trauma.

Through discursive essays and poetic narrative, Antithetical Commentaries on X, Y and the Disruption of Being explores the tenuous relationship between modes of measurement and the struggle for human relevance in the post-contemporary digital age. In the introductory essay, “Not the Feather, but the Bird”, I give an overview of the inherent problems of object-oriented ontology, and how it relates to aesthetics and social issues of our times. In the Developmental Overview, I detail how I developed my installation approach and techniques, particularly with regard to the three-way dynamic of the artist:work:viewer relationship and how it can encourage a ‘transgression’ that leads to the possibility of a transformative awareness of being. Subsequently, I present a series of ‘antithetical’ commentaries that neither explain nor expand the installation, rather, they create a non-binary duality that, through an entirely non-linear anti-narrative, work to erode the overlay of personal, civic and collective grids present in the memory space/time referenced in the video, TAG. Finally, in “Grid: Towards a Transgressive Humanism.” I propose a path by which installation art might serve to create transgressive opportunities for viewers, rather than the transcendence sought through religious rituals, which often reinforce stigmas, fears and authoritarian social dynamics, or worse, the reductive loop, of many contemporary approaches to art which proclaim their detachment in wordy displays, essentially leading to a form of aesthetic nihilism. This Transgressive Humanism is not presented as a dogma, but rather a revitalization of the work as a vessel of possibilities, an agent of creative growth for the artist and the viewer.

Este tesis explorara las facetas de los derechos económicos de la mujeres antes, durante y despues del régimen de Pinochet. El primer capítulo se enfocara en resumir las políticas económicas y sociales de Allende, el antecesor de Pinochet. El segundo capítulo analiza el rol de la mujer en la casa y el trabajo en este momento, donde se determinó la diferencia salarial entre los dos sexos. El tercer capitulo demostrara una comparación entre las mujeres que son de clase altas versus las de las clases socio-económicas más bajas. El último capítulo tocara el tópico de la moderna perspectiva sobre los derechos de la mujer post-Pinochet. This thesis will explore the facets of the economic rights of women before, during, and after the Pinochet regime. The first chapter will focus on summarizing the economic and social policies of Allende, the predecessor of Pinochet. The second chapter analyzes the role of women in the home and work, where there will be a comparison on the wage difference between the two sexes. The third chapter will show the contrast between women who are in high-class status versus those of lower socio-economic classes. The last chapter will be relating to the modern perspective on the rights of women post-Pinochet.

A large Mexican-American population already exists in Los Angeles and, with each generation, it continues to rise. This Mexican-American community has maintained its connection to its heritage by playing and watching soccer, Mexico’s top watched sport. In this thesis, I analyze how Major League Soccer's Chivas USA serves as an outlet through which many Mexicans in Los Angeles have developed their ethnic identities. Since the early twentieth century, Mexicans in Los Angeles have created separate residential communities and sports organizations to strengthen their connections with one another. To appeal to Mexican-Americans, Chivas USA has branded itself closely to its sister team Chivas Guadalajara of Mexico. I explore how Chivas USA's Mexican-American fans have responded to the team's arrival in Los Angeles by forming three different supporter groups — Legion 1908, Union Ultras, and Black Army 1850. By interviewing members of the Union Ultras and Black Army 1850, I learned their beliefs towards a range of issues, including: why they support Chivas USA rather than the Los Angeles Galaxy and how they view the poor representation of Mexican-American players on the United States National Soccer Team. As I conclude, these supporter groups have increased in number and diversity as Chivas USA has grown in popularity. To increase its Mexican-American fan base and to sustain professional soccer in Los Angeles, Chivas USA should relocate to a new stadium for the Major League Soccer's 2013 season and consider rebranding its name to "Chivas Los Angeles."

xiv, 485 p. / The organizing principle of this dissertation is that Las Casas's most famous work, the Brevisima relacion , is primarily an intricately reasoned legal argument against the excesses of early Spanish colonialism rather than a fiery polemical diatribe by the "first human rights activist." Contrary to such anachronistic (though enduringly popular) characterization, this study employs a historical perspective to view this influential text as belonging to the genres of the early modern juridical tradition. Accordingly, this investigation begins by examining the historical matrix of fifteenth-century and early sixteenth-century Spain to properly contextualize Las Casas's early life and certain initial colonial institutions of the Spanish Indies. Similarly, his juridical expertise is firmly rooted in an explication of his contemporaneous formation in canon law and theology. From these foundational strands of his life and work, his maturing juridical voice spoke most decisively in certain of the major debates among Spanish jurists, theologians, and politicians--as well as in the Brevísima relación --in the wake of the Iberian "discovery" of what was for all concerned a physical as well as philosophical "New World." The combined focus of subsequent chapters elucidates the fundamentally juridical dimensions of the text, beginning with the specific context accompanying its genesis in 1542 until its publication a decade later. The treatise's legal character as an official publication based on various evidentiary sources is further revealed by the text's triple function--to inform, to denounce, and to petition, which in turn corresponds to the genres of relaciones, denuncias , and peticiones of the civil juridical tradition. The Brevísima relación 's content unveils far more than this; the epistemological rationale and analytic framework are intimately linked to canonistic, Thomistic, and biblical genres of the ecclesial juridical tradition. Continuing this historical investigation, the concluding chapter demonstrates anew the fundamental grounding of Las Casas's approach in the vibrant first generations of juristic discourse of the so-called Spanish colonial era. His multifaceted juridical voice was distinctively encoded in a powerful melding of civil and ecclesial legal traditions. This dissertation intends to communicate this voice intelligibly with the proper accents of the past. / Committee in charge: Dr. Robert Haskett, Chairperson; Dr. Carlos Aguirre, Member; Dr. Stephanie Wood, Member; Dr. David Luebke, Member; Dr. Stephen Shoemaker, Outside Member

No início da Guerra da Secessão (1861-1865), os Estados Unidos promoveram negociações internacionais que pretendiam transferir seus afrodescendentes, em diversas condições de escravidão e liberdade para diversos países independentes da América Latina e possessões coloniais no Caribe. Ainda que tais negociações não tenham resultado de fato na realocação de homens e mulheres afro-americanos, as trocas diplomáticas, bem como outras fontes documentais, revelaram interessantes debates sobre escravidão, raça, construção nacional e o trabalho dependente no pós-abolição, que fazem do tema uma espécie de microcosmo que abrange questões substanciais que marcaram as mudanças nos mundos do trabalho no século XIX. Os projetos de colonização, como então foram chamados, para população afroamericana foram propostos e negociados por Washington com os seguintes países e colônias abrangidos pelo presente trabalho: Brasil, Equador, atual Panamá (pertencente, à época, à atual Colômbia), Costa Rica, Nicarágua. Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, Belize (Honduras Britânicas), Guiana Britânica, Suriname (colônia da Holanda), na ilha dinamarquesa de Santa Cruz, Haiti e Libéria. / In the early years of its Civil War, the United States Government proposed to resettle African- Americans throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Though these schemes did not ultimately come to fruition, the intentions of the United States and the responses of negotiating nations reflected broader debates on slavery, race, nation building and indenture labor in the post abolition era. These colonization projects, as they were then called, aimed to resettle African-Americans in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador, present-day Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jamaica, present-day Belize, British Guiana, Surinam, St. Croix Island, Haiti and Liberia.

The United States Military is currently organized along the lines of regional combatant commands (COCOMs). Each COCOM is responsible for all U.S. military activity in their designated area of responsibility (AOR). They also deal with diplomatic issues of a wide variety with the countries within their respective AORs. Among these COCOMs, Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), whose AOR encompasses all of Central and South America (less Mexico) and the Caribbean, is one of the smallest in terms of size and budget, but has the longest history of activity among the COCOMs as it is the successor to the first joint command, the United States Caribbean Defense Command (CDC 1941-1947). Existing from 1941 to 1947, the CDC was tasked with protecting the Panama Canal, the Canal Zone, and all its access points as well as defending the region from Axis aggression and setting up a series of U.S. bases throughout the Caribbean from which to project U.S. military power after World War II. Throughout its short history, however, the CDC was plagued with the same types of resource scarcity that its successor commands would later experience. Early successes, as well as the progress of the war saw to it that the original mission of the Command was quickly rendered moot. Ironically, it was partially the success of the U.S. war effort that kept the CDC from ever reaching its full potential. Nevertheless, the CDC evolved into something different than had originally been envisioned. In the end, it became the model that other COCOMs would follow after November 1947 when the system of regional combatant commands was formally established. Although some research has been conducted into the history of these commands, this dissertation is the first academic attempt to chronicle the history of the United States Caribbean Defense Command. Research into this topic involved combing through the Archives of the United States Southern Command in its offices in Miami, Florida (SOUTHCOM Archives), as well as the CDC archives in Record Group 548 in the U.S. National Archives II in Suitland, Maryland. Secondary sources as well as references regarding treaties and international agreements were also consulted as necessary.

The status, roles, and interactions of three dominant African ethnic groups and their descendants in Cuba significantly influenced the island’s cubanidad (national identity): the Lucumís (Yoruba), the Congos (Bantú speakers from Central West Africa), and the Carabalís (from the region of Calabar). These three groups, enslaved on the island, coexisted, each group confronting obstacles that threatened their way of life and cultural identities. Through covert resistance, cultural appropriation, and accommodation, all three, but especially the Lucumís, laid deep roots in the nineteenth century that came to fruition in the twentieth. During the early 1900s, Cuba confronted numerous pressures, internal and external. Under the pretense of a quest for national identity and modernity, Afro-Cubans and African cultures and religion came under political, social, and intellectual attack. Race was an undeniable element in these conflicts. While all three groups were oppressed equally, only the Lucumís fought back, contesting accusations of backwardness, human sacrifice, cannibalism, and brujería (witchcraft), exaggerated by the sensationalistic media, often with the police’s and legal system’s complicity. Unlike the covert character of earlier epochs’ responses to oppression, in the twentieth century Lucumí resistance was overt and outspoken, publically refuting the accusations levied against African religions. Although these struggles had unintended consequences for the Lucumís, they gave birth to cubanidad’s African component. With the help of Fernando Ortiz, the Lucumí were situated at the pinnacle of a hierarchical pyramid, stratifying African religious complexes based on civilizational advancement, but at a costly price. Social ascent denigrated Lucumí religion to the status of folklore, depriving it of its status as a bona fide religious complex. To the present, Lucumí religious descendants, in Cuba and, after 1959, in many other areas of the world, are still contesting this contradiction in terms: an elevated downgrade.