This thesis explores how the works of three contemporary women writers “write back” to the silences in the dominant historical narratives--made at various stages of Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s notion of the production of history and in varying ways--surrounding the sexual lives of women of color in the Caribbean and how, in turn, each offers an alternative narrative of women’s history. Chapter 1 focuses on Edwidge Danticat’s novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), a realist antiromance set in Haiti and the United States during the final years of the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc) in the 1980s. Chapter 2 examines Rosario Ferré’s novel, The House on the Lagoon (1995), an example of the genre of Latin American feminist historical fiction that follows the history of a Puerto Rican family on the island beginning with the transition from Spanish to U.S. occupation to the textual present (1898-1980s). Chapter 3 situates Andrea Levy’s novel, The Long Song (2010), a neo-slave narrative set in Jamaica in the years leading up to and following emancipation (1807-1898), alongside an original slave narrative, The History of Mary Prince (1831), that recounts Prince’s experiences as an enslaved woman in Bermuda and Antigua in the same era. Enlisting different literary genres, representing regions that are culturally and linguistically distinct, and narrating histories that are centuries apart, these novels certainly share as many differences as commonalities. Yet these differences, when read next to each other, further reveal a transnational interest among contemporary women writers, in the Caribbean and its diasporas, to contest dominant representations and silences of women’s sexuality in Caribbean history and to use fiction to offer an alternative version that spotlights the sexual lives of women. ​ / acase@tulane.edu

Civil-military relations theory stresses the importance of civilian control of the military and clearly defined roles for the military in democratic societies. There are two distinct perspectives regarding military roles. Traditionalist thinkers argue that the military should be restricted solely to its traditional role of national defense. On the other hand, some scholars propose additional, diverse, non-traditional roles for the military such as humanitarian assistance, law enforcement activities, peace-keeping operations, and disaster management, as “new military roles.†Guatemala serves as a case study where a military institution has received much criticism for past political involvement and lack of respect for civil authority. The 1996 Peace Accords stipulated a reduction and new mission for the Guatemalan military, which put new emphasis on disaster management, and serves as the research starting point. This study describes Guatemalan military involvement in disaster management during 1997-2002. In order to determine the nature of Guatemalan military involvement in disaster management, three indicators are examined: 1) organization, 2) training, and 3) participation in disaster response. Analysis of military compliance with Peace Accord directives, and the three indicators, is conducted to assess how well the Guatemalan military respected civil authority during the study period. This dissertation argues that the post-1996 Guatemalan military was involved in disaster management yet stayed within the bounds of civilian control of the military. The implications of these findings will add to the existing literature concerning civil-military relations, disaster management, and the controversial topic of non-traditional roles for the military. / acase@tulane.edu

This thesis investigates the relationship between the Viequenses, the U.S. government, the land, and the law on Vieques from 1979-2012 to illustrate how ecological empire is enacted and contested on the island of Vieques. I argue, that imperial ecology is enacted when a distant and overarching hegemon, in this case the U.S. government, controls the access, use, and management of land and sea through institutional channels in order to advance national priorities of defense and security. In Vieques, the authority of the Navy on the island represented a direct and explicit expression of U.S. military empire and expansion. However, the consequences of the restrictions of land on the island, and the lasting imprint on the land left by the Navy constitute a more subtle and deceptive transnational process of what I term as “imperial ecology.” Chapter One investigates the 1978 fishermen’s struggle for livelihood rights on Vieques to illustrate how the Viequenses framed their grievances in terms of livelihood and land—and sea—and how these grievances became amplified and dispersed as Puerto Rican political actors and radical activists became involved in the struggle. Chapter Two explores the transfer of former bases lands in 2003, unveiling the tensions and contradictions implicit in the overlapping designations of Wildlife Refuge and Superfund site on the island. Chapter Three investigates the 2007 class action lawsuit filed by a collective of over 7,000 Viequenses to demonstrate how the Viequenses perceive the mechanisms of imperial ecology on their island, and how these perceptions diverge from the Navy’s understanding of its action on the island. / acase@tulane.edu

This thesis explores the current divide in the LGBTI or queer social movement industry in Santiago de Chile. Based on field interviews with Chilean activists in June 2013, it argues that the deployment and maintenance of hegemonic masculinity is ultimately at the root of the fissure. The introduction provides a brief history of the movement in Chile since the 1970's, as well as short introductions to each of the six social movement organizations in the study. Chapter 1 problematizes the recent rapid lexical change in which the term diversidad has come to mean `gay,' as well as it impact on social movement framing tactics, providing evidence of a nascent diversidad frame that has been coopted by hegemonically masculine actors. Chapter 2 explores the politics surrounding the passage of Chile's Ley Antidiscriminación and the murder of Daniel Zamudio, arguing that certain social movement actors deployed hegemonic masculinity to seize and maintain control of both the media frenzy and the passage of the law. Finally, Chapter 3 analyzes the ongoing fight for same-sex partnership recognition in Chile by problematizing the fight for the proposed Acuerdo de Vida en Pareja as well as marriage equality, arguing that these issues represent the interests of hegemonically masculine voices within the movement above all others. / acase@tulane.edu

Scholars have often viewed nation and diaspora as opposing concepts. Such a binary perception is not useful for the establishment of a harmonious nation where multi-diasporic groups are compelled to cohabit. This study attempts to reconcile nation and diaspora. Reading Earl Lovelace’s fiction, I argue that in ethnically diverse countries like Trinidad, migrant populations can maintain their specific diasporic identities and still come together as a nation. Trinidad is inhabited by diasporas and its various people should be seen as such. In this study, the main diasporas in Trinidad include Afro-Trinidadians, Indo-Trinidadians, and white Creoles. Other minor diasporic groups include the Chinese, the Lebanese, and Syrians. The diasporic conception of Trinidad, where the original natives are a small minority, helps to ward off any autochthonous, indigenous and tribal territorial claims that potentially disrupt the social fabric. I argue that the promotion of diasporic consciousness can be a sine qua non pathway towards the formation of a consolidated multi-ethnic island of Trinidad. In practical terms, this means that the different diasporas in Trinidad are likely to come together if they are allowed to revitalize homeland cultures as they contribute to the national space. This study traces the evolution of Lovelace’s nationalist discourse, which progresses from a focus on the Afro-Caribbean male diaspora to an incorporation of other diasporas as well as women, as he imaginatively figures the future of the Trinidadian nation. This shift underscores Lovelace’s growing self-consciousness about the imperative to negotiate and reconstruct ethnic and gender identities in order to create a diverse Trinidadian nation. / acase@tulane.edu

This study compares traditional methods of sociolinguistic analysis to Milroy's (1987) theory of social network analysis to analyze language maintenance and shift (LMLS) in a group of 127 Afro-Costa Rican women in two bilingual (Spanish-English) communities, Puerto Limon and Siquirres, in the province of Limon, Costa Rica Since the publication of Milroy's work, a more recent trend has been to determine whether relationships among individuals exert normative pressures that affect their choice to maintain or alter the standard linguistic practices of their community. This study situates itself within this trend and so attempts to determine whether social network organization explains LMLS better than traditional methods of sociolinguistic analysis This objective is accomplished by applying each approach to analyze LMLS of the English spoken by the sample of Afro-Costa Rican women and their maintenance of four Creole phonological variables. The traditional sociolinguistic method of analysis is implemented by the examination of data collected through a questionnaire, complemented by interviews. Milroy's theory is implemented by delineating the network structure of the participants through the types of relations that bind them in order to define a measure of multiplexity and thus centrality. Both approaches were also applied to the examination of phonological variables based on the narration of 104 (of the 127) women of a picture story-task The data suggest that traditional sociolinguistic analysis is more reliable in explaining factors associated with LMLS than the social network approach. The latter did not prove useful in explaining patterns of language behavior as norm enforcement mechanisms in the maintenance of the linguistic practices of the members in the network Neither traditional methods of sociolinguistic analysis nor the social network model were associated with the maintenance of the phonological features of the Creole variety / acase@tulane.edu

Armed, illegal non-state actors control small but important sectors of both Brazil and Colombia. In these two countries, traffickers and large gangs concentrated in urban (and, in Colombia's case, also rural) areas clash heavily with state security forces, dominate significant numbers of the urban poor, and play a large, threatening role in the public's imagination. Some vital research has been done on the political and sociological dynamics within the zones controlled by these actors, but there is less in the literature that deals with the specific activities of community media and their relations with the ruling gangs and with local residents. This dissertation focuses on two community media groups, one in Bogotá, and one in Rio de Janeiro, both of which operate in informal urban slums controlled by gangs. It argues that in both cases these groups provide some checks to manifestations of authoritarian aggression, the infliction of arbitrary violence on residents and the climate of fear promulgated by the armed actors in these communities. These community media groups are able to do this by capitalizing on community resistance, by building informal relations and networks with gang membership, and by mobilizing notions of political legitimacy. / acase@tulane.edu

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YURUPARY ORIGINS OF A FEMININE-MASCULINE DUALITY: THE 'SHAMANIC FLIGHT' OF THE DAUGHTERS OF THE MOON IN THE TUKANO ORAL TRADITION OF THE VAUPES REGION OF COLOMBIA is a multidisciplinary comparative study between five versions of the Yurupary myth of the Vaupes region of Colombia that is a significant part of the collective memory, culture and oral tradition of the Amazonian Region. The vuelo chamanico (principal theme of the fifth version) made by the two women the main characters, symbolizes among other intertwined themes in the narration: the origin of women's wisdom in the Tukanoan tradition These versions are: Yurupary-Mito, Leyenda y Epopeya del Vaupes: Con la traduccion de la 'Leggenda dell'Jurupary' del conde Ermanno Stradelli por Susana N. Salessi by Hector H. Orjuela (1983). Text I in Yurupari Studies of an Amazonian Foundation Myth by Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (1996). The third and fourth versions in La oralidad en Yurupary o la exegesis de lo inaccesible: estudio comparativo entre el texto del conde Ermanno Stradelli y una transcripcion de don Antonio Guzman y Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff (Carriazo Osorio y el Abuelo Miru Puu, 2002) were given by el Abuelo Miru Puu in 2001 and 2002. The latter was a storyteller of the Mimi-Pora indigenous people of the Vaupes And the fifth version of the myth corresponds also to the Abuelo Miru Puu given in Spanish to Ariel Jose James: MASA BEHKE YURUPARY MITO TUKANO DEL ORIGEN DEL HOMBRE (2003) I propose that the fifth version, MASA BEHKE YURUPARY MITO TUKANO DEL ORIGEN DEL HOMBRE, is closer to representing the indigenous people's mythical reality of this particular Latin American region, while earlier versions such as the Leyenda del Yurupary , 1890 translated from Nengatu language into Italian by Ermanno Stradelli and the Text I, by the anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff represent theoretical assertions of the western mind, being translated and not transcribed. I reconstruct the concepts of myth and mythological reality (oral history) and I propose that even while these two versions deal with symbology and metaphorical language, the fifth version is the one that is viewed as part and parcel of the daily life of the indigenous people of the region. The European tendency of viewing mythology with a heroic (thus unreal) zeal is contrary to the native ideology, which is ontological / acase@tulane.edu

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