<p> The speeches given by Pedro Segundo and Getulio Vargas during wartime not only reveals their orientation of leadership but in turn provides something else. These discourses gives one a unique window into not only how these leaders chose to perceive the challenges of wartime but how to address them to the national populace. The rhetoric they used had to transform for purposes of mobilization while adapting to shifting political environments. Among one of the features of this adaptation was the choice of which aspects of the national consciousness to stress at pivotal moments. By examining the public speeches of Pedro Segundo and Getulio Vargas one can see the political orientation of both leaders, understand the political climate of both periods, and witness how much Brazil had changed in the eighty-one years between the beginning of the Paraguayan War and the end of WWII.</p>

<p>This thesis seeks to recover historical memory during El Salvador&rsquo;s devastating anticommunist campaigns from 1932 to 1963. With El Salvador&rsquo;s long history of repression against social movements, fear and even shame have silenced stories about the movement and its participants. In line with the current projects dedicated to social memory, this projects reconstructs the untold story of Felix Paname&ntilde;o, a local shoemaker and member of the Communist Party in the 1930s through his family&rsquo;s memories. Shoemakers were key to the growing political consciousness of the time, as documented by Roque Dalton through the testimonial of shoemaker and survivor of the 1932 revolt, <i>Miguel M&aacute;rmol</i>. Much of Paname&ntilde;o&rsquo;s life and struggle transpired within key political moments from the persecutions of political activists that followed the 1932 revolt, known as &ldquo;<i> La Matanza</i>&rdquo;, through the wave of repressive military dictatorships that conspired against political activist and democracy. These dictators imposed a tyranny that ultimately drove large numbers of Salvadorans to migrate to the U.S. beginning in the 1960s. Many of these immigrants, in turn, silenced their memories and depoliticized in exchange for a new beginning. Today, some of these memories are being rebuilt, giving insight to better understanding El Salvador&rsquo;s past, as well as the present peoples&rsquo; struggle for democracy at home and those participating from abroad. </p>

<p> The primary objectives of this thesis are to research the Conquest of Mexico and to integrate research to expand upon <i>Mexica</i>, a 125 page historical fiction screenplay that was started in 2008 about the 16th century invasion of Mexico by Hern&aacute;n Cort&eacute;s. Through quantifying and writing commentary on the revisions to reflect the integration of new research, the enhanced work is accompanied by a critical introduction essay that simultaneously serves as a literature review to determine how sources contributed to the dramatization. The critical introduction is in Spanish, the research was conducted in Spanish and English, and <i>Mexica</i> is in English, to better reach the target, mainstream American audience. The essay addresses schools of thought and theoretical frameworks on the conquest and how they have been accepted, rejected, dramatized and/or incorporated in the screenplay. By analyzing chronicles, literature, film and television relevant to the conquest, narrating experiences and creative license are demonstrated. The essay exhibits a historiographical review by examining myths, misconceptions and consensus on several themes relevant to this era of initial contact in the New World. The critical introduction of <i>Mexica</i> explains how the enhanced script better integrates the indigenous perspective through analysis of a variety of sources, with a non Euro-centric emphasis, to reflect compelling and multidimensional characters in the historical fiction genre. </p>

Studies of Latin American culture have returned time and again to the issue of how to capture the many conflicts and tensions inherent in national, group, and individual identities of the region. This dissertation examines an overlooked component of identity debates: the experience of being anonymous or unrecognized. In particular, I focus on late twentieth and early twenty-first century representations of anonymity in Argentina and Brazil. These countries share various key characteristics: emergence from recent military dictatorships; accelerating urbanization and globalization; rapid transformation of public spaces and media technologies that shape the possibilities of expressing an identity and having it recognized. Within these contexts, my dissertation considers a corpus of novels and films centered on attempts to either escape anonymity or become anonymous. Chapter 1 analyzes the decay of family and community bonds as a source of recognition and social value in Fernando Bonassiâ"u20ac™s Subúrbio and Guillermo Saccomannoâ"u20ac™s El oficinista. Chapter 2 examines media technology and the relationship between audiences and celebrities. I read Alejandro Lópezâ"u20ac™s La asesina de Lady Di and Ignácio de Loyola Brandãoâ"u20ac™s O anônimo célebre as depictions of individuals seeking mass-media fame as a form of large-scale, public recognition. Chapter 3 looks at two cinematic representations of the bus 174 hijacking in Rio de Janeiro. José Padilhaâ"u20ac™s Ã"u201dnibus 174 and Bruno Barretoâ"u20ac™s Última parada 174 show the challenge of preserving the disruptive potency of the hijackerâ"u20ac™s demand for recognition, and the danger of neutralizing it through conventional narrative tropes. Chapter 4 analyzes representations of â"u20acœdesired anonymityâ"u20ac"u009d in Sergio Chejfecâ"u20ac™s novel Mis dos mundos and Albertina Carriâ"u20ac™s film Los rubios. The first explores the freedom of anonymous wandering in cosmopolitan and digital spaces. The latter imagines the creation of a community in which the burden of post-dictatorship memory and identity can be de-individualized and shared. Taken together, these works illustrate the continued demand to identify oneself and be(come) recognized as a basis for everyday social-civil interactions. They also question the value and viability of expressing a clear identity or cohesive self-narrative in contemporary Argentine and Brazilian society. / Adam Demaray

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-01, Section: A, page: 0199. Adviser: Kathleen A. Myers. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed Feb. 8, 2007)."

<p> This dissertation explores the work of Colombian writer Evelio Rosero (1958), whose work-like many of his nation's generation, but with a radically new aesthetic and ethic proposal&mdash;focuses on violence and on the disappearance of people in the context of the armed conflict that has ravaged Colombia for the last thirty years. </p><p> Despite having a long and consistent literary career that started in the early eighties and having received prestigious awards, Rosero continues to be almost unknown both nationally and internationally. My dissertation contends that such lack of recognition is serious and that current conversations about Colombian literature and the representation of violence more broadly cannot be done without taking into account his disruptive work. Through a careful analysis of Rosero's most representative novels&mdash;<i>Se&ntilde;or que no conoce la luna, En el lejero and Los Ej&eacute;rcitos</i>&mdash;I examine the literary techniques the author uses to produce a space&mdash;both literary and political&mdash;that neither justifies nor exacerbates violence. </p><p> Based primarily on the concept of the spectral put forth by Jacques Derrida in <i>Specters of Marx,</i> on Mieke Bal's position on political art and on Jean-Luc Nancy's construction of rebellion in <i>Noli me tangere, </i> I demonstrate how Rosero's novels highlight the discourses and mechanisms that put into place and even sanction the violence they supposedly lament. </p><p> The dissertation is divided in three chapters. Chronologically organized, each one examines one of Rosero's most representative novels. </p><p> In the introduction I contextualize Rosero's literary work within the larger efforts to represent Colombia's violent situation. I argue that by focusing on disappearance, ambiguity and spectrality Rosero avoids the most common and problematic pitfalls of such texts. I take the position that by doing so Rosero gives visibility to the many ways in which a state of violence is (re)produced and represented -both aesthetically and politically&mdash;signalling a complicity (not necessarily deliberate) between the two. </p><p> The first chapter analyzes <i>Se&ntilde;or que no conoce la luna. </i> I argue that by focusing in the way los vestidos enslave and torture los desnudos due to their dual genitalia, Rosero shows the artificiality and arbitrariness of our social constructions and highlights how they are used to infringe extreme violence to a particular group of people. I contend that in the unregulated circulation of erotic desire Rosero finds a way out of this structure of abjection. </p><p> The second chapter deals with the radical "spectralization" that takes place in <i>En el lejero.</i> I take the position that Rosero's emphasis on the difficulty of identifying people and spaces, and his refusal to stabilize meaning are effective tools in dismantling a system of oppression and violence while opening a space for agency and solidarity. </p><p> The third and last chapter studies Rosero's most famous novel, <i> Los Ej&eacute;rcitos.</i> I read the novel's contrast between moments of intense visibility and instances of extreme obscurity and confusion as a way to underscore the violent nature of certain ways of looking at things and people. Rosero's insistence in our bonds with, and responsibility towards, what can no longer, not yet, be seen or heard is key to create a space for the political that is not based on violence and exclusion. </p><p> To conclude, I argue that through Jacques Derrida's "impure impure history of ghosts" Rosero develops an aesthetically astonishing and politically crucial way of re-counting and accounting for the violence that a prolonged state of warfare continues to (re)produce in Latin America.</p>

<p> Esta disertaci&ocirc;n conecta la teorfa de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa de &acute;Angel Rama con la tradici&ocirc;n intelectual latinoamericana que aport&ocirc; sus caracterfsticas m&acirc;s distintivas. Las teorfas de Rama fueron influidas por dos tradiciones latinoamericanas. Una es de car&acirc;cter polftico y tiene su origen en la Reforma de C&ocirc;rdoba de 1918. La otra, de car&acirc;cter epistemol&ocirc;gico y se remonta a la d&eacute;cada de 1930, cuando comienza el culturalismo en Latinoam&eacute;rica. Mi investigaci&ocirc;n se ocupa de un grupo de intelectuales uruguayos que trabajaron en torno al semanario <i>Marcha</i> [1939-1974]: Carlos Quijano [1900-1984], Julio Castro [1908 -desaparecido en 1977] y Arturo Ardao [1912-2003]. Tambi&eacute;n me ocupo de dos intelectuales brasile&tilde;nos, Antonio C&acirc;ndido [1918] y Darcy Ribeiro [1922-1997], quienes continuaron con la tradici&ocirc;n culturalista que inauguraron en Latinoam&eacute;rica autores como Gilberto Freyre [1900-1987] y Fernando Ortiz [1881-1969]. Recuperar las redes intelectuales que acompa&tilde;naron el proceso de articulaci&ocirc;n de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa nos permite comprender mejor las tesis de Rama por dos razones. Primero, porque enmarca esta teorfa dentro de algunos de los debates polfticos y culturales m&acirc;s importantes de la Guerra Frfa. Y segundo, porque se aproxima a la manera como Rama comprendi&ocirc; la historia latinoamericana y su coyuntura polftica y socio-cultural durante las d&eacute;cadas de 1960 y 1970. </p><p> El objetivo de la teorfa de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa es describir el proceso por el cual las manifestaciones literarias latinoamericanas pasan de la dependencia a la autonomia cultural. Como el proceso descrito se despliega dentro de la estructura social, para comprenderlo es necesario analizar la interacci&ocirc;n entre las obras literarias y la sociedad que las rodea, de esta forma las ciencias sociales &ndash;antropologia, sociologia, economia&ndash; son instrumentos de an&acirc;lisis indispensables para comprender una obra o tradici&ocirc;n literaria. Este marco general de an&acirc;lisis es descrito por Rama como el culturalismo. </p><p> En el caso de Rama, una lectura desde los estudios literarios puede dar por sentado que el culturalismo fue tan s&ocirc;lo un m&eacute;todo de an&acirc;lisis alternativo al estructuralismo franc&eacute;s. Aunque esta perspectiva sea en parte correcta, no es del todo precisa. El culturalismo al que se refiere Rama es el mismo que practicaron los cientistas sociales en Latinoam&eacute;rica desde la d&eacute;cada de 1930. Recuperar la historicidad de la transculturaci&ocirc;n narrativa no solo nos permite comprender la genealogia de esta teoria sino recuperar y hacer visibles algunas tradiciones intelectuales contra-hegem&ocirc;nicas que desarticul&ocirc; la Guerra Fria en Latinoam&eacute;rica.</p>

Adolfo Bioy Casares es uno de los escritores mas relevantes que ha dado la literatura argentina aunclue muchas veces la critica lo ha olvidado considerandolo solo una prolongacion de uno de sus mas intimos amigos: Jorge Luis Borges. Tambien se lo ha acusado de escribir una literatura de evasion, desrealizadora y muy poco comprometida con la realidad. Este trabajo muestra las profundas conexiones que la obra de Bioy--especialmente seis de sus siete novelas publicadas hasta ahora--tiene con la realidad historica y social de la Argentina. Para ello se rastrean tres motivos de la topica literaria pero que aluden directamente a esta realidad que se ha mencionado. Me refiero al tema central de civilizacion y barbarie unido al motivo del viaje y al mito de la valentia. La recurrencia de estos motivos, de radical importancia en la cultura y la historia de este pais representa en las novelas de Bioy Casares el autocuestionamiento del autor frente a la realidad y tambien la estructura social generadora del texto.

<p> This dissertation is a social history regarding moviegoing and film audiences in Cali, Colombia, from the 1940s through the 1970s that aims to explore the meaning of movies in relation to the broader historical context and field of social forces in which they existed. This analysis of the intersection of the actual material conditions of existence of film-related practices and social imaginaries about movies is developed taking into account three main elements. The first one is the definition of film audiences by their film preferences, moviegoing practices, and socio-demographic characteristics. The second aspect is the role that moviegoing and moviegoing-related activities had within the broader cultural and political positioning of the filmgoers in relation to personal and collective, urban identities as demarcated by social class, age, and gender. The third element has to do with the geopolitical positioning of Cali, which poses very specific inquiries into the context of a non-capital city of a so-called underdeveloped country in Latin America. The analysis of these three aspects permit us to acknowledge and understand how moviegoing, the activities related to it, and the ways in which people thought of themselves as film spectators intertwined with urban, cultural, and political dynamics in modes that defined the diverse yet connected ways in which people identified themselves as urbanites, dealing with the conflicts between tradition and modernity in the historically and geographically situated context of an "underdeveloped" country and its struggles to reach the much desired and elusive modernity.</p>

Thesis--Université Paris III. / Includes bibliographical references and index.