In Guatemala, a relatively recent education policy articulates the stateâs recognition of Guatemala as a multiethnic, multicultural and multilingual country and mandates intercultural, bilingual education in areas where indigenous languages are widely spoken. Education policy is developed and decreed at the state level but implemented in notably divergent Mayan communities, where numerous variables affect how teachers interpret the stateâs directives. Quantitative assessments that gauge the effectiveness of bilingual programs minimize the role of teachers as local agents imparting dual language instruction, while anthropological assessments generalize across linguistic communities or focus on the linguistic and cultural revitalization efforts of the larger Mayan movement. Ethnographic research in specific communities highlights the myriad ways teachers embody the spirit of the policy by interpreting it appropriately for the needs of students and the linguistic and cultural context in which students are learning. Interviews and participant observation conducted in the Kâicheâ-speaking town of Nahualá, Sololá reveal that the strength of the programâs implementation locally is largely made possible by teachers' own initiative and commitment to promoting K'iche' language and Mayan culture. Although teachers abide by a state directive that is sometimes contested by parents and often complicated by a lack of resources and children's wide range of language skills, teachers avail themselves of a certain degree of latitude within the national curriculum. Bilingual teachers in Nahualá interpret the stateâs directive in community-specific ways and thus fill the most influential role in the school system.

In recent decades, the United States government enacted immigration policies that transformed migrant workers into undocumented immigrants. Illegality is a highly racialized status, as more than half of Mexican and Central American people in the U.S. are undocumented. Immigration laws that purport to be color-blind recreate older racial and ethnic discriminatory systems. Today, being an undocumented immigrant in the United States has repercussions far beyond administrative status. Immigration enforcement agencies and employers utilize the threat of deportation to suppress the efforts of workers to organize for improved working conditions. In this way, illegality functions to maintain a fearful and compliant workforce. The U.S. government enforces immigration policies that dehumanize and commodify millions of people, and relegate millions of workers to the most vulnerable occupations in exploitative industries.

<p> This essay presents the life and works for solo piano of Portuguese composer and pianist &Oacute;scar da Silva (1870&ndash;1958). It is the first publication dedicated solely to &Oacute;scar da Silva in the English language. It also presents the first chronological catalogue of da Silva&rsquo;s solo piano works. It includes both published and unpublished works, encompassing all of the extant music available in several libraries in Portugal. &Oacute;scar da Silva studied with Adolf Ruthardt and Carl Reinecke in Leipzig and with Clara Schumann in Frankfurt. He was the most prolific composer of piano music of his generation in Portugal, and one of the most prolific ever in Portuguese piano music. His life is marked by the end of the monarchy in Portugal, the rise and fall of the first republic, and by Estado Novo. His music ranges from German romanticism to modernism. His works are also emblematic of saudosism, a Portuguese nationalistic movement not previously studied in music. </p><p> This essay was submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Musical Arts in Piano Performance, at The Hartt School, University of Hartford, on March 23, 2015.</p>

This dissertation presents a study of the narrative of the Mexican writer Jose Revueltas (1914-1976), with special attention given to three of his novels: Los muros de agua (1941), Los días terrenales (1949) and El apando (1969). Our analysis explores two fundamental aspects found in the aforementioned novels. First, we posit the presence of a situation of idialogy, a conceptual notion of our own creation that reflects discursive expressions which tend toward ideological marginality of characterization and introspection as a narrative vehicle. Idialogy is the synthetic result of M. Bakhtin's concepts of ideology and the dialogic. Idialogy is reflected in novelistic texts through discursive practices that include dialogized interior monologues and internal dialogues in order to create discourses of resistance that are opposed to a dominant discursive situation. In our view, the character structure of Revueltas' novels responds to this idialogical situation as they are eminently marginal. The second aspect analyzed is the relation of time and space in the novels in question. In order to approach this aspect, we will refer to the Bakhtinian concept of chronotope and to Joseph Frank's idea of spatiality in the form. Revueltas' novels display a tendency to condense narrative times and spaces. Through this condensation one observes at once another tendency which is to reduce or retract spaces and detain time. Therefore, time becomes an evocation of the past and space takes precise geometrical forms. In particular, we study the formation and development of a chronotope of the prison. From the prison space of the Islas Mari as in Los muros de agua to a background of political and ideological clandestineness in Los días terrenales, ending with the presence of a reductionist carceral geometry in El apando, the chronotope of the prison serves as a framework for the inscription of counterdiscourses of the marginal elements in Revueltas' novels.

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A general disregard for literary works of eighteenth-century Latin America continues to characterize scholars attitudes towards the era. The prevailing past and current scholarly approaches to these works have portrayed them as second-rate, overly Baroque and valueless. I argue that these negative perceptions have remained stagnant not because of their innate inferiority, but rather because of many scholars inadequacies in correctly interpreting their intentionality. To further this assertion, I focus on the analysis of the famed eighteenth-century playwright Eusebio Vela and his play Comedia nueva del apostolado en las Indias martirio de un cacique (Comedia nueva del apostolado). I analyze the ways in which the intentionality within Comedia nueva del apostolado becomes more apparent when it is understood as a participant in the large-scale cultural indoctrination campaign promoted by the Bourbon monarchy and influenced by the Enlightenment. The primary sources I reference that allow for enlightenment-influenced elements to surface within the play include José Antonio Maravalls Politica directiva en el teatro ilustrado and Ignacio de Luzáns La Poética o reglas de la poesía en general y de sus principales especies. My textual analysis covers the ways in which Comedia nueva del apostolado indoctrinates Bourbon values through historical revisionism and character construction. By appropriating a foundational story and manipulating characters to reflect model subjects, Vela was able to promote an ideal Bourbon society where monarch-vassal relations were redefined, natives were given a societal role and traditionally powerful sectors of society were limited in their authoritative scope.

<p> In the two decades prior to the 2008 financial crisis, the Mexican government pursued policies aimed at liberalizing markets, while simultaneously trying to ensure the stability of the peso. These policies consisted of monetary and fiscal controls to keep inflation low and free trade agreements to reduce Mexico's dependence on the United States. The policies significantly reduced the country's public deficit and were implemented in hopes that they would help reduce the country's exposure to currency crises. </p><p> Yet, despite all provisions the Mexican government put in place, the country's peso still lost two percent of its value in the first three days following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the US-based investment firm. The loss was significant given the average appreciation of the peso in the months leading up to the crisis was one percent <i>per month,</i> and given that not enough time had passed to fully understand the impact that bankruptcy would have had on Mexico. By the following Monday, the peso recovered all of its lost value, suggesting that investors were uncertain about the true impact the events unfolding in the United States would have on Mexico's economy. It also suggested that the uncertainty and negative sentiment within the market during the initial week of the global crisis played a stronger role in the rapid depreciation and recovery of the peso than changes in market fundamentals. </p><p> Using an inductive analysis of the historical events, this thesis suggests the circumstances in which sentiment engendered by mainstream media and distributed through digital channels during the financial crisis could have contributed to the dramatic short-term swings in the price of the peso. Specifically, this paper focuses on the new, digital information technologies, their use among investors as a means for financial research, and the role of high-frequency trading (HFT) algorithms in initiating information cascades. HFT algorithms account for nearly 70 percent of daily trading volume in financial markets and can magnify negative market sentiment among rational investors. Utilizing historical trading data for the peso and headlines and tweets published by the Thomson Reuters news group during the crisis, I seek to illustrate the correlations between market sentiment manifest in digital media and the price movements of the peso, indicating possible herd behavior tendencies in the form of information cascades. </p><p> Though it is not possible to empirically separate the market movements of informed decision-makers from the information cascades of investors and HFT algorithms reacting to media, the fact that information cascades can and do exist as demonstrated by specific examples in this paper has significant implications for the Mexican peso. The existence of information cascades implies that having strong macroeconomic fundamentals is no longer an adequate safe guard against the immediate impacts of external crises. As social media becomes the main source of breaking news and market sentiment for mainstream media and investors, it becomes vital for emerging countries such as Mexico to monitor social platforms for sentiment related to the domestic economy in order to proactively address investor pessimism. Finally, emerging country governments can utilize these platforms to push out relevant and truthful information about the economy in order to diminish investor uncertainty and minimize the impact of externally-induced information cascades.</p>