This thesis is an analysis of Octavio Paz's essay, El laberinto de la soledad, and its relationship to the thematic content of Rudolfo Anaya's novels, Bless Me, Ultima and Heart of Aztlan. It discusses the concept of Mexican solitude and the search for identity. In the introduction a biographical summary of Paz's life and literary accomplishments illustrates the importance of historical events in the formation of his understanding of human solitude and alienation in the modern world. As a surrealist he concludes that Mexican solitude is an expression of an inner conflict of opposing forces which can only be overcome through poetic inspiration and the discovery of one's other self. The first chapter discusses the thematic content of Paz's El laberinto de la soledad in terms of the Mexican's character and behavioral patterns including dissimulation, denigration, and self-denial. In his solitude the Mexican experiences a sense of alienation, inferiority, and a loss of individual identity. In the second chapter an analysis of the main characters in Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima and Heart of Aztlan reveals that solitude and the search for identity involve the spiritual reconciliation of forces which adversely affect the Chicano's relationship with the land and the people of Aztlan. It involves the formation of an individual as well as a collective identity through self-awareness, love, spiritual harmony and a common sense of purpose. The third chapter discusses the thematic similarities and differences between the three literary works. The similarities include the idea of separation and the need to search for a positive, meaningful identity. The chicano novel offers a practical solution to the identity problem through the resolution of conflict and the establishment of a collective identity based upon shared experience and common purpose. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-05, Section: A, page: 1783. / Major Professor: Louis C. Bourgeois. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.

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This paper analyzes the effects of minimum wages on employment and the wage distribution in Colombia from 2006 to 2010. Specifically, it uses multinomial logistic regressions to explore the effects of the minimum wage on the probability of being unemployed, employed or inactive and on the odds of being a formal worker, an informal employee or self-employed. Unconditional quantile regressions are employed to observe the effect of the minimum wage on the gender differentiated wage distribution. The study uses data from the new National Household Survey (Gran Encuesta Integrada de Hogares, GEIH) which contains significant changes relative to the previous Survey and has not been used for analytic purposes yet. Results show that increases in the minimum wage raise both the probabilities of being employed and unemployed relative to inactive, but the effect on unemployment is larger. Informal workers are more affected by increases in the minimum wage, although the odds of having either a formal or an informal job relative to being an independent worker decline with a raise in the wage. In terms of wages, for male and female workers, increases in the minimum wage tend to reduce the reported wages at the tails of the distribution, while increasing the salaries of those in the middle, creating a compression effect. In addition a simple simulation showed that increasing the minimum wage results in reductions in wage inequality at the right tail of the distribution but not at the left tail, which has important inequality consequences for poor and low-skilled workers.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-03, Section: A, page: 0951. Adviser: Luis Davila. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed March 21, 2007)."

<p>On 23 January 1958, Marcos Pérez Jiménez was ousted in a "democratic revolution" whose emblematic images featured a vast public housing project built by the dictator in the heart of in downtown Caracas, next to the Presidential Palace, Ministry of Defense, and Congress. Officially named "2 December" to memorialize the coup that consolidated his rule, the neighborhood and its residents suffered harshly was renamed the "23 January" (23 de enero) in honor of the 1958 revolution. This study investigates the relationship between this parish and the Venezuelan democratic system that would, over the following decades, be praised for its stability and was believed to have made the urban popular sectors dependent on party and state. This study disrupts such an interpretation by exploring how oppositional politics, forms of street protest, and voting combined to produce evolving understandings of political participation and legitimate contestation. </p><p>Three key moments anchor the story told in this dissertation: the transition to electoral democracy during the 1958 revolution and its aftermath; the late 1970s and early 1980s period of structural crisis that lead to dramatic seizures of public vehicles; and the 1989 Caracazo massacre in which Venezuela's newly elected President shocked the nation by ending the country's largest urban protest with a massacre that killed hundreds. The dissertation ends with reflections on the continuity of in political and protest behavior in el 23 under former military rebel Hugo Chávez who was elected to the presidency in 1998. While the urban popular sectors' are depicted by some as having been awoken to national politics under Chavez, this study establishes powerful continuities going back to 1958 in this stronghold of Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution."</p><p>A comprehensive and systematic canvas of thirty years' of newspaper and periodical sources on el 23 provides a firm foundation for the narrative. It also draws on primary sources from the Banco Obrero, the US National Archives, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, while making extensive use of polling data and electoral statistics from 1958 to 1989. This archival work allowed for the success of extensive oral histories and ethnographic observation carried out in the 23 de enero over ten months between 2004 and 2005.</p> / Dissertation

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago Dept. of Comparative Literature, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-06, Section: A, page: . Adviser: Alejandro Lugo. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-208) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

The Road Less Traveled is about engaging film from a geographic perspective, specifically analyzing the underlying structures, cultural contexts and forces affecting the movements of the two main protagonists of the film The Motorcycle Diaries. The focus at the individual scale aims to reveal not just how and where, but why people chose to move where they do. The paper is divided into five main chapters: mobility as resistance, mobility as structured process in the form of motility and moorings, forced mobility as distinctive from chosen mobility, mobility as discovery and a final body chapter that demonstrates examples of all these types of mobility. These sections will mainly flow as neoformal, mostly chronologic descriptions of the film text, but will also occasionally reference the written text of the two diaries on which the movie is based. While the main character of the film is Che Guevara, no attention will be dedicated to his revolutionary life outside of the time frame encompassed by the film. / text

This dissertation is a historical and a sociopolitical approach to Bertalicia Peralta's poetic and narrative discourse. Our analysis includes selections from her poetic collections Dos poemas, Himno a la alegria, Libro de las fabulas, Casa flotante, Piel de gallina, Invasion U.S.A., 1989: Cronicas de una memoria and three short stories from her book Puros cuentos. The particular contribution of this study is to recognize and introduce Peralta as an outstanding writer, poet, journalist and educator. In chapter one, we approach this study with the help of a personal interview, direct correspondence with the author and studies on revolutionary philosophies. Chapter two centers its attention on Panamanian history and how it's reflected in Peralta's work. The third chapter focuses on Panamanian sociopolitical issues. It shows the strategies and conventions employed by the author. Among the critical references used to support Peralta's commitment to humanity in general are the ideas of James Iffland, Louis Althusser, Goran Therborn, Terry Eagleton, John Beverley, Marc Zimmerman and others. Finally, in the fourth chapter the works of Mariblanca Staff Wilson, CODEHUCA's research on human rights and literary feminist criticism are used in order to illustrate and represent the role of women in Peralta's work. This dissertation concludes accepting her written discourse as a literary expression that promotes an understanding of our society. For the above reasons, her work is a true literary contribution, worthy of scholarly attention.