This dissertation explores continuities and transformations in the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood in Cuba between 1902 and 1958. A dynamic and evolving process, the construction of Afro-Cuban womanhood encompassed the formal and informal practices that multiple individuals—from lawmakers and professionals to intellectuals and activists to workers and their families—established and challenged through public debates and personal interactions in order to negotiate evolving systems of power. The dissertation argues that Afro-Cuban women were integral to the formation of a modern Cuban identity. Studies of pre-revolutionary Cuba dichotomize race and gender in their analyses of citizenship and national identity formation. As such, they devote insufficient attention to the role of Afro-Cuban women in engendering social transformations. The dissertation’s chapters—on patriarchal discourses of racial progress, photographic representations, la mujer negra (the black woman), and feminist, communist, and labor movements—probe how patriarchy and assumptions of black racial inferiority simultaneously informed discourses of citizenship within a society that sought to project itself as a white masculine nation. Additionally, the dissertation examines how Afro-Cuban women’s writings and social activism shaped legal reforms, perceptions of cubanidad (Cuban identity), and Afro-Cuban community formation. The study utilizes a variety of sources: organizational records, letters from women to politicians, photographic representations, periodicals, literature, and labor and education statistics. Engaging the fields of Latin American history, African diaspora studies, gender studies, and visual culture studies, the dissertation maintains that an intersectional analysis of race, gender, and nation is integral to developing a nuanced understanding of the pre-revolutionary era. / text

<p>"Capitalizing Subjects: Free African-Descended Women of Means in Xalapa, Veracruz during the Long Seventeenth Century" explores the socioeconomic worlds of free women of means. I find that they owned slaves, engaged in cross-caste relations, managed their estates, maintained profitable social networks with other regional elites, and attempted to secure the economic futures of their children. Through an examination of notarial, ecclesiastical, and viceregal sources, I highlight the significant role this group played in the local economy and social landscape. My work demonstrates that free women of African descent engaged in specific types of economic endeavors that spoke to their investments in particular kinds of capital (economic, social, and cultural) that allowed them greater visibility and social legitimacy than previously documented. This dissertation, further, challenges a historiography that has over-emphasized the roles of race and gender in determining the lives of all people of African descent in colonial Latin America.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This dissertation argues that the civilian "political class" played an understudied yet decisive role in toppling Brazil's 1964-1985 military dictatorship. In contrast with existing explanations for the regime's fall, which emphasize either the isolated initiative of the generals or the independent resistance of civil society, this dissertation highlights the inadvertent opposition of civilian politicians, connected by familial and social ties to both the military and social movements. Between 1968 and 1985, the relationship between all three shifted significantly, as politicians first resisted the military's challenge to their presumed right to rule on behalf of the masses and later came to defend a role for those masses in ruling the nation. It offers a deeper understanding of the dispositions, worldview, and behavioral codes that united politicians regardless of ideology or party and turned them against the regime that many of them had helped bring to power. </p><p>In contrast to the Southern Cone, where the military sought to abolish political activity, Brazilian officers cast themselves as democracy's saviors. Yet even as they maintained elections, they also imposed authoritarian reforms on politicians. The first four chapters offer the most detailed study to date of this project and politicians' indignant reaction. In 1968, as the regime repressed leftist student activists, politicians, tied to students by blood and social class, took to the streets to defend their children in a nearly forgotten act of defiance. Then, when the military demanded the prosecution of a congressman for insulting them, Congress refused to lift his immunity. In response, the military placed Congress in recess, arrested several politicians, removed many others from office, and decided to turn their reforms into tutelage. Amidst the repression, a few politicians opted for courageous denunciation, but most chose to wait out the storm until the generals believed them sufficiently cowed. Still others adopted the strategy proved most successful - working within the rules to build their careers despite constraints.</p><p>The final three chapters show how the military's project collapsed amidst bolder challenges from politicians, especially in the vitally important state of São Paulo. In 1974, after five years of breathtaking economic growth, the powerless opposition party decisively won legislative elections. This study offers fresh insights into the opposition's success by examinging its novel appeal to working class voters. By 1978, restiveness in São Paulo spread to the military's own allied party, as in São Paulo they nominated a dissident gubernatorial candidate against the generals' wishes. As the regime turned toward political opening, in 1979-1980, opposition politicians took to the streets to protect striking workers from repression, demonstrating a greater acceptance of popular mobilization. Politicians changed under military rule, but rather than collaborating with a demobilizing regime, many allied with an emerging civil society to oppose it.</p><p>This study draws on transcripts and audio recordings of legislative speeches, electoral court records, public opinion surveys, police records, classified Brazilian intelligence reports, newspapers, and correspondence from the foreign embassies. It cites the personal archives of key politicians, as well as oral histories, biographies, and memoirs. The sources enable a dynamic and culturally informed analysis of the "political class" to explain how, through resistance to tutelage and the acceptance of popular participation, civilian politicians helped topple the military regime and lay the groundwork for an unprecedented expansion of citizenship in the following decades.</p> / Dissertation

<p> After the United States entered World War II, the nation began a technical assistance program and a military aid program in Paraguay as part of its Latin American foreign policy. The U.S. rooted its technical assistance program in an idealized narrative of U.S. agricultural history, in which land-grant colleges and the agricultural reforms of the New Deal had contributed to prosperity and democracy. The extension of this American Way to other countries would strengthen prosperity, encourage democratic reforms, and prevent fascist and Communist subversion. The U.S. also extended military aid to Paraguay to draw Paraguay's military away from its fascist sympathies. Over the next twelve years, policymakers debated the relationship between technical assistance and military aid, their effects on Paraguay, and their compatibility with U.S. foreign policy. Initially, U.S. policymakers saw the programs as mutually reinforcing. By the mid-1950s, however, the promise of agrarian democracy remained unfulfilled in Paraguay.</p>

abstract: This study analyzed archaeological residential inventories from the center of Sauce and its hinterlands to address the possible appearance of markets and the structure of exchange during the Middle Postclassic period (A.D. 1200-1350) in south-central Veracruz, Mexico. Economic development is rarely the result of a coherent strategy either on the part of managing or consuming elites or on the part of the average consumer. Instead, a combination of strategies and overlapping exchange systems provided the context, rather than any one explanation, for how commercial market exchange develops. Identifying the context is challenging because economies have multiple exchange mechanisms, which require clearly defined expectations that separate spatial and network (distributional) data. This separation is vital because different exchange mechanisms such as centralized redistribution versus central-place marketing produce similar spatial patterns. Recent innovations in identifying exchange mechanisms use network (distributional) instead of spatial expectations. Based on this new body of knowledge, new quantitative methods were developed to distinguish between exchange through social networks versus market exchange for individual items based on comparisons of household inventories, later combining this information with spatial and contextual analyses. First, a Bayesian-inspired Monte Carlo computer simulation was designed to identify exchange mechanisms, using all household items including cooking utensils, serving dishes, chipped stone tools, etc., from 65 residential units from Sauce and its hinterland. Next, the socioeconomic rank of households, GIS spatial analyses, and quality assessments of pottery and other items were used to evaluate social and political aspects of exchange and consumption. The results of this study indicated that most products were unrestricted in access, and spatial analyses showed they were acquired in a market near Sauce. Few restrictions on most of the polychromes, chipped stone, and assorted household items (e.g., spindle whorls) lend strong support to commoner household prominence in developing markets. However, there were exceptions. Dull Buff Polychrome was associated with the Sauce center; analyses showed that its access was restricted through social networks. "Cookie-cutter" style figurines and incense burners also showed restriction. Restricted items found in Sauce and wealthier residences indicate enduring political and social inequalities within market development. For Sauce, a combination of elite and commoner household interests was crucial in supporting the growth of commercial exchange rather than a top-down directive. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2011

abstract: This dissertation investigates socio-economic strategies adopted by a small craftworking community situated on the edge of one of the earliest, largest and most complex cities in Mesoamerica. The focus of investigation is San Jose 520, a hamlet located on the southeastern margin of Teotihuacan and occupied primarily during the Tlamimilolpa and Xolalpan phases (ca. A.D. 200-500). Its inhabitants were potters of low socio-economic status living in small, architecturally simple residential structures. The investigation complements much more numerous studies of higher-status groups residing in Teotihuacan's famous apartment compounds, much larger and architecturally more formal structures clustered primarily within built-up parts of the city. The founding residents of San Jose 520 might have initially been immigrants, arriving at Teotihuacan after most of the city was already filled in and occupied, and therefore settling in a spatially marginal area with limited potential for farming. Archaeological field and lab investigations demonstrate that they adopted ceramic production as a strategy of economic survival in a competitive urban system. They specialized in the manufacture of the outcurving bowl--a vessel widely used at Teotihuacan for food service and certain ritual activities. At smaller scales of production, these potters also made other types of serving and ritual vessels and figurines. Evidence relating to mortuary and domestic rituals indicates participation in a number of the rituals typical of other sectors of Teotihuacan society, but not all. The most general goal of this investigation is to improve understanding of how socially and spatially marginal peoples possessing low economic status developed and exploited viable economic niches in pre-industrial urban systems. The San Jose 520 potters appear dynamic in their economic adjustment--in part by enhancing their production system over time through the adoption of various specialized pot-making tools (some as yet undocumented for Teotihuacan), and to some extent by modifying their product line, they survived for many generations. Nevertheless, they never succeeded in significantly raising their economic status; at the time of their apparent disappearance sometime in the Xolalpan phase, these potters and their households continued to constitute a case study of urban poverty in a massive pre-industrial city. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Anthropology 2011

abstract: Antonio López de Santa Anna (1794-1876) is considered as one of the biggest villains of Mexican history. This frequent president in the first decades of Independence of México is the main character portrayed in the novels analyzed in this dissertation: Su alteza serenísima (1895-1896) by Ireneo Paz, Santa Anna, el dictador resplandeciente (1936) by Rafael F. Muñoz, El seductor de la patria (1999) by Enrique Serna, and México mutilado (2006) by Francisco Martín Moreno. Many Mexican novelists have tackled iconic personalities from Mexican history. However, based upon the historical context that occurred within their lifetime, each author takes a different approach to the story and characters they portray. In the novel Su alteza serenísima, Santa Anna is presented with identical characteristics as in the official history. That was written for other liberals, like Paz, the author. In El dictador resplandeciente an image almost romantic of the leader is presented through the valorization of his role in history. The narrator shows the contradictions of Santa Anna, who was a hero and villain. Santa Anna is presented from different perspectives in El seductor de la patria. The narrator uses Santa Anna's voice projecting a consciousness of the future's judgment of history upon his actions and the voices of "the others" that live around him. In México mutilado Santa Anna is presented from the same perspective as the official history, although other traitors are added to distribute the fault among various important figures. This dissertation works through the analysis of the discursive mechanisms used in these novels, of the configuration of the message that they wish to convey to the reader, of the level of re-writing official history, of the perspective from which each author is reviewing the history, of the recount of what historical aspects and voices were chosen for inclusion in each novel, and through the evaluation of how the authors recover the figure of Santa Anna. This study follows an eclectic model of cultural commentary, taking up critical concepts from Latin American literary scholars such as Perkowska, Pons, Jitrik, Aínsa, among others. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Spanish 2011

The aim of my project is to show how the lives, strategies and attitudes of Huguenot printers of the late sixteenth century both reflected and influenced the self-image of Protestant Europeans. Historians of the book such as Roger Chartier and Adrian Johns have argued that the process of printing includes several components which are easily overlooked by historians interested in exploring thoughts and attitudes. My project attempts to put these insights to practical use by demonstrating how printers were as integral to the process of reading as were readers and writers. I investigate the lives, social networks, and business strategies of a pair of successful Huguenot printers of Geneva, Jean Crespin and Eustache Vignon. My investigation shows how they relied on cooperative, international networks to practice their business and that this fostered a practical, cosmopolitan attitude among them. I then examine Jean Crespin’s most famous work, the Livre des Martyrs, showing how it supplied the needs of his readers for a sense of meaning an community. I show how this work changed over time in response to changing needs and circumstances, as seen most dramatically in the version which Eustache Vignon produced after his partner’s death. Finally, I examine how Vignon – along with other Protestant printers of his time – began to produce books about the New World. I argue that these New World Works, reflecting the printers’ cosmopolitan perspective, promoted a more ecumenical vision of Christianity and a universal ethic based on kindness and justice.

xiv, 219 p. : ill. (some col.) A print copy of this title is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This dissertation examines popular responses to property rights reforms in Mexico by comparing two ejidos in the southeastern state of Yucatan. As part of a series of neoliberal reforms enacted in the 1980s and 1990s in Mexico, the federal government altered the existing property rights regime to enable the division and privatization of previously protected communal land. I argue that the responses to the reforms were contingent on the historical development of institutional rules, political and economic practices, and cultural values. In the first case study, Mani­, ejidatarios accepted the new rules while simultaneously expressing concern over changes in the process of becoming an ejidatario, a rights holder making land tenure decisions. Community members used the new rules to guarantee access to land and the ejido system by purchasing individualized parcelas of ejido land in part because they gained material benefits, such as secure access to state-funded irrigation systems. The rise in the remittance-economy and population pressures increased local demand for land and provided the income for local buyers. In Hunucma, the other case study, ejidatarios contested the state-imposed rules as violations of their traditional usos y costumbres. They fought against land sales for the construction of a new airport, rejecting the legitimacy of the formal property system because the new rules had been manipulated by state officials and land speculators. In doing so the ejidatarios revived and re-deployed historical cross- ejido alliances and habits of militancy and mobilization. Both cases reveal that property rights regimes are more than institutions but rather political configurations of control over resources, whereby the distribution of rights and subjective interpretation of the rules and practices determine local responses. / Adviser: Dennis Galvan

viii, 138 p. / This thesis examines casual storytelling among Mexican and Mexican American women in Oaxaca, Mexico and Eugene, Oregon. I focus on narratives involving powerful female protagonists and explore the ways in which storytelling can represent a negotiation of power in informants' lives. Taking a feminist and performance-centered approach, I analyze informants' perceptions of power and gender dynamics in their own lives and the lives of the iconic characters discussed. Analysis is based upon participant-observation, in-depth interviews, casual conversations, popular culture artifacts, and library and archival research. My research indicates that prose narratives are popular and discussed frequently among the communities I interacted with. Female icons function to shape virtuous feminine behavior and chastise immoral behaviors. Women form and articulate multiple identities and communicate about power and gender dynamics through discussion of these protagonists. / Committee in charge: Dr. Lisa Gilman, Chairperson; Dr. Carol Silverman, Member; Dr. Robert Haskett, Member