To counter regnant arguments in the historiography about the putative historical “forgetting” of Afro-Platines in their nations, “‘¡Pobres negros!’” explores the various social representations and commemorations devoted to blacks in the River Plate over the period from the mid-1800s to the 1930s. While never uniformly or consistently positive, over the nineteenth century these social remembrances nevertheless experienced a radical transformation. Early intellectual nation builders among the Generation of 1837 associated blacks with the forces of social, political, and cultural “barbarism.” These representations remained a part of the national memory until well into the late 1800s in liberal and progressive circles. For these thinkers, European immigration was the solution to all of Argentina’s ills. However, starting in the middle of the nineteenth century, blacks in Argentina and Uruguay became the objects of more favorable remembrances, especially among nationalists. Blacks were now often depicted and historically remembered (and reimagined) as Platine Creoles and national heroes. Their white compatriots remembered that Afro-Platines, for instance, fought for and died defending their nations, and often lamented the fate of the “Poor blacks!” By dying for the cause of national sovereignty, blacks were seen as having vanished from the national scene and became the convenient objects of Creole nostalgia. National leaders like Bartolomé Mitre, the founder of the modern Argentine state and its historiography, nostalgically recalled and reimagined them as loyal patriots and heroes. Especially in Argentina, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this nostalgia was further encouraged by the social and political problems often blamed on foreigners, Jews, and radicals (i.e., non-Argentines). In this socio-political climate, therefore, Afro-Platines were fondly depicted in sites of social memory as loyal sons of the nation, as opposed to foreign anti-patriots and subversives. Even if incorporated as inferiors into the national imaginary, Afro-Platines were nonetheless variously commemorated by Creole elites at the turn of the nineteenth century (and, indeed, beyond).

This project examines the ways in which gendered discourses were strategically deployed by working women in their own interests during the years of Cardenismo. One result of this activism is the fluorescence of a number of court cases in the capitol of Oaxaca in south-central Mexico, Ciudad Oaxaca de Juárez. Hundreds of working women sued former employers between 1929 and 1938, which were unusually high numbers not seen before or since. Offenses cited include nonpayment of wages, firing without sufficient cause, and “other offenses” – usually quite juicy in the details. The majority of the women worked as household domestic help or as shop clerks in the market, and were almost uniformly young, illiterate, and poor. Moreover, a great many of them had recently migrated to the city center from rural indigenous communities. Their testimonies cited revolutionary narratives of inclusion and labor rights. As indigenous women they embodied mexicanidad, or “authentic Mexicanness”, as promoted by the revolutionary state in a bid to create a unified national identity. Describing themselves in terms consistent with revolutionary values of womanly abnegation, they claimed labor rights as upstanding members of a revolutionary state. They simultaneously reproduced and challenged gendered discourses, which were deployed within ongoing social negotiation of the meaning and shape of revolutionary change. By citing accepted notions of gendered behavior, testifiers were able to expand official understandings of appropriate social roles for women. As poor, indigenous, and female, they testified from a multiply marginalized social position. Nevertheless, they petitioned the court for labor rights as women, as citizens, and as workers – all at once. Public understandings of proper roles for women expanded over time to include the two latter categories. This project argues that textual analysis of narratives at this formative moment within women’s labor rights in Mexico will result in a better historical understanding of their role and agency in changing social norms and structures.

<p> Though alphabetic script had become a prevailing communicative form for keeping records and recounting histories in New Spain by the turn of the seventeenth century, pre-Columbian and early colonial artistic and scribal traditions, including pictorial, oral, and performative discourses still held great currency for indigenous communities during the later colonial period. The pages of a corpus of indigenous documents created during the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries known as the Techialoyan manuscripts abound with vibrantly painted watercolor depictions, alphabetic inscriptions, and vivid invocations of community elders&rsquo; speeches and embodied experiences. Designed in response to challenging viceregal policies that threatened land and autonomy, the Techialoyans sought to protect and preserve indigenous ways of life by fashioning community members as the noble descendants of illustrious rulers from the pre-Columbian past. The documents register significant events in the histories of communities, often creating a sense of continuity between the colonial present and that of antiquity. What is more, they provide the limits of the territory within a depicted landscape using a reflexive, ambulatory model. Representations of place evoke ritual practices of walking the boundaries from the perspective of the ground, enabling readers to acquire different forms of knowledge as they move through the pages of the book and the envisioned landscape to which it points. The different communicative forms evident in the Techialoyans, including pictorial, alphabetic, oral, and performative modes contribute to understandings of indigenous literacies of the later colonial period by demonstrating the diverse resources and methods upon which indigenous leaders drew to preserve community histories and territories. </p><p> The Techialoyans present an innovative artistic and scribal tradition that drew upon pre-Columbian, early colonial, and European conventions, as well as the contemporary late-colonial pictorial climate. The artists consciously juxtaposed traditional indigenous materials and conventions with those of the contemporary colonial moment to simultaneously create a sense of both old and new. Not only did the documents recount indigenous communities&rsquo; histories and affirm their noble heritages, they also proclaimed possession of an artistic and scribal tradition that was on par with that of their revered ancestors, thereby strengthening corporate identity and demonstrating their legitimacy and autonomy within the colonial regime.</p><p>

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This dissertation addresses the works of art of two free men of color, Vicente Escobar (1762-1834) and José Antonio Aponte (date of birth unknown-1812), who lived in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Havana. I offer the first consideration of these two artists together in order to illuminate the scope of visual artistic practice of free people of color prior to the foundation of the fine arts academy, the Academia de San Alejandro, in 1818. Creole and Spanish elites who supported the foundation of the school expressed concern that blacks had been “dominating” the arts and excluded them from studying there. I posit that both Escobar and Aponte worked as self-aware artists prior to the elite project of the fine arts academy, which followed an unclear path after its foundation. Escobar painted the portraits of colonial society’s Spanish and creole elites. The works span the dates from 1785 to 1829. Aponte’s only known work of art – a so-called libro de pinturas (book of paintings) found in 1812 – no longer exists. However, a textual description of the book survives in the court record that documents his trial for conspiring to plan slave rebellions across the island. Aponte collaged together an array of images to depict a “universal black history” that we are now forced to imagine as the original work of art has been lost. I argue that both artists, through their artistic practices, embodied a self-awareness as artists that they directed to transformative ends. These artistic practices – as advanced by the works themselves as well as how they were produced and received – involved the articulation of two axes. The first axis moved from the representation of the visible, in the case of Escobar’s portraits, to the representation of the invisible, in the case of Aponte’s book of paintings. The second axis measures how the works themselves could be “historically effective” – following T.J. Clark – and transform a colonial black identity, operating on the scale of the individual to that of a larger community. For Escobar, his artistic practice was personal; for Aponte, his artistic vision extended beyond himself. / History of Art and Architecture

This dissertation traces the history of Mexico City’s municipal markets from a patchwork of sites of customary trade dating from the colonial era to a network of state-controlled modernist halls in the 1950s. It shows how, as small-scale vendors of tomatoes, straw hats, charcoal and all manner of every-day necessities plied their trade and fought to protect their livelihoods, their interactions with the government and other social groups and classes transformed the city’s markets and shaped the contours of popular politics in modern Mexico. More broadly, it uncovers vendors’ role in the dual process of economic development and state formation. / History

<p> This dissertation explores the evolution of political activism among Haitians in the United States from the formation of Haitian New York in the late 1950s to the return of Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti in 1994. It traces the efforts of Haitian activists to build bridges connecting New York and Miami to the grassroots organizations in Haiti, finding a considerable degree of success in their efforts to construct a transnational movement that had a substantial impact both in Haiti and in the United States. Shedding additional light on the interconnected history of Haiti and the United States, this dissertation also adds to the growing historiography on immigrant activism and international campaigns for democracy and human rights. </p><p> At the outset, politics in Haitian New York was splintered among competing factions, though by the early 1970s there began to form a somewhat unified anti-Duvalier opposition movement. The arrival of the Haitian "boat people" in South Florida in the early 1970s continued the evolution of Haitian politics in the United States, triggering a refugee crisis that drew the attention of the activists in New York and forcing a reconsideration of political vision and strategy that had previously been solely concerned with the overthrow of the Duvalier dictatorship. The grassroots resistance in Haiti and in the United States saw a slight opening with the arrival of President Jimmy Carter, but with Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, came a wave of repression in Haiti and stringent new policies toward Haitian refugees. The uprisings of 1985 and 1986 that toppled the Duvalier dictatorship transformed Haitian politics at home and abroad, enabling an expanded and tightened network of activism connecting New York, Miami, and Haiti, which grew from 1987 to 1989. The years 1990 and 1991 were the pinnacle moment for the linked popular movements in New York, Miami, and Haiti, though Haitian activists were soon forced to pour their energy into the overlapping campaigns aimed at reversing the coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and defending the new wave of refugees that the coup produced.</p>

<p> Contrary to Texas Ranger myth, Stephen F. Austin's settlers were not the first Texas Rangers to ride across Texas. As early as the 1540s, almost three hundred years before Austin arrived in Texas, mounted Spanish subjects on the frontiers of northern New Spain ranged, scouted, pursued, and waged offensive war against Chichimeca enemies. These methods were employed and accepted actions on the hostile frontier, and were also the characteristics Texans so highly revere in Ranger traditional lore. Several of these colonial military and ranching families from Nuevo Leon and Coahuila, settled Texas in the first half of the 18^th century. They intermarried and developed kinship bonds and were community leaders. In the 1820s, and 1830s Spanish surnamed descendants of early military men and ranchers became acquainted with newly arrived Anglo-European settlers. Friendships and alliances were forged based on political ideology and even kinship. As the winds of rebellion blew, several of the leading military and ranching families chose to fight for Independence in the Army of the Republic. They also joined the ranks of the Republic of Texas Rangers, and finally the Texas Rangers. Despite their loyalty, they lost political powers as more Anglo-Europeans arrived. Tejanos lost property, status and ultimately their right to be identified as Texas Rangers. The object of this work is to contribute a small piece to the literature regarding the development and evolution of ranging traditions from a southern to northern frontier perspective. The military and law enforcement traditions of colonial era New Spanish soldiers and ranchers were passed on to their Tejano descendants through continuous participation in ranging and ranching activities within their communities. Tejanos participated in the Independence of Texas, the Republic Rangers and the Texas Rangers throughout the 19^th century, and based on connections with Anglo settlers may have taught Anglos mounted ranging technique, and how to survive on the Texas frontier.</p>