Neoliberal has bee largely responsible for the creation of a narcoestado. As the Mexican state abandon its previous cultural projects such as education, employment, and social services, economic void increased. Narco-traffickers have increasingly filled this vacuum. Arguably, the weaken pillars of Mexican society allowed narco-trafficking to penetrate the areas once fulfilled by the state. It has led to the recruitment of economically dislocated farmers and citizens to turn to narco-trafficking for financial stability. Although, the state and narco-traffickers at times compete with each other to fulfill some of these functions, they also at times co-exist and merge into what has been referred to as narcoestado. This metamorphosis between the state and narco-traffickers has been responsible for the increasing impunity of violence and crime in México. It is also a factor in the continuous disenfranchisement of the rights Mexican citizens. The ubiquitous violence and fear have altered the ways Mexicans negotiate their rights. It has led to many resistance efforts and organizing across the country with the most notable example of autodefesas.

This thesis explores the relationship between colonialism and the environment through a study of hurricanes in Cuba and Puerto Rico. Because hurricanes do not discriminate between international borders, they reveal much about the influences of political, economic, and social structures on vulnerability to hurricanes, hurricane preparation, and hurricane relief efforts. The Caribbean is a region that has been disproportionately impacted by hurricanes. It is also a region that has been wholly shaped by colonization. Prior to Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Caribbean, natives on islands like Puerto Rico and Cuba built and structured their societies around hurricanes and other catastrophes. Different aspects of colonialism altered the relationship between Puerto Ricans and Cubans and their respective environments. Though Puerto Rico and Cuba share incredibly similar histories, competing trajectories have emerged on both islands as they have undergone processes of decolonization and independence. An examination of Cuban and Puerto Rican history prior to Hurricane Irma and Hurricane María in 2017 provides a deeper understanding of the divergent histories of both islands. Ultimately, this study demonstrates that the legacy of colonialism continues to impact the identities and security of Cuba and Puerto Rico today.

Health inequalities take many forms related to race, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnic, language and many other axes throughout communities around the world. Type two diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol are examples of conditions (among many others) that disproportionately affect Latino@s in the U.S.. The research of this dissertation is based on fieldwork conducted throughout several predominantly Latin@ neighborhoods in Chicago, IL. This dissertation examines how Latin@s in Chicago navigate health and well-being, and how they engage in agentive strategies in the face of chronic disease. I recorded individual life histories and semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and participant observation at various community events and settings. The stories of these Chicago Latin@s are shared here in an effort to de-homogenize the depiction of Latin@s in the U.S. by paying attention to local narratives, and especially to those related to living with chronic disease.

This is a document explaining in detail my artistic practice from childhood to the day I graduated VCU. It will perhaps only be understood by those who have themselves already felt such ways, or similar ways – words and ghosts are mostly invisible.

Utilizando estos métodos que resaltan un “énfasis en la entrevista cualitativa” para poder colectar las historias personales de los Braceros y sus familias, en esta tesis analizo las historias orales de mi familia que han sido transmitidas de generación en generación (Uribe et al.). Específicamente, me enfoco en las experiencias de cuatro generaciones: un Bracero (mi Bisabuelo Filiberto) y su esposa, sus hijos (es decir, mi Abuelita Luisa), sus nietos (mis padres), y su bisnieta (yo). El propósito de este enfoque en la memoria intergeneracional de las experiencias de mi Bisabuelo Filiberto y sus descendientes en el Programa Bracero es resaltar los efectos que el Programa Bracero ha tenido en múltiples generaciones de las familias involucradas en él.

Latinas in college are systematically disadvantaged and face many unique stressors and adversities such as race-related discrimination and family stress; however, perceived availability of social support has been shown to have positive effects on students, such as positively influencing adjustment and academic persistence. In an effort to determine what factors help Latinas thrive in college, an experimental study with a 2x2 factorial design is proposed to investigate if in the face of adversity, does peer support/community preserve the thriving of Latinas in college. Community is defined by sense of membership and validation, and both will be manipulated in the in-lab community experience through a confederate (race of the confederate x support offered). The results are expected to show that main effects in the influence of validation on thriving and main effects in the influence of sense of membership on thriving. Furthermore, an interaction is predicted such that the effect of being validated depends on whether or not the confederate is Latina. It is also predicted that participants will feel a higher sense of communality with Latina students than Latinx students. The proposed study works to add to the small body of literature that highlights ways to help underrepresented students in higher education, rather than simply investigating factors that work to their detriment. The implications of the research are to work to legitimize community as a form of self-care and support, so that institutions help foster and support Latina communities on college campuses.

This dissertation is a multidisciplinary study that brings together the fields of literature, sociolinguistics, and cultural studies in order to understand the motivation and meaning of English-Spanish codeswitching or language alternation in Latino literature produced in the United States. Codeswitching was first introduced in Latino literature around the time of the Chicano Movement in the 1970s and has been used as a distinctive feature of Latino literary works to this day. By doing a close linguistic analysis of narratives by four different authors belonging to the largest Latino communities in the country (Chicano, Puerto Ricans, Dominican Americans, and Cuban Americans), this study examines whether codeswitching is used as a mere decorative element to add ethnic flavor, performs a mimetic role of oral codeswitching, or responds to a political strategy. To reach representative conclusions, the political, social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds of each community are studied in order to establish commonalities or differences in the experiences of these immigrant communities in the United States and how these experiences inform their writing. Considering the negative views held by speakers of both English and Spanish regarding the use of oral codeswitching, the need to study its use in literature is compelling. To that end, I have adopted social, and sociolinguistic theories to identify whether codeswitching operates as linguistic and symbolic capital in Latino literature, which authors may profit from to advance a Latino agenda. This work concludes that how codeswitching is used in Latino literature and the goals it ultimately achieves—if any—hinge on the positioning of the authors vis-à-vis hegemonic English monolingualism and their own experience as members of the Latino community to which they belong. Thus, the role of codeswitching may indeed be solely ornamental or ethnic or it may be a political one; that of expanding the space in which Latinos are allowed to operate. The narratives studied include Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima (1972), Esmeralda Santiago’s When I was Puerto Rican (1993), Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban (1992), and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007).

This study examines the cultural production and political history of Nicaragua from the 1960s to the early 1990s and interprets Francisco Goldman’s The Ordinary Seaman alongside Central America’s literary boom period, the nation-building project of the revolutionary letrados, and race relations between Nicaragua’s Pacific region and its two autonomous sectors of the Atlantic coast. It is argued that Central American ways of seeing are colored by the interplay between a revolutionary past, the myth of the pure Indio or mestizo, and the erasure of national identity in the US contact zone. Rather than recuperating a Central American identity, it is maintained that exposing the construction of said identity uncovers the hidden blackness and the heterogeneity of the Central American isthmus. Ultimately, the thesis aims at giving visibility to forgotten and ignored Central American narratives, histories, and people, and stresses the significance of studying the region within a literary and black Atlantic perspective.

Representations of Chicana bodies in dominant popular culture have historically been contested by Chicana feminists’ own self-representations through art and literature. However, few works examine representations of fat Chicana bodies in literature by Chicana feminists. Through a literary analysis of The Panza Monologues and Real Women Have Curves, as well as an artistic analysis of Laura Aguilar’s photography and through the lenses of Chicanx, queer, and fat studies, my research bridges a gap between Chicana feminist work and fat studies. It looks at how fatness is constructed through the self-representation of women’s bodies. Ultimately, I argue that these art objects are sites of fat Chicana artivism—activism through the use of art—that call for body liberation, respond to the “normative body” required by a colonial legacy of symbolic and physical violence against Chicanx women, and pave the way for further creative artistic and literary work centered on fat Chicanxs to be done.

Cuando hablamos de una epidemia, entendemos el fenómeno de una enfermedad que infecta y se propaga. Las palabras que usamos para describir el contagio frecuentemente instilan la enfermedad con características personificadas. Dentro de la época de la guerra fría, este fenómeno discursivo entraba en unas narrativas nacionales de paranoia del contagio del otro. En este tesis, presento un análisis de la epidemia que junta, en vez de diferenciar, el carácter infeccioso de la enfermedad y la ideología. Pretendo sintetizar temas tan variados como el VIH/sida, el lenguaje discursivo y el neocolonialismo en un mundo definido dentro de un contexto de la guerra Fría. Examino la retórica empleada para describir la epidemia del sida en los Estados Unidos y en América Latina, y cómo estos discursos eran apropiados por varios estados con propósito de marginalizar y condenar a las comunidades homosexuales.