The dominant Sandinista party discourse of Nicaragua designates the family as the country’s base social institution, but the prevailing machismo threatens the family’s structure. Men - fathers - leave, either literally as migrant laborers or in the abandonment of their family responsibilities. In order to counteract the men’s socially sanctioned absence, the state deploys a hegemonic expectation of motherhood in the passage of its complete abortion ban, one of the strictest in the world. All forms of abortion, including saving the life of the mother, are banned in Nicaragua and both doctors and women are heavily penalized if an abortion is performed. The denial of this vital health service becomes much more threatening in the context of Nicaragua’s increased maternal mortality and the highest adolescent fertility rate in Latin America. However, this thesis focuses on abortion within the social context of idealized maternity; here, abortion is not simply the removal of a fetus but a rejection of motherhood, a dangerous option to normalize when women are seen as those primarily responsible for the family's well-being. This study draws on seven weeks of fieldwork in early 2016 in Managua, Nicaragua and interviews with sixteen women to advance the argument that the abortion ban is a form of reproductive governance implemented to maintain a hegemony of maternal expectations in order to preserve the family.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-27T13:49:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Elizabete Bicalho.pdf: 857817 bytes, checksum: bfd444072cb2c9d53f0c21b24fd8c02a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2001-06-18 / This dissertation approaches the social representation of the violence in domestic realm and also between among some married people. Mainly for women that live this violence phenomenon and participate in the christian religious expressions: pentecostal and charismatic catholic; contemporary religious movements that reproduce in its speeches, the stain of misogenous, a cultural inheritance, contemplated in the feminine submission, where the blame is settled. The violence is understood in this work as a result of the gender relationships, historically hierarquical and naturalized. The actors (feminine gender) of this investigation had only left the submissive silence, when they saw threatened of losing or in fact they lost the aggressor husband or the family s patrimony in these situations. Their religious faith turns into rebelliousness, taking them to the police office after years of violence and family reclusion. As subject that is constitued by the heteronomy, the feminine reaction comes in the moment in that she doesn t have more for who give her incondicional love and her daily dedication. In the pain of the loss, love is subverted and it is revealed in fight while vector of the feminine subjectivity for the social life.In this process the same religious experience to justify for woman of their social non privileged condition represents for them force and power in the process of the accusation of the violence. / Esta dissertação aborda a representação social da violência conjugal/doméstica, para mulheres que vivem este fenômeno e participam das expressões religiosas cristãs: pentecostais e carismática católica; movimentos religiosos contemporâneos, que reproduzem em seus discursos, a nódoa da misoginia, uma herança cultural, refletida na submissão feminina, onde se instala a culpa. A violência é entendida neste trabalho como resultado das relações de gênero, historicamente hierarquizadas e naturalizadas. As atoras desta investigação só saíram do silêncio submisso, quando se viram ameaçadas de perder, ou quando de fato perderam o marido agressor ou o patrimônio da família. Nestas situações, a sua fé religiosa se converte em rebeldia, levando-a à denúncia na Delegacia de Polícia após anos de reclusão familiar violenta. Como sujeito que se constitui pela heteronomia, a reação feminina se apresenta no momento em que ela não tem mais para quem dar seu amor incondicional e sua dedicação cotidiana. Na dor da perda, o amor se subverte e se revela em luta, enquanto vetor da subjetividade feminina para a vida social. Neste processo a mesma experiência religiosa, justificadora para a mulher de sua condição social desprivilegiada, representa para ela força e poder, no processo da denúncia da violência.

This M.A. thesis consists of a close-textual reading of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s four sets of villancicos dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (1676, 1679, 1685 and 1690), with a special focus on Sor Juana’s marianism and a contrast with Juan Correa’s painting, La Asunción de la Virgen (1689). This thesis will cover Sor Juana’s innovation in her representation of Mary as a model of femininity, Mary’s creative abilities, the crowning of Mary, Mary as a dwelling for God, Sor Juana’s feminization of the divine, Mary’s Assumption itself, masculine aspects and professions attributed to Mary, and Sor Juana’s identification with the Virgen.

This Master thesis focuses on the dynamic of the development and rethinking of the concept of the traditional Latino patriarchal family built up around male dominance. This work explores the changes of the traditional concept under the pressure of society of the United States in novels written in English by authors of Latino origin awarded for their novels after 2000. The most significant of them being Junot Díaz and his The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; the other two are Mexican Female authors Stella Pope Duarte with If I Die in Juárez and Reyna Grande with Across a Hundred Mountains. The first part is purely theoretical, stemming from the concepts of traditional Latino masculinity, the role of the female and children in the patriarchal family in order to explain the clash of values and family crises which Latinos undergo once they are confronted with the different system of values of the United States and the consequences for all family members. In the second part, all three books are analyzed on the basis of the male - female polarity. Consequences for families are explored as seen by Latino/a authors. Finally, solutions and possible ways of escaping the vicious spiral of violence and tensions created by the changed paradigm penetrating the Latino family life as suggested in the novels are...

This thesis interrogates García Márquez’s representations of sexualities in the following selected novels: Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981); The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975); One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967); The Sad and Incredible Tale of Innocent Erendira and her Heartless Grandmother (1972); and Memories of My Melancholy Whores (2004). It is argued here that García Márquez’s employment of the sexuality motif enables him to delve into many worldwide current concerns such as the irrelevance of some socio-cultural sexual practices; commercial sexual exploitation of children; the different manifestations of prostitution; and female powerlessness under autocratic rule. Earlier literary critics have tended to narrowly interpret García Márquez’s employment of the sexuality motif as just a metaphor for colonial exploitation of the colonised. The study also explores the writer’s artistic role and concludes that García Márquez speaks against commercial sexual exploitation of children as he concurrently speaks on behalf of children so exploited. Similarly, the writer speaks on behalf of prostituted womanhood by showing how prostitutional gains do not seem to cascade down to the prostitutes themselves. García Márquez also invests female sexual passivity as a coping mechanism against a dictator’s limitless power over the life and death of his citizens. However, the writer also constructs female agency that grows from the rejection of an initial victimhood to develop into an extremely flawed and corrupt flesh trade that co-opts and indentures children into sex work with impunity. Thus the study breaks new ground to show that García Márquez’s representations of different sexualities are not merely soft porn masquerading as art. His is a voice added to the worldwide concerns over commercial sexual exploitation of children in the main and also the recovery of a self-reliant female self-hood that was previously inextricably bound to male sexual norms. Quite clearly, García Márquez demonstrates that female prostitution is driven by a lack of social safety nets, a lack of other economically viable options and also a distinct lack of educational opportunities for female economic independence, hence the flawed female agency. / English Studies / D. Litt. et Phil. (English)