Starting in 1960, a 36-year Civil War ravaged Guatemala ultimately leaving 200,000 people dead and 45,000 people disappeared. The violence that drove Guatemalans from the country during the war eventually saw a boomerang effect when U.S. immigration policy shifted and vicious gangs returned to the nation after years of operation in the United States. The powerful presence of the military and the lack of checks and balances during years of conflict allowed patterns of corruption to emerge both between officials and drug trafficking organizations and with elite Guatemalan families. Shifts in the path of the international drug trade allowed traffickers to take advantage of this history and move into Guatemala, clamoring for territory. By the time the Peace Accords were signed and the war ended, a poorly conceived plan to remove the military without an adequate civilian police force to take their place created an environment in which gangs, drug trafficking organizations and local bosses could operate illegally and freely. Together, the Guatemalan Civil War, U.S. immigration policy and shifts in international drug trafficking practices significantly debilitated the Guatemalan state, making it ill equipped to provide for its citizens basic social service and safety needs.

<p> Esta investigaci&oacute;n explora, a trav&eacute;s de la novela de El sue&ntilde;o del celta (2010) de Mario Vargas Llosa, una nueva postura sobre lo que implica ser un h&eacute;roe. El cuestionamiento que surge sobre el concepto heroico es lo que posibilita examinar la composici&oacute;n heroica del personaje principal de El sue&ntilde;o del celta, Roger Casement. Se conceptualiz&oacute; al personaje como un h&eacute;roe moderno, ya que el rasgo que lo identifica es su car&aacute;cter contradictorio. Para demostrar la caracterizaci&oacute;n de Casement como h&eacute;roe moderno se estudiaron diversas instancias narrativas que representaban tanto los rasgos heroicos como antiheroicos. Tambi&eacute;n se examin&oacute; la ambig&uuml;edad del personaje a trav&eacute;s de sus textos escritos y por medio de la construcci&oacute;n narrativa de la obra. </p><p> A trav&eacute;s de este estudio se lleg&oacute; a la conclusi&oacute;n de que Roger Casement, forma parte de la disgregaci&oacute;n &eacute;pica del h&eacute;roe que propuso Mija&iacute;l Bajt&iacute;n. Seg&uacute;n la teor&iacute;a de Bajt&iacute;n, Casement como h&eacute;roe novelesco se caracteriz&oacute; como un personaje inconcluso y con m&uacute;ltiples matices. Lo que permiti&oacute; demostrar que los g&eacute;neros literarios como la &eacute;pica y la novela pueden influenciar en c&oacute;mo se constituyen los personajes heroicos. En fin, en esta investigaci&oacute;n se cuestiona la conceptualizaci&oacute;n del h&eacute;roe tradicional trabajada por Hugo Francisco Bauz&aacute; en su libro El mito del h&eacute;roe: morfolog&iacute;a y sem&aacute;ntica de la figura heroica y por Joaqu&iacute;n M. Aguirre en su art&iacute;culo H&eacute;roe y sociedad: El tema del individuo superior en la literatura decimon&oacute;nica. Tanto Bauz&aacute; como Aguirre sostienen que el h&eacute;roe cl&aacute;sico manifiesta juicios elevados de valor, no son cobardes ni sienten miedo, sino m&aacute;s bien exteriorizan los rasgos heroicos m&aacute;s elevados. Entre ellos, el m&oacute;vil &eacute;tico de su acci&oacute;n, la transgresi&oacute;n, la ilusi&oacute;n, el sentido de mediaci&oacute;n, el valor, el deseo de vencer, el sentido de b&uacute;squeda, el valor que los dem&aacute;s le otorgan, entre otros. </p><p> No obstante, la nueva postura heroica que presenta El sue&ntilde;o del celta propone que el verdadero hero&iacute;smo no consiste en carecer de miedo, sino en superarlo. Ya que el verdadero h&eacute;roe es aquel que, a pesar de ser consciente de todas sus deficiencias, como el miedo y la debilidad, logra superar y enfrentar los problemas. Son estas caracter&iacute;sticas las que permiten presentar a Roger Casement como un h&eacute;roe en contraposici&oacute;n al h&eacute;roe tradicional al mostrar un car&aacute;cter contradictorio y aproximarse a la ambig&uuml;edad de la condici&oacute;n humana.</p><p>

In the antebellum American South, slaves and free blacks from across the Atlantic World went to court to petition for their freedom from illegal enslavement. US legal officials primarily cared whether or not slaves could prove their free status in court and, to that end, petitioners made legal claims that reflected themselves and their identities as free persons. They emphasized to courts that they were born free, emancipated or manumitted, and had freedom papers. To support these claims, petitioners also created narratives that would represent their identities as free persons and common examples included telling legal officials that they previously moved freely in the Atlantic, served in the military, or worked in skilled labor positions. Another way that petitioners articulated their status and identity as free persons was by telling legal officials about their connections to Atlantic empires. To petitioners, being a member of Iberian, French, or British empires and enjoying imperial subjecthood was closely connected to their identities as free persons. This thesis examines freedom suits in the antebellum US South by slaves and free blacks from across the Atlantic World and the ways they created legal narratives connected to their identities within nineteenth-century empires. Ultimately, legal officials were most concerned with whether or not petitioners could prove their free status - not where they belonged in the Atlantic World, to what empires they pledged loyalty, or what king recognized them as subjects. Therefore, petitioners created narratives centered around proving their freedom. However, slaves and free blacks continued to incorporate notions of Atlantic empires and subjecthood in their freedom petitions to varying degrees - even if it served little legal strategical purpose to a US court. Their narratives illuminate the importance that imperial belonging and subjecthood represented to slaves and free blacks from the Atlantic World petitioning for freedom in the US South and demonstrate that they understood imperial belonging and subjecthood as a way to embody their identities and experiences as free persons.

<p> This multiple case study contributes to identifying the reasons behind the almost complete absence of high-growth ambition of early-stage entrepreneurs in Brazil by investigating why they did not develop similar cognitive frameworks as the countries high-growth entrepreneurs. The understanding of the reasons can assist in the planning of programs and policies directed toward the creation of the necessary conditions to increase the number of early-stage entrepreneurs with high-growth ambition and hence promote the country&rsquo;s economic growth and help fulfill its aspiration to transition from factor-driven to innovation-driven economic development. The reasons identified by the study were that the factors in the cognitive framework of high-growth entrepreneurs&mdash;self-efficacy as a personality trait, knowledge acquired from family and professional experience (human capital), and social capital acquired during a professional career&mdash;that explains their high-growth ambition are rare in Brazil. These factors are rare because high-growth entrepreneurs belong to the countries&rsquo; very small well-educated and empowered elite whereas most early-stage entrepreneurs in Brazil do not. Some additional findings of the study are: (1) There is no social upward mobility from self-employed to high-growth early-stage entrepreneurs in Brazil; (2) The low quality of the Brazilian education system required acquiring task-related knowledge through extensive professional experience to find high-growth entrepreneurial opportunities; (3) The task-related knowledge acquired mostly in multinationals lead to innovations to fill needs and market gaps in the Brazilian market, but not to breakthrough innovations.</p><p>

The Orthodox Church is an institution with deep roots in nationalism and collective identity. It is the patriotic faith of the majority of Eastern European nations, where many regard following the nationally dominant faith of Orthodox Christianity as an important aspect of belonging in the homeland. Despite its eastern foundation, Orthodox Christian evangelism has been on the rise in the Western Hemisphere since the 1980s, most notably in the United States and Brazil. The role that converts have played in fostering a unique American and Brazilian Orthodox society, however, has received little attention from scholars. This thesis will seek to address this gap in the literature by discussing how the publishing efforts of Orthodox Christian converts in the United States and Brazil have been instrumental in creating an Orthodox Christian society that is native to the Western Hemisphere. I argue that this literary production links the United States and Brazil in an Inter-American dialogue through their dichotomous relationship to the East and has led to the formation of a collective American Orthodox identity.

<p> The Latino paradox of crime suggests that relative to other groups with similar rates of economic disadvantage, Latinos fare a lot better in a wide array of social indices, including the propensity to violence and crime. While previous studies tend to overestimate the role of community members in creating the conditions under which violent crime occurs, very few have examined the direct role of the &lsquo;disorganizing&rsquo; or &lsquo;organizing&rsquo; factors that result from political turf wars. This study will examine the ways in which the mobilization of resources and organizational infrastructures affect the immigration-crime nexus. In an effort to better understand the Latino paradox associated with crime, this study shall critically examine how organization-based resources affect variations in violent crime rate among Latino neighborhoods in the City of Chicago.</p><p>

This dissertation explores the rhetoric of childhood to comprehend how Latin American literature and film signify childhood. It furthermore analyzes the figure of the child as a rhetorical device in the construction of literary and cinematographic meaning in twentieth and twenty-first century poetry, narrative prose and film. I claim that, contrary to prevailing cultural notions of childhood innocence, the child often constitutes an unsettling presence, signaling textual as well as extradiegetic opacities and tensions. Echoes of the Child is divided into three chapters that each present a different approach to childhood. Chapter 1 posits the politicization of the child narrator’s voice as both enabling and restricting the articulation of socio-political trauma. Analyzing texts by Nellie Campobello, Rosario Castellanos, Juan Pablo Villalobos and Juan Rulfo, I contend that child narrators create and subvert meaning depending on the position they occupy vis-à-vis the socio-political turmoil they witness. The second chapter postulates an uneasy alliance between what I call the ‘visual pull’ of the child on screen, and the erotic charge of the image in three Argentine films by Lucrecia Martel, Julia Solomonoff and Federico León / Martín Rejtman. I probe the relationship between the child’s strong screen presence and the forms in which the cinematographic image offers the child ways of transforming sexuality into sensuality; resisting heteronormative sexuality; and of eluding the spell of the adult’s libidinal gaze. Performing when she is merely present, I argue that the child bestows a performative dimension on her acting and her very presence. The third and final chapter posits infancy as an impossible experience in poetry from the historical avant-garde by Oliverio Girondo, César Vallejo and Vicente Huidobro. I contend that reading the poetry guided by the infant reveals two sides of ‘experience;’ the poetic expression of the infant’s experience of the world, a question I broach through psychoanalysis, and the poet’s attempts at articulating transcendental experience in language. My analyses reveal how the rhetoric of childhood bears on issues and dynamics in the socio-political realm; it thus contributes to our understanding of processes of signification within Latin American culture. / Romance Languages and Literatures

In 1998, a dispute between a federal government agency and the local community of Chacchoben resulted in the emergence of a community-based ecotourism (CBE) enterprise to be fully owned and operated by the community in conjunction with a complex arrangement of agreements and partnerships with external actors. CBE is usually framed as a lower-impact, often small-scale alternative to mass tourism and as a conservation and development strategy that can hypothetically protect biologically diverse landscapes while improving the lives of marginalized peasant and indigenous communities through their participation. This case study analyzes the roles of common property land tenure and social capital and how the unique dilemma of a mass community-based ecotourism theme park emerged in Chacchoben. Findings indicate that local decisions and processes of development, conservation, and land use are affected by the complex interaction between local and external institutions and fluctuating levels of social capital.

The purpose of the thesis was to first, document the expansion of Trinidad's business sector and then to probe the implications of this expansion on Caribbean regionalization. The variables analyzed were physical expansion, technology and development and community involvement. The methodological approach used first, a theoretical approach based on the New Regionalism Approach (NRA) which best accounts for non-state actors (multinationals) and their role in the scheme of regionalization. Second, interviews were conducted with leaders of the major multinationals in Trinidad to ascertain their opinion on the role of multinationals in the regionalization process. Based on the case studies analyzed, namely Royal Bank Group of Companies and Trinidad Cement Holdings Limited, the findings of the thesis indicate that Trinidad multinationals are helping the process of Caribbean regionalization and consider themselves regional rather than national entities. It can be concluded that the growth of Trinidad multinationals will continue to be integral to the economic integration of the region.

The purpose of this study was to examine formal and informal networks within the South Florida Colombian community. The qualitative, ethnographic study used research from personal interviews, focus groups, and observations, placed within a theoretical framework based predominantly on Putnam’s conceptualization of social capital, as well as previous research on immigrant and Colombian communities. The resulting analysis focused on Colombian immigrant solidarity and social capital in South Florida, examining the role of the context of reception and the effects of social structures on levels of trust and reciprocity. The results showed that a non-receptive immigration policy, socio-economic differentiation in migration waves, and spatial fragmentation within the receiving community, hinder community-building. There were incipient signs of civic engagement, yet Colombian leadership as well as individual Colombians perceived that the community lacked solidarity. Both formal and informal networks are best characterized as fragmented and guided by pre-existing social structures. The findings showed that a unique context of arrival and low levels of social capital have challenged Colombian immigrants’ ability to create the type of community cohesion that would facilitate their transition to life in South Florida.