Teses / dissertações sobre o tema "Latin American and Puerto Rican"

This study expands upon Geert Hofstede’s theory that employees in high power distance societies will prefer and accept direction from their workplace superiors. Hofstede’s first two dimensions of national culture, power distance and uncertainty avoidance, are based in the results to questions related to hierarchical relationships. This and other studies into power distance orientation reveal significant country differences, but no previous research exists into power distance among Puerto Rican workers who have relocated to the continental United States. This dissertation addresses that gap with a qualitative, phenomenological study into the research question of whether there exists anecdotal evidence of high power distance orientation among Puerto Rican employees living and working in Pennsylvania. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in Pennsylvania with 15 hourly employees originally from Puerto Rico. In answer to the research question, no evidence of high power distance orientation is indicated through the analysis. Implications of this study include the potential for cultural shifts over time as a result of economics, politics, and technology. From the anecdotes, emerge themes of the importance of family and leisure time over status, the desire for respect and organizational justice, and a sense of comfort and familiarity with current supervisors and managers.

This research is on the ways Puerto Rican women fought for their reproductive justice. It covers the years 1930 through to the 1980s on the island of Puerto Rico and the city of New York. The fight was not always won in the streets or in the courts but also through everyday struggles to survive. There were multiple forms of resistance used in order to fight for control of their own bodies and for the lives of their children. Reproductive justice is not limited to the right to have or not have children but also the ability to exercise choice and freedom over the children you have, over your own body and sexuality. The resistance led by these women was in all the ways they fought against oppressive forces which limited their ability to exercise reproductive freedom. The research was conducted through archival records, secondary sources and an interview conducted with my mother to learn the stories of the women in my own family and how they reflect the history I had researched. Puerto Rican women dealt with overcoming a high rate of sterilization, migration to the United States where they were met with racism and hostility and the ability to rise up and organize to demonstrate their voices as a collective. None of this could have been gained without the drive to survive.

The Spanish-American War of 1898 ended Spain’s colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere, and represented the symbolic pinnacle of U.S. imperialism throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific. During this historical juncture, the U.S. launched the invasion of Puerto Rico and established itself as the governing power. My analysis of this defining event in Puerto Rico’s history focuses on the ‘discursive’ and ‘representational’ practices through which the dominant representations and interpretations of the Puerto Rican campaign were constructed. In revisiting the U.S. ‘imperial texts’ of ’98, most of which have not been studied extensively, it is my intent to approach these narratives critically, studying their ideological and political significance regarding the U.S. acquisition of Puerto Rico as a colony.

The ‘War of ’98’ has been typically represented as an inter-metropolitan conflict, thus relegating to a secondary place the contestatory discourses produced within the colonies. It is the purpose of my dissertation to examine ‘dialectically’ the cultural counter-discourse produced by the Puerto Rican Creole elite alongside the U.S. official discourses on Puerto Rico, concerning its colonial past under Spanish domination, the military occupation of the island, and its political and economical future under the American flag. With this purpose in mind, I chose to study four post-1898 Puerto Rican novels, specifically José Pérez Losada’s La patulea (1906) and El manglar (1907), and Ramón Juliá Marín’s Tierra adentro (1912) and La gleba (1913), all of which have been underestimated and understudied by literary scholars.

As a gesture of resistance in the face of the disruption of the old social order (that is, the old patterns of life, customs, traditions and standards of value) caused by the U.S. invasion and occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898, the island’s intellectual elite—most of which were descendant of the displaced coffee hacendado families—responded by fabricating an ideology-driven national imaginary and iconography that proposed a hispanophile, nostalgic, and romanticized rendering of the late-19th century coffee landscape (i.e. the pre-invasion period) as an idyllic locus amoenus, thus becoming an emblem of national and cultural identity and values against American capitalist imperialism, the ‘Americanization’ of Puerto Rico’s economy and political system, and the rapid expansion of U.S. corporate sugar interests.

This dissertation has two distinct yet complementary purposes: first, it examines critically the imperial/colonial power relations between the United States and Puerto Rico since 1898, while questioning the hegemonic discourses both by the Americans and the Puerto Rican cultural elite regarding Puerto Rico’s historical and political paths; secondly, it is an attempt to do justice to the literary works of two overlooked Puerto Rican novelists, approaching them critically on several levels (historical, literary, and ideological) and bringing their works out of the shadows and into today’s renewed debates around Puerto Rico’s unresolved colonial status and U.S. colonial practices still prevalent today.

Esta tesis doctoral gira en torno a las medidas disciplinarias que se establecieron antes, durante y después del embate de la epidemia de cólera en la ciudad amurallada de San Juan, Puerto Rico, entre los años 1854 y 1856, con miras a resaltar las nociones del poder, biopolítica, sanidad, higiene, marginación y desarrollo urbano. El análisis exhaustivo de las Actas del Cabildo de la ciudad de San Juan fue fundamental para determinar cuán preparadas estaban las autoridades civiles, militares y sanitarias durante el periodo de estudio. A través de su revisión, se observa cómo los cabilderos, atendían el problema de la presencia de los bohíos en la Capital, considerados como focos de contagio y propagación de enfermedades. Desde antes que llegara la epidemia de cólera a San Juan, las autoridades buscaban la manera de eliminar los bohíos existentes dentro de la ciudad amurallada. El uso de una biopolítica por las autoridades, entiéndase como “la política de la salud del pueblo”, justificaron y señalaron que estas viviendas representaban ser un peligro para la población sanjuanera. Algunos historiadores afirman que fallecieron aproximadamente 500 personas de diferentes “castas” en la ciudad de San Juan por el cólera. Según los datos obtenidos del Libro de Defunciones de la Catedral de San Juan los resultados son distintos. Toda persona fallecida por la epidemia de cólera fue enterrada en fosas comunes llamadas cementerios colerientos. La hipótesis planteada durante esta investigación establece que la epidemia de cólera fue el agente catalítico para crear pánico en la ciudad de San Juan y así ejercer la presión necesaria para eliminar los bohíos y a los habitantes considerados como focos de enfermedades contagiosas.

El propósito del estudio se enfocó en conocer cómo funcionan los programas de retención. Utilizó un diseño instrumental de caso (Stake, 1995) y se delimitó en su alcance a explorar y describir la experiencia de un programa de retención, en el contexto de una institución universitaria privada en Puerto Rico (PR). Enfatizó en los procesos y experiencias del programa, interesados en mejorar el entendimiento del fenómeno de la retención estudiantil en el entorno de la universidad privada en PR.

Las preguntas fueron dirigidas a explorar y describir: los procesos y experiencias del programa que facilitan la integración de los estudiantes; condiciones que generan una ecología que facilite el éxito de éstos; mecanismos anticipatorios y de adaptación que se observan en ellos, y cómo son incentivados para responder a eventos que les afectan; y, aquellas interacciones en el campus y con el programa que involucran a éstos en su vida académica. La información se recopiló mediante grupos focales, y el análisis e interpretación, mediante triangulación de datos y secuenciación analítica (Stake, 1995), discutiendo y armonizando contrastes sobre la percepción entre los participantes sobre el éxito y contribuciones del programa.

Los hallazgos revelan: a) consensos sobre la contribución del programa para facilitar la integración de los estudiantes, mediante el apoyo para el manejo de la transición, el trato individualizado, la disponibilidad y accesibilidad de los servicios, ambientes de oportunidades, y el compromiso y liderazgo institucional; b) experiencias con influencias positivas en la retención, posibilitadas mediante interacción entre pares, contacto con profesores, involucramiento en actividades extracurriculares, grupos de apoyo e interacciones con el personal del programa; c) fuertes conexiones de los estudiantes con el personal, con profesores y compañeros de grupo para responder a situaciones personales y de riesgo; y, d) testimonios que demuestran las fortalezas del programa para involucrar a los estudiantes académicamente, para mejorar el desempeño académico y retención. Finalmente, se plantean contrastes entre los participantes del programa, acerca de asuntos que les resultan comunes, pero que mantienen apreciaciones discrepantes entre sí, las cuales deben tener consideración futura en el diseño e implantación de los programas similares en otras universidades privadas en PR.

This dissertation explores the relationship between identity and place in the imagination, performance and production of post-World War II Puerto Rican urban space in Chicago. Specifically, I contend that the articulation of Puerto Rican spatiality in the city has emerged primarily as a response to the threat of local displacement as a byproduct of urban renewal and gentrification. I further argue the experience of displacement, manifested through territorial attachment, works to deepen the desire for community and belonging. Through a performance and cultural studies approach, this project works to track this recent history of Puerto Rican geographic and psychic displacement within Chicago as it is evidenced by various performative spatial interventions and manifested within the community's expressive culture.

My topics of study include the 1966 Division Street Riots, the Young Lords Organization (YLO), Humboldt Park's Paseo Boricua and spoken-word poet David Hernández. Through these interventions and forms of expression, I argue that physical, political, discursive, and affective claims are made to local territory, articulating a Puerto Rican cultural identity inextricably connected to urban space. In so doing, I aim to endorse the theoretical utility of concepts of "space" by highlighting the enduring material and metaphoric significance of place for Puerto Ricans, arguing against a tendency in contemporary Puerto Rican studies to equate circular migratory movement with transnationalism by virtue of its opposition to territorially grounded definitions of identity.