Search and Citation Exercise
Using core research resources in Latin American studies available through the University Libraries' LASC 234 Research Guide, you are asked to identity a short list of sources related to a chosen research topic.
The Guide is available online via the LASC 234 ELMS website. The Guide can also be accessed directly at the URL is: http://lib.guides.umd.edu/lasc234williams
The Assignment
Citation styles should follow Chicago/Turabian Style Manual (Notes System) described in detail at: http://www.lib.umd.edu/guides/citing_chicnotes.html
The assignment is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, September 28, 2010.
The assignment represents 5% of your total grade for the course.
Questions may be directed to:
Daryle Williams <daryle@umd.edu>
Patricia Herron <herron@umd.edu>
The Guide: http://lib.guides.umd.edu/lasc234williams
Research Topics
Think of a research topic of your choice and identify and cite the assigned number of relevant sources. The topic should be relevant to Latin America and its study.
OR
Select one of the topics below and identify and cite the assigned number of relevant sources.
What was the Cochabamba Water War all about?
In 1999, the Bolivian government signed a $2.5 billion contract with Aguas del Tunari, a consortium of multinational engineering and construction firms led by the Bechtel Corporation, granting a forty-year concession to manage water and sanitation services in the city of Cochabamba. In January 2000, an increase in water rates sparked widespread popular protests against Aguas del Tunari. The protests, some violent, quickly spread to La Paz. The Cochabamba "Water War" later spread to the 2000 Meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, held in Washington, DC. The contract with Aguas del Turani was subsequently revoked, representing (for some) a major victory for antiglobalization activism and contemporary indigenous political mobilization.
What role has foreign immigration played in the urban development of the River Plate?
The demography and social history of cities throughout the River Plate have been deeply shaped by foreign immigration. In the colonial era, immigrants from Spain and Portugal established small settlements on the banks of the Rio de la Plata. Through the 1840s, a branch of the South Atlantic slave trade brought enslaved Africans to Buenos Aires, among other growing towns. By the end of the First World War, large-scale immigration, largely from Spain and Italy as well as the Russian and Ottoman empires, had swelled the urban populations of Buenos Aires and Montevideo to the point that nearly one of every two residents of the Argentine capital was foreign-born. Immigration continues to shape contemporary Buenos Aires, whose total population is about 4.25% foreign-born. Newer immigrant communities include Bolivians, Paraguayans, and Peruvians, as well as East Asians, especially from Korea and China.
Should Chilean arpilleras be treated as works of handicrafts, art, or as political statements?
In Latin America, quilting and other textile arts often blend handicrafts, artistic expression, and politics. Literary critic Marjorie Agosín and art critic John A. Walker, among others, have been especially interested in the case of arpilleras, the handcrafted, three-dimensional appliqué collages popularized in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990). In these authors' studies, arpilleras are treated as an innovative form of artistic expression with broad resonance in recent histories of human rights advocacy, political protest, and women's mobilization in Chile and other Andean republics.
How has the human rights community responded to the epidemic of feminicidios in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico?
In the 1990s, various human rights organizations grew alarmed by a dramatic increase in violent homicides of working-class women, mainly maquiladoras [female assembly-plant workers], in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juárez. The majority of these murders, known in Spanish as feminicidios, remain unsolved. Between 1998 and 2005, a number of Mexican and international human rights organizations — the National Human Rights Commission of Mexico, the Organization of American States' Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and Amnesty International, among others — have investigated the high incidence of homicide and sexual violence against women in Ciudad Juárez. In their findings, these organizations have identified a wide range of deficiencies in local and federal policing as well as a prevailing culture of gender prejudice.
What happened to the "preferential option for the poor" advocated at the 1968 Conference of Latin American Bishops?
In 1968, the Consejo Episcopal Latinoamericano (English: Latin American Episcopal Conference also known as the Conference of Latin American Bishops) assembled in Medellín, Colombia. One of the most important resolutions to come from reformist bishops gathered at Medellín was the commitment to take up "a preferential option for the poor." This resolution became the foundation for a new turn in theological thought in Latin America, often called la teología de la liberación [English: liberation theology], as well as a lay-centered activism, especially through Christian base communities. These developments shaped Roman Catholicism throughout the region until the early 1980s, when conservative Latin American bishops as well as the Vatican repeatedly censured liberation theology and the "popular Church" as too closely associated with Marxism or socialist states such as Nicaragua under the Sandinista regime.