Student Research

Student Research Question

Peyton O’Laughlin

My research question is Does the history of Panama consistently become framed in a lens of economic advantage? Panama, along with various Central American countries, is famously disregarded in the discussion of Latin America due to its small size and population. Likewise, Panama has significant amounts of natural resources and a beneficial geographical location, between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. These factors resulted in decades of colonial and neocolonial actions by domestic and foreign influences. Sentiments regarding the economic benefit of the nation and its utility in effectively handling trade developments and resources have long been present. Ultimately, the goal of my public history project is to examine primary sources and pieces of Panamanian and Latin American history to observe how significant historical figures, countries, and institutions view Panama in the larger discussion of Latin America and individual sovereignty with regards to economic advantage and prestige. 

Sources: 

Hay, John, Canal Treaties: Executive Documents Presented to the United States Senate, Washington: United States Department of States, 1914. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100346769 

Carter, Jimmy, “Address to the Nation on the Panama Canal Treaties,” (Speec, Washington, DC, February 1^st, 1978), The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-nation-the-panama-canal-treaties 

Ovidio Diaz Espino, How Wall Street Created a Nation: J.P. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal, MJF Books, New York, 2001. 

Mauer, Noel and Carlos Yu, What Roosevelt Took: The Economic Impact of the Panama Canal, 1903-37, Harvard Business School, 2006. https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/06-041.pdf 

Palka, Eugene J., A GEOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW OF PANAMA: Pathway to the Continents and Link between the Seas, United States Military Academy, Springer, 2005. https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/1-4020-3297-8_1.pdf 

Narrowed Research: Chilean Feminist Protest 2019

I will be focusing my research on the new wave of feminism that is becoming very popular around the world. Originally created in Chile by Las Tesis, the global ‘rape song’ is one about power dynamics and violence against feminism. The group of activist women, Las Tesis, became inspired by a radical feminist and anthropologist, Rita Segato, and wrote their approtraitely acusatory protest song. This song, titled “el violador en tu camino” (“The Rapist on Your Way”), was performed on November 25, 2019 in Santiago, Chile. Chile is known for the amount of violence against women that happens. There is so much violence that Chile, and Latin America in general, has coined the term ‘femicide’ for the high rates of female murders & rapes. I would like to look into how this specific movement has become popular. Obviously, it has spread with the help of social media, but I want to understand what actual legislation and female experiences are driving these intense feelings of violation within Chile. This is an extremely important thing to look into, because the movement is gaining speed for a reason: women are being threatened by the people in power. 

Primary Source:

Performance Colectivo Las Tesis “Un Violador En Tu Camino.” Accessed February 16, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aB7r6hdo3W4.

Secondary Source:

Pichel, Mar. “La Violación No Es Un Acto Sexual, Es Un Acto de Poder, de Dominación, Es Un Acto Político.” BBC News Mundo, December 11, 2019, sec. Otras noticias. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-50735010.

“‘Chile Woke Up’: Dictatorship’s Legacy of Inequality Triggers Mass Protests.” The New York Times, November 3, 2019, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/03/world/americas/chile-protests.html.

Government of Chile. “Circuito de Feminicidio.” Chile: UN Women, 2009. https://evaw-global-database.unwomen.org/fr/countries/americas/chile/2009/circuito-de-feminicidio.

Cáceres Pérez, Daniela Isabel. “About the Semantics of the Femicide in Chile.” Sociedad y economía 31 (2016): 239-262. 

Narrowed: Student Research: Social structures of nineteenth century Jamaica

My project will look at the depiction of the various groups in Jamaica during the nineteenth century. The question I will explore, and answer is, how did the social structures of Jamaica exemplify the social structures of Latin America? This is significant because by doing a case study of Jamaica, a wider analysis of Latin America can be conducted into the social structures between races, economics, and other aspects of Latin American society in the nineteenth century.  

Primary Source

Hakewill, James. Llanrumny Estate, St. Mary’s, Jamaica. 1820 and 1821. Paul Mellon Collection, Yale Center for British Art, Jamaica. In Yale Center for British Art. Accessed March 20, 2019. https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3632989.

Secondary Sources

Armstrong, Douglas, and Mark W. Hauser. “An East Indian Laborers’ Household in Nineteenth-Century Jamaica: A Case for Understanding Cultural Diversity through Space, Chronology, and Material Analysis.” Historical Archaeology 38, no. 2 (2004): 9-21. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25617142.

Burnard, Trevor. “European Migration to Jamaica, 1655-1780.” The William and Mary Quarterly 53, no. 4 (1996): 769-96. doi:10.2307/2947143.

Palmer, Colin A. Freedom’s Children: The 1938 Labor Rebellion and the Birth of Modern Jamaica. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469611709_palmer.11.

Paul, Kathleen. “Keeping Britain White.” In Whitewashing Britain: Race and Citizenship in the Postwar Era, 111-30. Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 1997. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7591/j.ctv5rdvw1.10.

Robinson, St. John. “Southern Loyalists in the Caribbean and Central America.” The South Carolina Historical Magazine 93, no. 3/4 (1992): 205-20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27568303.

Narrowed Research Post: LGBTQ+ Rights in Cuba

My research question is: How did deep prejudice toward homosexuals in Cuba during the Revolution motivate the development of Cuban LGBTQ+ rights to the present? This topic is significant because research on this area can help demonstrate how much progress or lack of progress has been made toward establishing more rights for the LGBTQ+ community in Cuba since the initiation and discontinuation of placing homosexuals in labor camps during the Cuban Revolution. Also, this research can be beneficial toward understanding modern Latin America because it will provide greater insight toward the development of the LGBTQ+ movement in Cuba, which may then be compared to LGBTQ+ movements in other Latin American countries to assess the development of these movements as well.

Sources

Guerra, Lillian. 2010. “Gender Policing, Homosexuality and the New Patriarchy of the Cuban Revolution, 1965–70.” Social History 35(3): 268–89.

Leiner, Marvin. 1994. Sexual Politics in Cuba: Machismo, Homosexuality, and AIDS. Boulder: Westview Press.

Majied, Kamilah F. 2015. “Racism and Homophobia in Cuba: A Historical and Contemporary Overview.” Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 25(1): 26–34.

Montoya, Óscar E. 2012. “Leonardo Padura Fuentes: Las Máscaras Estéticas y Sexuales de La Revolución.” Hispanic Review 80(1): 107–25.

Pena, Susan. 2007. “‘Obvious Gays’ and the State Gaze: Cuban Gay Visibility and U.S. Immigration Policy during the 1980 Mariel Boatlift.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 16(3): 482–514.

Student Research: Women in Revolutions

I would like to investigate women in Latin American Revolutions, in Chile and Cuba (perhaps a third could be added or just do these two comparatively). I find it interesting that the Cuban Revolution falls on the “left” side of the political spectrum, while the Chilean Revolution falls on the “right” side of the political spectrum. While differing ideologically, did the women participating in these two revolutions use similar strategies to meet their goals? What were their appeals? Were they different or similar? This topic is important in understanding women’s history in Latin America, political mobilization, women’s political history, etc.

Since I have some background knowledge on the topic, I noticed that many of the women who participated in both revolutions were white, upper-class, and educated. I was wondering if there was any history to diversify it or add a different perspective, such as women’s indigenous history? I am also interested in indigenous women’s history but was unsure of what primary sources are available and I’m not completely tied to the above idea (I only know of Rigoberta Menchú).

Photos courtesy of Democratic Socialists of America website and Workers World website