This dissertation looks at how state-society relationship in Bolivia has evolved from the 1930s to the present. It explores contradictions embedded in different projects of nation making and social change in the country. It centers popular actors, including comunarios (members of indigenous communities), colonos (indians subjected to hacendados), miners, indigenous residents of poor barrios, Aymara and Quechua intelectuals and peasants. It examines select moments in Bolivian history that challenge the presumed linear, chronological progression of national history. In other words, the five moments, analyzed herein, represent histories that do not fit into the History (master-narrative) of Bolivia’s national development–they are different facets of popular experiences in the country’s history. By critically using archival documents, newspapers, films, images, literature, and oral testimonies, it shows a long-term process of popular mobilization that has raised a possibility of social emancipation in Bolivia.

This thesis is an ethnographic case study of a secluded Christian community called Céu do Mapiá located deep within the western Brazilian Amazon. The roughly 700 permanent residents are members of the internationally recognized, fairly young Brazilian religion called Santo Daime. This thesis is the product of ethnographic field research conducted in July of 2015, its author having visited the isolated community, having observed and interviewed many of its inhabitants, and having himself participated in village life. The principle goal of this study has been to create a reliable pool of information about the Céu do Mapiá community in order to better be able to understand the nature of its socio-economic organization considering its important role as the mother community for all Santo Daime parishes around the world. It is important to understand the causes for the community’s ability in maintaining such a sizable population, comparatively speaking, in such an isolated and hostile environment. The successful model of conservation of the 560,000 hectares of the surrounding National Forest of Purus and Mapiá-Inauiní also deserves attention. The information gathered in the following pages also explores vital questions of U.S. drug policy, considering Santo Daime’s sacrament, the ancient Amazonian entheogen called ayahuasca is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in the US. Considering also that ayahuasca has increasingly been the focus of intensive academic, medical, and scientific research of late, this thesis considers implications of its classification and argues that reconsideration of its legal status and use is a question of not merely reason but also fundamental human rights that ought to be addressed.

The South American country of Colombia has received much attention in the last decade. This is due to successes in various global stages. Recently, the entertainment giant, Disney, even made a movie about the country. However, not much attention has been given to the harsh reality of the country, and its tumultuous history. For much of the 20th and 21st centuries, the country has been in a deep internal armed conflict that has ravaged through the countryside and has been the cause of many of today’s problems in the densely populated urban areas. Traditionally, the armed conflict has been interpreted as the result of the war being carried out by insurgent guerrillas against the state. The official government explanation has historically relied on positioning itself as a victim in a conflict that began in the 1960s with the creation of campesino guerrillas, especially the FARC-EP. Proper research into the history of the country and its present, reveals a much more complex reality. The purpose of this research is to analyze the background of the armed conflict and its continuing patterns in order to understand the systemic causes that led to the prolongation of the conflict and its intensification in the 1980s through the early 2000s. This research interprets the creation of guerrillas as a response to the violent repression being felt by Colombia’s subaltern classes since the beginning of the 20th century. It also reinterprets the role of the state, as it views the modern capitalist state as the amalgamation of power of the political and economic elite. Thus, the main purpose of this investigation is to trace the role of the Colombian state, and therefore its ruling classes, in the conflict.

In November of 1903, the United States, under the leadership of Theodore Roosevelt, helped protect and support a revolutionary movement on the Panama isthmus. As the region seceded from its mother country, Colombia, the world stood in both shock and celebration. The story that is normally explained afterward focuses on the building of the Panama Canal and the U.S. rise as a dominant world power. But what about Colombia’s experience? For the South American country, they lost a priceless territory in a humiliatingly public event. More strikingly, before this Colombia and the U.S. had shared a long and cooperative relationship throughout the previous century, and now this close friendship was tarnished in an instant. Instead of moving their separate ways, the governments of each nations unexpectedly went to great efforts to salvage what was left of this broken relationship over the following two decades. For the first decade ordinary circumstances made hope of a settlement a dismal affair, but monumental changes soon took place with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 which inverted the political and economic atmospheres of not only Europe, but the Western Hemisphere as well. Owing to the War’s massive influences, the U.S. and Colombia would finally find motive to rekindle their ties. This essay dives into this tumultuous situation between the two nations and explains why, and how, a relationship fragmented by deceit and aggression was able to be redeemed during the most destructive conflict the world had ever seen.

The quilombo – the name commonly used to describe fugitive slave settlements in Brazil – is firmly ensconced in Brazilian historical memory. My objective is to demonstrate the process by which quilombos in western Maranhão evaded and resisted the repression of the state in order to create autonomous cultural and geographical spaces in the state of Pará and defend those spaces well after abolition when faced with the exploitation of their labor and land for the benefit of a nascent mining economy.

Fugitive slave activity was a well-known and continuous phenomenon in western Maranhão, particularly in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Dense forests and abundant rivers offered a path to freedom for enslaved Africans. Quilombos profoundly shaped the land through various methods such as the creation of trails, the exploitation of rich alluvial gold deposits, and planting of various fruit trees. Quilombo inhabitants accumulated a knowledge of the land only matched by its indigenous inhabitants, establishing a territoriality recognized for decades thereafter.

This territoriality allowed quilombo descendants to bargain with state actors on the basis of their knowledge of gold deposits and geography along the Maranhão-Pará border region. Quilombo descendants formed permanent communities in this region and avoided capture, even while maintaining relationships with local judges, police officials, and representatives of the Brazilian Empire tasked with building a telegraph line in northern Brazil. With the advent of abolition, quilombo descendants were ignored as mining concessions delivered their lands to foreign capital. Their resistance took on many forms, but I will especially demonstrate how quilombo descendants used a deft understanding of major political events such as the Revolution of 1930 to defend their land and autonomy, fighting for freedom after abolition.

By demonstrating the complex nature of interactions between quilombolas and dominant political and economic structures and the nature of subaltern resistance therein, I will add new layers to historiographies of slave resistance as well as Afro-Brazilian political engagement following the abolition of slavery.

This research takes the municipality of Villamar, Michoacán, México as a case study in the patterns of political participation that characterized the June 2015 legislative elections. Villamar, a municipality rich in social, economic and political dynamics, is taken as a microcosm of broader historical and political processes that have taken place in Michoacán. In qualitative interviews with 20 residents of three rural ranchos in Villamar, this study seeks to understand the local factors and characteristics of political participation, and the extent to which patterns may reflect context-specific cumulative processes. Among these processes are the history of agrarismo in the region, local culture and sociopolitical infrastructure, economic changes, and the influence of parastate actors such as drug-trafficking organizations. The thesis provides a detailed description of Villamar’s political landscape as described by participants, and highlights the following patterns: PRI party loyalty, low internal political efficacy, healthy participation rates of women, the centrality of immediate needs in political decision making, and overwhelming perceptions of government inefficiency. While the patterns found in Villamar are outcomes of national level political processes, they are more easily traced to their local counterparts. Participation, then, is influenced more by citizens’ immediate needs and realities than national political concerns. This research discusses these findings in light of their implications for Mexico’s endeavor towards democratic consolidation.

This dissertation studies the development of ecclesiastical courts in medieval Europe and their implementation in the viceroyalty of New Spain. In order to understand the repercussions that religious tribunals had on local colonial society, I focus on the ecclesiastical court of San José de Toluca, in the archdiocese of Mexico, from 1675 to 1800.

In particular, I analyze four criminal categories that this court prosecuted: right of asylum, cases against ecclesiastics, indigenous idolatry, and offenses against the sacrament of marriage. First, right of asylum cases illuminate how the Church and the Spanish Crown negotiated the ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the Americas, and how ecclesiastical judgesdefended their privileges before royal officials. Second, accusations against ecclesiastics are key to explain the social and political interaction between indigenous communities and parish priests. These cases are also fundamental to understand how the Church maintained good moral customs in colonial society by correcting the misdemeanor of members of the clergy. Third, I study indigenous idolatry cases to explain how local ecclesiastical courts promoted the evangelization of indigenous peoples and eradicated religious unorthodoxy. Finally, the last criminal category I analyze relates to marital issues, which include crimes that threatened or violated the Catholic sacrament of marriage, including adultery, fornication, concubinage, and domestic violence. Put together, these four criminal categories allow us to understand the role of ecclesiastical courts in enforcing good customs, facilitating governance, promoting social harmony, and eradicating “public sins.”

This dissertation argues that ecclesiastical courts, including that of San José de Toluca, were an essential piece in the governance of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. For the Spanish Crown, ecclesiastical courts were a useful tool to reinforce the Patronato Regio, administer justice in collaboration with royal officials, support the evangelization of indigenous people, settle disputes in indigenous towns that could develop into problematic rebellions, appease God’s wrath, and to supervise the morality and sexuality of the colonial population.

This dissertation examines the role of train development and construction in

Bolivian state formation and social change at the start of the twentieth century during the

twenty years of Liberal Party governments. The study analyzes national planning for

liberal development and studies the impact of one particular railroad, the Arica – La Paz

line, in the province of Pacajes. Though development planning throughout this period was

exclusively the realm of politicians and businessmen, their plans often depended on the

participation of the same people and relationships that Liberal Party leadership wanted to

change. This study shows how a wide range of groups within the border province of

Pacajes responded, reacted, and developed alternative agendas to the advance of trains and

state reforms associated with them.

Though Liberal Party leaders depicted the unimpeded advance of their plans to

transform the nation into a liberal, modern, and centralized one, the details show a much

more fragmented and varied result. That result often emerged from tensions and conflicts

produced in those places and moments where the imagined project landed in a complex

local reality, and came to reflect and produce many of the same contradictions that had

been present for centuries. Because the Liberal Party’s approach to railroads understood

modernization and development as a way to force other changes within the nation,

including in social relations, power, and identity, this dissertation focuses on aspects of

everyday life directly impacted by their development reforms: work, markets, food

production and transport, taxes, and the financing of local governments. This study

engages in a dialogue with research on the history of indigenous and worker movements,

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the development of liberalism, and citizenship in Bolivia, by examining the profound

impact of expanding capitalism in the daily lives of residents of one region and its

implications for belonging and exclusion in the nation. I suggest that the years of Liberal

Party rule and their successful project to build trains and transform the economy shaped

the emergence of new movements and politics that would dominate discussions of the

nation’s future for many decades after.

This thesis examines the organization of the 1970 and 1986 World Cup in Mexico. By implementing an ecology model, it demonstrates the connections between these events and the 1968 Olympic Games. This thesis argues that the hosting of the World Cup exemplified the PRI’s diminishing interest in the potential of professional sports to promote a nationalist project, and the rising influence of sporting entrepreneurs over these activities. Emilio Azcarrága Milmo and Guillermo Cañedo became the driving figures behind the hosting of the 1970 and the 1986 World Cups from their position as leaders of the Mexican soccer federation and Mexico’s telecommunications company. Together, they worked to pursue and organize the World Cup with the objective of making significant profits.

This dissertation analyzes the social, cultural, and political importance of competitive cycling in Colombia from 1930 to 1958. It examines the sport from the appearance of the first races until its consolidation as a popular mass phenomenon. The dissertation claims that competitive cycling was a place where Colombians could represent themselves to themselves and others. It shows how several agents within the cycling field such as cyclists, journalists, civilian authorities, and spectators addressed national debates on regionalism, politics, class relations, masculinity, and social unrest. In chapter one, the dissertation discusses the place that sports had in Colombian society during the early 1930s and how sporting activities became part of the country’s consumer culture. It also illustrates, from an institutional point of view, the government’s intervention in sports through the formation of the National Commission of Physical Education. The chapter ends with an examination of the first Bolivarian Games held in Bogotá in 1938. Chapter two traces the emergence of cycling as a free time activity in the early twentieth century and the way in which cycling enthusiasts first organized the sport in Colombia. The chapter evaluates the assembly of the National Cycling Association and the celebration of the first-ever national championship in 1946. Chapter three describes the popularization of competitive cycling and the role played by the private sector through the formation of Colombia’s Industrial and Commercial Sporting Federation. The chapter finishes with an account of the way in which La Vuelta a Colombia, the country’s most important stage race, was imagined and organized. Chapter four focuses on the celebration of the first ever Vuelta a Colombia in 1951, and its social, economic, political, and cultural impact. It also shows how the “big Colombian race” became a site for the production of meanings and representations about the country and its people. Chapter five addresses La Vuelta’s regional symbolisms and examines the way in which the race was used politically during the military regime of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla. The chapter also dissects how pedalers such as Ramón Hoyos Vallejo became recognized public figures and cultural icons nationwide.