Browsing by Subject "Central America"
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Item Open Access A Home of Our Own: Social Reproduction of a Precarious, Migrant Class(2019-04-29) Aguilar, ErickMany of the recent migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico have experienced the rise of drug-related gang violence and declining economic conditions in their home countries brought on by transnational agreements. With the ongoing collapse of their communities and homes via these conditions, many of these migrants move to the United States and join precarious jobs, such as agricultural labor. This thesis explores the ways in which family connections, inside and outside the home, affects the decision-making processes that leads migrant parents to join these precarious labor regimes. Through participant-observation and semi-structured interviews with migrant mothers and fathers from Honduras and Mexico living in rural towns in Eastern North Carolina, I investigate the social reproductive forces of the family that help fuel mass migration into rural North Carolina. Furthermore, I use my own experience as the son of an agricultural worker to complement my findings within the fields. My findings show that migrant mothers choose to migrate to North Carolina to raise their sons in proximity to their fathers, which they believe will allow their sons to learn how to become successful laborers in the future. Additionally, migrant parents believe that the home can be a place where the trauma of displacement can be undone. These findings show a glimmer of how lives can be structured and shaped outside of wage labor.Item Open Access Assessing Community Based Water Organization Performance in Central America(2017-06-26) Browning, NeilWhat are the effects of household, community, technical, and environmental variables on the performance and resilience of CWOs in dry regions? Since 2014, drought has severely affected Central American economic and health outcomes, necessitating international intervention. 2.5 million people were at risk of food insecurity across the region in 2014, and 65% of homes had no stock of food during the 2015 harvest season. Low-income families living in Central America’s “dry corridor” are affected the most by droughts; the UN’s long-term plan is to build climate resilience in these communities as climate change increases the magnitude and frequency of droughts. Local community-based drinking water organizations (CWOs) are key actors in Central American water provision. In rural and urban peripheral areas, CWOs provide the populace with up to 60% of its drinkable water. As climate change strains water accessibility, these local institutions will require effective management strategies so they have the capacity to handle the resource declines they will experience. I assessed how different independent variables are associated with the adaptive capacity of CWOs and identified attributes that lead to success by conducting regression analyses on a data set from three Central American countries: Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. I also compared the statistically significant outcomes across the three countries. The regressions are based on survey data that has been gathered at the household and CWO level, technical data that was collected by engineers, as well as environmental and census data on the subnational regions in question. First, I examined household reports of water access – defined as number of hours per day. I analyzed how this definition of water access related to household, engineering, community-level, and environmental variables. I found that volumetric pricing and elevation are the key variables to consider when designing an effective governance structure for a Central American CWO. I also determined that it is possible that national norms in CWO procedures may overstate the effect of volumetric pricing. Second, I used three different engineering variables as dependent and analyzed how they were affected by household, community-level and environmental variables. Unlike the hours of service variable, the engineering variables were collected at the community level by engineers, rather than self-reported at the household level. I conclude that elevation and volumetric pricing are the most relevant variables to consider in effective rural water provision. Elevation increases the start-up and maintenance costs of obtaining water. Volumetric pricing should be promoted as well, as it encourages the regulation of scarce water resources in the simplest way. I also conclude that higher elevation communities require more maintenance from community members, and require more expensive and powerful pumping technology.Item Open Access Biogeography in deep time - What do phylogenetics, geology, and paleoclimate tell us about early platyrrhine evolution?(Mol Phylogenet Evol, 2015-01) Kay, Richard FrederickMolecular data have converged on a consensus about the genus-level phylogeny of extant platyrrhine monkeys, but for most extinct taxa and certainly for those older than the Pleistocene we must rely upon morphological evidence from fossils. This raises the question as to how well anatomical data mirror molecular phylogenies and how best to deal with discrepancies between the molecular and morphological data as we seek to extend our phylogenies to the placement of fossil taxa. Here I present parsimony-based phylogenetic analyses of extant and fossil platyrrhines based on an anatomical dataset of 399 dental characters and osteological features of the cranium and postcranium. I sample 16 extant taxa (one from each platyrrhine genus) and 20 extinct taxa of platyrrhines. The tree structure is constrained with a "molecular scaffold" of extant species as implemented in maximum parsimony using PAUP with the molecular-based 'backbone' approach. The data set encompasses most of the known extinct species of platyrrhines, ranging in age from latest Oligocene (∼26 Ma) to the Recent. The tree is rooted with extant catarrhines, and Late Eocene and Early Oligocene African anthropoids. Among the more interesting patterns to emerge are: (1) known early platyrrhines from the Late Oligocene through Early Miocene (26-16.5Ma) represent only stem platyrrhine taxa; (2) representatives of the three living platyrrhine families first occur between 15.7 Ma and 13.5 Ma; and (3) recently extinct primates from the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola) are sister to the clade of extant platyrrhines and may have diverged in the Early Miocene. It is probable that the crown platyrrhine clade did not originate before about 20-24 Ma, a conclusion consistent with the phylogenetic analysis of fossil taxa presented here and with recent molecular clock estimates. The following biogeographic scenario is consistent with the phylogenetic findings and climatic and geologic evidence: Tropical South America has been a center for platyrrhine diversification since platyrrhines arrived on the continent in the middle Cenozoic. Platyrrhines dispersed from tropical South America to Patagonia at ∼25-24 Ma via a "Paraná Portal" through eastern South America across a retreating Paranense Sea. Phylogenetic bracketing suggests Antillean primates arrived via a sweepstakes route or island chain from northern South America in the Early Miocene, not via a proposed land bridge or island chain (GAARlandia) in the Early Oligocene (∼34 Ma). Patagonian and Antillean platyrrhines went extinct without leaving living descendants, the former at the end of the Early Miocene and the latter within the past six thousand years. Molecular evidence suggests crown platyrrhines arrived in Central America by crossing an intermittent connection through the Isthmus of Panama at or after 3.5Ma. Any more ancient Central American primates, should they be discovered, are unlikely to have given rise to the extant Central American taxa in situ.Item Open Access Monitoring Key Biodiversity Indicator Species in Southwestern El Salvador: Changes in Bird Populations during Five Years in the Apaneca Biological Corridor(2009-04-24T17:40:02Z) Wolfe, KalaOne of the primary purposes of biodiversity conservation programs is to maintain stable populations of both threatened and non-threatened species. Knowing the current status of bird populations through long term monitoring projects is vital in determining population trends over time, evaluating the success of existing conservation programs, as well as identifying conservation priorities. Five years ago, the virtual absence of abundance information for forest bird species in El Salvador inspired the development of the Permanent Bird Monitoring Program. Since the Program’s inception, data have been collected for 151 species across the southwestern Apaneca region of El Salvador. Monitoring was conducted at three monitoring stations, which covered three habitat types: dry forest (El Imposible), cloud forest (Los Volcanes), and shade grown coffee plantation (Finca Nuevos Horizontes). Linear regression was used to evaluate temporal trends over a 5 year period for 87 species that have each been detected at least 10 times in the monitoring stations. Analysis of data resulting from this program has identified 22 declining species, and 1 increasing species. The dry forest site of El Imposible contained the most stable bird populations (90% stable), while the cloud forest populations of Los Volcanes were found to be intermediately so (79% stable), and the coffee plantation site was found to have the least stable populations (69% stable). Insectivore and neotropical migratory species appear to be suffering the worst declines. Of the neotropical migratory species found to be in decline in El Salvador, six were also found to be experiencing declines in their North American breeding grounds. In addition to providing base knowledge of the status of bird populations, this analysis will permit more accurate evaluations of threatened status in future reevaluations of national Red List status for El Salvador birds.Item Open Access Social and Behavioral Determinants of Child Undernutrition in Camasca, Honduras(2020-04-17) Iskandarani, MayaChild undernutrition remains a significant health challenge around the world despite its high-priority status on the global health agenda. While the global burden of child undernutrition has reached historically low levels, it remains a pressing issue in rural communities of Central America. Through a partnership with a grassroots intervention targeting child undernutrition, this study sought to explore predictors of child nutrition knowledge and child growth outcomes in the community of Camasca in Honduras.Item Open Access Using metapopulation theory for practical conservation of mangrove endemic birds.(Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 2020-02) Huang, Ryan; Pimm, Stuart L; Giri, ChandraAs a landscape becomes increasingly fragmented through habitat loss, the individual patches become smaller and more isolated and thus less likely to sustain a local population. Metapopulation theory is appropriate for analyzing fragmented landscapes because it combines empirical landscape features with species-specific information to produce direct information on population extinction risks. This approach contrasts with descriptions of habitat fragments, which provide only indirect information on risk. Combining a spatially explicit metapopulation model with empirical data on endemic species' ranges and maps of habitat cover, we calculated the metapopulation capacity-a measure of a landscape's ability to sustain a metapopulation. Mangroves provide an ideal model landscape because they are of conservation concern and their patch boundaries are easily delineated. For 2000-20015, we calculated global metapopulation capacity for 99 metapopulations of 32 different bird species endemic to mangroves. Northern Australia and Southeast Asia had the highest richness of mangrove endemic birds. The Caribbean, Pacific coast of Central America, Madagascar, Borneo, and isolated patches in Southeast Asia in Myanmar and Malaysia had the highest metapopulation losses. Regions with the highest loss of habitat area were not necessarily those with the highest loss of metapopulation capacity. Often, it was not a matter of how much, but how the habitat was lost. Our method can be used by managers to evaluate and prioritize a landscape for metapopulation persistence.Item Open Access Visual Disobedience: The Geopolitics of Experimental Art in Central America, 1990-Present(2014) Cornejo, KencyThis dissertation centers on the relationship between art and politics in postwar Central America as materialized in the specific issues of racial and gendered violence that derive from the region's geopolitical location and history. It argues that the decade of the 1990s marks a moment of change in the region's cultural infrastructure, both institutionally and conceptually, in which artists seek a new visual language of experimental art practices to articulate and conceptualize a critical understanding of place, experience and knowledge. It posits that visual and conceptual manifestations of violence in Central American performance, conceptual art and installation extend beyond a critique of the state, and beyond the scope of political parties in perpetuating violent circumstances in these countries. It argues that instead artists use experimental practices in art to locate manifestations of racial violence in an historical system of domination and as a legacy of colonialism still witnessed, lived, and learned by multiple subjectivities in the region. In this postwar period artists move beyond the cold-war rhetoric of the previous decades and instead root the current social and political injustices in what Aníbal Quijano calls the `coloniality of power.' Through an engagement of decolonial methodologies, this dissertation challenges the label "political art" in Central America and offers what I call "visual disobedience" as a response to the coloniality of seeing. I posit that visual colonization is yet another aspect of the coloniality of power and indispensable to projects of decolonization. It offers an analysis of various works to show how visual disobedience responds specifically to racial and gender violence and the equally violent colonization of visuality in Mesoamerica. Such geopolitical critiques through art unmask themes specific to life and identity in contemporary Central America, from indigenous genocide, femicide, transnational gangs, to mass imprisonments and a new wave of social cleansing. I propose that Central American artists--beyond an anti-colonial stance--are engaging in visual disobedience so as to construct decolonial epistemologies in art, through art, and as art as decolonial gestures for healing.
Item Open Access Whole genome sequencing identifies circulating Beijing-lineage Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains in Guatemala and an associated urban outbreak.(Tuberculosis (Edinb), 2015-12) Saelens, Joseph W; Lau-Bonilla, Dalia; Moller, Anneliese; Medina, Narda; Guzmán, Brenda; Calderón, Maylena; Herrera, Raúl; Sisk, Dana M; Xet-Mull, Ana M; Stout, Jason E; Arathoon, Eduardo; Samayoa, Blanca; Tobin, David MLimited data are available regarding the molecular epidemiology of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) strains circulating in Guatemala. Beijing-lineage Mtb strains have gained prevalence worldwide and are associated with increased virulence and drug resistance, but there have been only a few cases reported in Central America. Here we report the first whole genome sequencing of Central American Beijing-lineage strains of Mtb. We find that multiple Beijing-lineage strains, derived from independent founding events, are currently circulating in Guatemala, but overall still represent a relatively small proportion of disease burden. Finally, we identify a specific Beijing-lineage outbreak centered on a poor neighborhood in Guatemala City.