The surge of the chola alteña in Bolivia as a woman who, after being historically discriminated, has achieved her empowerment through her practices of resistance and agency is a very particular and new phenomenon hardly studied. The contribution of this research is in principle to describe and discover the complexity of this occurrence, but at the same time to open a field of understanding the works of the chola as a preliminary input for alternative feminisms, in accordance to the particularity of each context. As a result, an eclectic perspective from different non-canonical theories stemming from the Americas has been adopted. For example, intersectionality stemming from various social, cultural, racial, and gender contexts is addressed by Kimberlé Crenshaw, Dora Inés Munévar, Ann Phoenix, Breny Mendoza y Sonia Montecinos. Research from Aníbal Quijano, Walter Mignolo and María Lugones proposes the decolonization of knowledge. From a Bolivian perspective, the proposal of communitarian feminism by Julieta Paredes and the chi’xi approach by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. At the same time, the documenting of the chola practices has been obtained from non-conventional digital and oral sources. Thus, this research becomes a referent for future feminist research about the chola, but also for understanding other movements and practices of subaltern and discriminated women in similar or different contexts.

The chola is characterized by her peculiar garment which was imposed by the colonizer in the XVIII century, nullifying her indigenous identity. However, this woman has continued to wear it to the present day as much as a tactic of resistance as of empowerment and agency and has transformed it into a current fashion for the valorization of her identity. She is a chi’xi subject who complements or antagonizes opposites without subsuming them. Finally, what guides her practices and strategies are her native cultural values, such as the principle of Living Well, cooperation, reciprocity, and godfatherhood.

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The Escucha Project: Documenting Hispanics of Phoenix started with one purpose: to speak less and listen more. Often times, I find myself focused on what I can contribute to a conversation rather than listening to what others have to say; this project was the first step in changing that. As a student pursuing a Spanish language minor in the School of International Letters and Cultures, I decided to combine three things I am passionate about: the Spanish language, storytelling, and people. Similar to the Humans of New York blog by Brandon Stanton, which features portraits and interviews collected on the streets of New York City, I photographed and highlighted the stories of Hispanics in Phoenix. Each interview started with a brief description of the project, followed by a series of questions, and finally, a photograph. Through a blog and social media, I documented the photographs and quotes of those who I spoke with. The simple concept and project procedure led to complex and thoughtful realizations, not only from myself, but also from those who followed along. I was surprised at how similar and thematic the responses were throughout the process. The most common themes throughout the interviews were family, education, opportunity, and fear. By speaking with individuals within the Hispanic population of Phoenix and learning more about them, I feel that the overall purpose was achieved. Regardless of the content of their interview, each one of them allowed a non-native Spanish speaker into some part of their life and that is something I am grateful to have facilitated.

Hispanic neighborhoods, referred to as barrios, reveal several key characteristics unique to their ethnic neighborhood identity. The housescapes in the neighborhoods exhibit three characteristics which distinguish them as Latino housescapes: bright color exteriors, fences around the property and a display of religious iconography. In a spatial and landscape analysis of two key barrios in Arizona: Barrio Anita in Tucson and El Campito in Nuestro Barrio in Phoenix, research reveals the prevalence of the three housescape characteristics. The multiple case study explores the extent to which Hispanic housescapes exhibit bright house color exteriors, fences and religious iconography. The least prevalent of these characteristics is the display of religious symbols which indicates a growing change in the way Hispanic ethnicity is displayed in neighborhoods.

The first part of my thesis covered the history of bullfighting and the logistics of the "corrida de toros". This part of my thesis was there to educate my audience about what the actual practice was and where it came from. This was the only way that some of my later arguments could be made. Without knowledge of the sport the true meaning of the majority of my thesis would have been lost. To accomplish my goal of proving that bullfighting is no longer the culture symbol that is once was analyzed the differences in the perception of bullfighting in literature, art, and poetry. To show that the sport is no longer the symbol of Spanish culture, but rather a fleeting memory of the past, I showed that the glamorized image of matadors and bulls in past is no longer the case. Now the culture of Spain has moved away from this practice and toward a more beautiful and peaceful culture. To substantiate my findings in literature, art, and poetry I conducted interviews with Spaniards and to get their opinion on this art form. By attending events both for and against the sport of bullfighting and conversing with people on both sides of the line I was able to gain a well-rounded opinion on both sides of the argument. Outside of the interviews that I conducted I analyzed the economic impact, how parts of spain and other countries had banned the practice, and finally how the practice could be saved through a non-violent alternative. As an outsider living in the Spanish culture I can never truly see the culture as the Spanish people do and this is why remaining objective throughout this process was paramount.

In the face of what many scientists and cultural theorists are calling the Anthropocene, a new era characterized by catastrophic human impact on the planet’s geologic, atmospheric, and ecological makeup, Latin American writers, artists, and filmmakers today from various disciplinary and geographical positionalities are engaging in debates about how to respond ethically to this global crisis. From an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates cutting-edge theories in multispecies ethnography, material ecocriticism, and queer ecology, this study examines multispecies relationships unfolding in three telescoping dimensions—corporealities, companions, and communities—in contemporary Latin American cultural production while uncovering indigenous and other-than-dominant epistemologies about human-nonhuman entanglements. I argue that contemporary cultural expression uncovers long, overlapping histories of social and environmental exploitation and resistance while casting the moment of encounter between individuals of different species as hopeful figurations of human-nonhuman flourishing beyond the Anthropocene. Instead of remaining hopelessly mired in the dire geographies of planetary decline, the works of Uruguayan writer Teresa Porzecanski, Mexican author Daniela Tarazona, Mexican textile sculptor Alejandra Zermeño, Argentine filmmaker Lucía Puenzo, Colombian installation artist María Fernanda Cardoso, Colombian poet Juan Carlos Galeano, Colombian graphic artist Solmi Angarita, and Brazilian poet Astrid Cabral dramatize a multitude of multispecies encounters to imagine the possibility of a better world—one that is already as close as our skin and as present as the nonhuman “others” that constitute our existence. These works imagine the human itself as a product of multispecies interactions through evolutionary time, multispecies companionships as formed around queer kinships, and biocultural communities as emerging through communicative, ethical encounters.

ABSTRACT Emile Zola is considered one of the fathers of 19th century French Naturalist literature. He is famous for his eloquence, sarcasm and is well known for being a provocateur. He wants to follow the principles of science: observation of his characters in their living environment (or milieu). He holds that individuals inherit physical and personality traits from their ancestors, such as atavism, which can be passed from grandfather to father and father to son. This assumption leads to Social Darwinism and impacted Zola like many other European intellectuals who believed in the new social sciences. Religion was going extinct on the old continent and the trend was to apply these theories to literature and humanities. The author also captures the political and social unrest of a struggling working class in his novel Germinal, where starving miners rebel against the bourgeois class that exploits them. Baldomero Lillo is a Chilean naturalist follower of Emile Zola who found inspiration in Germinal to write Sub Terra-short stories depicting the grim life of the coal miners. The author knows them well since he shared his existence with the miners in Lota, in the southern region of Santiago. Unlike Zola, Lillo, who was less educated and less inclined to trust science, opts for a compassionate Naturalism which relates more to his culture and personal inclinations. Le milieu or el medio ambiente in the Sub Terra stories is dreadful and the author seeks to expose the master/slave relationship in a society that still resembles the European Middle Ages. Le milieu, that is to say the external forces that surround the miners (their geographical, social and political environment), eventually engulfs and condemns them to a life of servitude and misery. Determinism on both continents decides the fate of each member of the society.