2024 Research Travel Grant Presentation

Sara Pan-Algarra, International & Comparative Education 

Climate Mobility, Disasters, & Girls’ Education in Honduras

Climate disasters, on top of violence and poverty, drive internal and cross-border mobility in Honduras. In 2020, Hurricanes Eta and Iota displaced around 1 million people, representing 10 percent of the country’s population. Severe flooding hit the northern region of the Sula Valley—home to San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras. School infrastructure, students, and children of school age were also affected. Since existing literature shows associations between disasters and increased violence against women and girls, this research asks what factors influence the capability of girls displaced by disasters and of girls who live in zones prone to future catastrophes to access and remain in school. Analyzing in-person semi-structured interviews I conducted in the Summer of 2024 with girls in 9th grade attending public schools and girls out of school living in flood-prone, poor areas, and contexts affected by violence in the Sula Valley, this study aims to comprehend specific conditions girls in these contexts face to pursue education. My fieldwork contributes to understanding the complex interrelation between climate disasters, schooling, and internal displacement in Honduras from the point of view of girls themselves.

Paulina I. Gómez, Anthropology 

Land Access and the “Problem” of Indigeneity in Puerto Rico

This presentation will largely focus on one of my theoretical approaches in regards to the questions I am asking about indigeneity and land relations in Puerto Rico. There has been very little work connecting the Taíno resurgence movement to broader ecological protections and land rights movements happening currently on the island. In addition, the Caribbean often falls out of settler colonial analyses as a settler colonial site, and the critique that follows is that many Caribbeanists start History at the re-peopling of the islands rather than engaging with indigenous presence. This presentation aims to think about how we articulate a place like Puerto Rico– a current colony, where there was a prior Indigenous presence, and there are current disputes over ongoing Indigenous presence alongside land access disputes and local displacement by impeding US (non-Puerto Rican) mainlanders– in conversations of settler colonialism. I think through the way logics of land access are unsettled across multiple, overlapping contingent histories by reading across Caribbean political theory, settler colonial studies, and my own experiences and conversations on the island during the summer of 2024. 

Alyssa Brown, Ecology Evolution and Environmental Biology

Investigating wood traits to assess forest resilience to hurricanes in Puerto Rico

My research in El Yunque (the national forest on the North Eastern side of Puerto Rico) focuses on understanding recovery dynamics following past hurricanes to assess how the forest may fare with climate change. Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017 tripling stem break compared to past storms. My fieldwork focused on collecting wood samples from a number of species throughout the forest to look at how wood traits might influence tree resistance (avoidance) of trunk damage. Each day I went to the forest to collect samples from the North East and South West sides of trees to assess how wood traits change around the stem and how this influences trees' vulnerability to future storms. 

Thomas Maggiola, History

 The Politics of Guatemalan Exile in Mexico, 1980-2002

In the early 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans left their homes due to the violence of the internal armed conflict. Many of these people ended up in refugee camps just over the border into Mexico, provoking the involvement of the Mexican government and international organizations. In response, refugees mobilized within their new context to advocate for their interests and insert themselves into the Guatemalan peace process. In my research this summer, I consulted archives in Mexico and Guatemala in order to understand the international, national, and local contexts within which refugees lived, worked, and politically operated. I came across a wide range of documents, from the elaborate spy reports produced by Mexico's Dirección Federal de Seguridad about the camps to documents produced by refugee activists in negotiating a return to Mexico. While much of the existing work on the topic, published by the Mexican government and the United Nations, overlooks the roles played by the refugees themselves, my findings this summer show that refugees were engaged every step of the way and influenced the outcomes of the Guatemalan peace process.

Ana Zuniga Loreto, History

Crafting Legitimacy: Nahua Legal Technologies and the Shaping of Colonial Power in New Spain, Mexico

In this summer research, I gathered legal materials from several archives in Hidalgo, Toluca, and Mexico City crafted by Nahua peoples. I could identify the relationship between accessing juridical institutions and political power with the crafting of historical records. Questions of legitimacy and kinship became central to securing the communal ownership of the lands of the altepetl.