This exam is to be completed by you and you alone; you may make use of your books, your notes, and reserve materials, but you may NOT discuss this exam with anyone, nor may you use another person's notes. Violation of this prohibition will constitute a serious infraction of the Honor Code, possibly resulting in failure of the course.

I. Provide the context for and explain the significance of two (2) of the following three (3) passages; your answers should be three to five sentences in length. Be sure to identify the exact source of the passage.

A.     Whether the rituals are staged on a pyramid in pre-Columbian Tenochtitlán or in a detention center in contemporary Argentina, sacrifice is a symbolic drama by which authoritarian leaders effect an autoapotheosis through the sanctified destruction of ritually charged victims, thereby generating an illusion of politico-religious legitimacy.

B.      I have made a point of telling this story, because without Doña Marina we could not have understood the language of New Spain and Mexico.

C.     The strange permanence of Cortés and La Malinche in the Mexican's imagination and sensibilities reveals that they are something more than historical figures:  they are symbols of a secret conflict that we have still not resolved.  When he repudiates La Malinche ­ the Mexican Eve, as she was represented by José Clemente Orozco in his mural in the National Preparatory School ­ the Mexican breaks his ties with the past, renounces his origins, and lives in isolation and solitude.

II. Give a succinct yet informative identification of three (3) of the following five (5) terms; these answers should illustrate your command of the reading and discussion material, and should be three to five sentences in length.

A. chingar

B. sacrifice

C. picana

D. desaparecido

E. curfew

III. Essay Questions: Answer any two (2) of the following three (3) questions. Your answers should be thoughtful, insightful, draw upon class discussion, critical readings, reserve readings, etc., and tie fundamental course concepts with a minimum of three (3) narrative texts (i.e. "stories"). Each essay should draw upon different texts, and each should be approximately 500-1000 words in length. Cite and remark upon specific passages in order to illustrate your points, but include 500-1000 of your own words.

A. Drawing upon a number of narratives (including movies) about the Americas, discuss how issues of expansion and colonialism are addressed in the terms of the human body, cannibalism, and gender relations in History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil.

B. Using Frank Graziano's summary of the forms of ritualized violence, discuss how projecting the concept of evil, or ``otherness", upon a construed enemy relates to the political and religious models used to justify torture, murder and genocide.

C. What, if anything, do acts like rape, torture, cannibalism, and religious conversion have in common?  Why is this course entitled ``Divine Rape:  Coercion, consumption and colonialism"?