I really enjoyed learning about the caudillos and everything that went along with and around them this week. First off, just getting some more detail on what the post-independence scene in Latin America looked like was good. I obviously knew that independence did not bring great stability or peace to the area, but to learn of all that it brought – the breaking up of political units, wars, civil wars, and even the violent suppression of indigenous and other peoples – kind of just put it all into perspective for me. Then, getting into the details of all of this, specifically caudillaje, I found to be very interesting.

Caudillaje is completely new to me and so it was pretty cool to learn about. The fact that this sort of system of clientalism existed and thrived on such a large scale so recently was kind of surprising to me. It sounds like it was a very harsh time to live, and so it was also kind of surprising to me when it was said that caudillos were actually pretty popular, and I wanted to know the reasons why. Caudillos did a good job of appealing to people’s emotions, and provided a sense of community for people, as well as protection. They allowed for rural folks to keep their traditional values and customs in place in the aftermath of the fall of the Spanish crown as well as the Catholic church; and they helped to stave off the emerging liberal elites who saw the peasants’ “communal lands and autonomy as the essence of backwardness” (quoted from the textbook). With the view that the liberal elites had on the peasants, and how they seemed to really look down on them, it is no surprise to me that change was resisted. I am a bit divided on what to think of the caudillos. Like with everything involving Latin America, it seems, they are complicated. While their actions brought a lot of violence and instability to the lives of many people, they also did provide good services for people who needed them. They ruled with an iron fist, but also fed people and protected what those people considered to be “traditions essential to their survival.” In terms of their impact on nations as a whole, this also seems to have been mixed. Like in the case of de Rosas, he actually started the process of uniting Argentina under Beunos Aires, and got their export economy going. While at the same time many caudillos seem to have lost considerable land for their countries through their actions. Also, when you look at the historical circumstances surrounding the emergence of caudillos, which I discussed a bit above, they actually reflect in a lot of ways the times they were living in, and simply took advantage. So, while I cannot support any authoritarian power, I can at the same time see that the situation is complicated and must be taken in context; and that there are many elements to it that might be seen differently by different people.

I also enjoyed the reading by Echevarria, The Slaugherhouse. I thought that for the most part his writing was pretty engaging, and the descriptions he used were very colorful. He also utilizes bitter sarcasm quite often, and his hate for Rosas and all Caudillos is clearly evident. I thought that he laid out his thinking quite clearly in this quote: “It is a matter of reducing man to a machine, whose driving force is not his own will but that of the church and the government.” He gets at the idea of the people blaming everything on the Unitarians, when really their troubles are the cause of the church and the state. As I said, his descriptions are very colorful, and this includes really ugly descriptions of the people hunting for food at the slaughterhouse. While many of their actions do sound pretty wild, just the way he describes them makes his disdain for the people obvious. It almost seems like he is trying to equate them to animals, as he is always describing them alongside dogs who are also fighting for food. Again he makes his feelings obvious with this quote: “It was all a simulacrum in miniature of the barbaric ways in which individual and social issues are resolved in our country.” A couple of questions I may have are why did he use such religious descriptions and references throughout the text, such as with the flood and the crucifixion? And does this really display some sort of contradictory feelings on his part, or is he just using language which is appropriate for describing the situation from the view of these people? Also, I was a bit curious by the death of the Unitarian at the end, who is described as dying from rage while being mobbed and tortured by the Federalists. What exactly does this obviously symbolic death represent?