This week’s reading started off by stating that not many people benefited from economic growth, and it was characterized negatively. For instance, people faced a loss of rights, land, and autonomy and people in Latin America were under constant threat from North America. As the book quoted, “One person’s boom was always another’s crisis”, which I think was the best expression to describe the situation and intriguing phrases at the same time.

Jose Marti’s essay, Our America, was trying to alert people that they have to unite to fight against North American threat. Even though he was raised to believe in the progress, but he observed that progress as a new era of outside domination. In addition, he believed that poor people suffered even more as a result of export boom. I thought that his essay was intriguing because it portrayed the situation at that time. As part of modernity, railroad construction began, but it created a minor conflict with rural groups. They had to be removed from the construction site, but Porfirio Diaz did not managed to remove them peacefully. As a result, this led to violence using police.

When Porfirio Diaz won the election by sending Francisco Madero into jail, middle class people started to uproar. Madero managed to overthrow the government by use of arms and thought that Mexican revolution was over. However, collapse of his government resulted in civil war and I could notice that these two people were corrupted and did not managed to administer the country well. While the country was in the mess, peasant army of Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata converged to Mexico City. They were aiming to take back stole lands and liberties from Mexican Government.

Finally, I found it interesting to read about Argentina’s number of attracted immigration, 800000. They formed great part of working classes in there and by 1914 foreign born consisted almost 70% of skilled workers, which I think brings positive effect to Argentina. However, they were not able to vote and their action was limited. This came from distrust towards immigrants because they “spoke foreign tongues, ate alien food, did not celebrate the national traditions or owe any loyalty to Argentina”. This is something that is still present in my opinion. Especially with countries in Europe, immigrants may be seen as aliens because they do not share common belief. As a result, they often receive criticism and discrimination during economic crisis because people think immigrants are stealing jobs. Various misunderstandings comes from not knowing the people fully.

This week’s reading started off by stating how countries transformed as one of the modern state in Latin America. In Mexico, modern infrastructures such as complex buildings and railroads were built and managed to eradicate the threat of Malaria. Other parts of Latin America underwent similar transformation. After abolishing slavery and caste systems, Latin America flourished through global trade especially by exporting raw materials such as copper and silver. These resources were exported to wealthy state in North such as the US and the demand was going up. Even though the economy seemed to be fine, but Milton Friedman said the export boom was increasing the economic dependency and foreign investors were attempting to monopolize Latin America’s wealth. In addition, disparity between rich and poor grew larger. I believe that this problem still exists today around the world. Various countries in the world rely heavily on export because their domestic market is not big enough. As a result, economic dependency increases, which may lead to economic crisis as the book also pointed out.

Order and Progress was also interesting to read because I could understand it was very important in modernization. Elites thought that order was necessary in order to modernize, otherwise it would become impossible. At the same time, they believed that democracy was not an ideal way to rule the country because people were not smart enough to exercise democratic rights.

As I was reading the book, I found it intriguing to read about the statement of Raul Prebisch, an economist from Argentina. He stated that export boom relied too much on foreign export and that “simply replaced one colonial master with others”. In my opinion, this problem still exists today among developing countries or countries in poverty as they have to rely on wealthy nations to run their economy.

Finally, I enjoyed reading about how photography was considered the most powerful symbol of modernization. Photographs could describe the process of modernization by capturing the photograph of buildings and construction of huge buildings. Moreover, the photographs were also used to take pictures of indigenous to fix racial identity. Benito Juarez had indigenous past, but he managed to erase it by using photographs to promote that he different from slaves and peasants. In present day, photographs are not too special for ordinary people, but back then it was used to document the signs of progress to modernity.

Reading “Citizenship and Rights in the New Republics” helped me to understand the circumstance surrounding slavery and development of colored rights in Latin America in 19th century. While reading this document I noticed some comparison of situation between United States and countries in Latin America, which I found very intriguing.

Ideas such as biological differences were brought in Latin America from Europe which clearly excluded people based on their race. This was called scientific racism. Before I read this chapter, I had some knowledge about scientific racism and it was about using scientific technique to justify racism as well as slavery. Even though it was thought to be scientific, it had little connections to science. It was intriguing to see the lines such as “Different groups had innately different abilities” and “Mixing of races led to the degeneration of the species”. This enabled direct exclusion of groups other than white and segregation. In addition, Scientific racism enabled colonial system to encourage cleanliness of blood, created notion that whites were smart and superior and treated Blacks and Indigenous as a threat to modernization. The idea of white superiority led people to boost the prosperity or modernize by attempting to reduce the number of colored people by intermarriage or reclassification. For example in 1838, Afro Argentines consisted of 25% of the population in Buenos Aires, but by 1887 the number dropped to 2%. A large number of them were reclassified as trigueño or “wheat colored”. I found this interesting because the number dropped massively in such a short time and idea of “improving the race”.

I was able to see the difference between how USA and Brazil regarded slaves. For instance, Brazil tended to bring more slaves and they were expendables. In often case, many slaves died within a few years of arrival. Life expectancy was also very low in Brazil compared to that of in America. On the other hand, the United States wanted slaves to live longer and encouraged them to have children. In addition race and slavery were not linked in Brazil and Cuba and blacks were free and they could own land and even slaves. These kinds of differences were very astounding to me because I thought that a slavery system in North and South America was basically the same.

Through reading this week’s chapter, I was able to draw the difference between slavery system in the US and Brazil, rights of slaves and the idea of scientific racism.

I believe it was interesting to read about Latin American countries after achieving independence from Spain. Although they achieved it they had to face so many problems such as instability and economic growth. Consequently, Caudillos appeared to take power and from the reading Juan Manuel de Rosas may be one of the most famous brutal leader. When an influence of Catholic Church and Spanish colonialists disappeared, this led to the emerge of Caudillo. Before I took this course, I had no idea about it, but the reading allowed me to know what it is and famous caudillos from Latin America. The  Caudillos did not prefer to have a modern state where they create systems and institutions. Adherent of Caudillos were mainly peasants and Indians, who wanted defend their autonomy and community from liberals who sought to create a modern state. Caudillos granted lands to peasants to join military and peasants and Indians needed Caudillos to protect them. Therefore, people may state that they were relying on each other.

I found interesting and surprising to learn about Santa Anna who was considered a independence hero and villain at the same time. I knew that Mexico lost the war against America, which Mexico lost Texas and California, so people can claim that Santa Anna is certainly responsible for losing territories.

As I was reading the book, I learned that economic development within Latin America differed depending on regions. For example, Chile was doing relatively well by exporting formidable merchant marine mining. This allowed more domestic investment such as education and military. As a result of this, Chile was able to fend off attacks from Bolivia and eventually Chile was able to gain new territories. On page 51, the image shows how much territories Bolivia had lost. I was completely unaware of this and I believe that this happened due to lack of ability to gain and consolidate power nationwide after independence.

Through this reading, I was able to learn about Caudillos and how Latin America struggled to consolidate power.