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.