I was very excited when I began reading this chapter in our textbook. As a child I have watched the “Evita” musical many times and watched it before my recent trip to Argentina.
This week the reading focuses on the techniques to reach the masses of political leaders. This became a very powerful political era and has continued to develop ever since. Every minor to major decision is available to the public now, I believe this is very special. It gets citizens involved in politics and it limits the opportunity for leaders to do major catastrophes. As a result of the publicity of political leaders since the very beginning of media leaders are held accountable and monitored by the citizens of its nation.
As we see the emphasis put on Evita Peron’s speeches in the documents 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4. The title of Dawson’s chapter “Power to the People” is clearly seen in document 7.3 from August 22 1951. After reading this I was intrigued by her charismatic speeches and looked for videos on youtube.
http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=253VzMtQ-9s
It is absolutely incredible to see the masses of supporters who were attending but also that it was filmed at that today in 2015 I can watch her final speech is incredible.
Document 7.4 looks further into if her speech was similar to the script with all the screaming descamisados. Comparing both they seemed quite similar, which is very impressing since there was less than 1 million people gathered in a plaza. I cannot imagine that pressure she was under during this speech, declining such a powerful position that the crowd of people below her obviously care deeply about. Dawson states “a million people have a kind of power all their own.” This is a powerful sentence which summarizes this chapter but also explains many changes that continued to happen throughout Latin America.
I also agree the availability of information is a positive advance. I strengthens the power of the people and makes it exponentially harder for political figures to manipulate public information to their favor.
She was under a lot of pressure but it seemed like she cracked and in the moment she decided that her popularity was the most important. It was also interesting how much she blatantly praised herself and her husband throughout the speech.