“In the Andes, the Devil merges with the image of the stranger.” If you were to replace ‘the Andes’ with ‘Latin America’, I believe it would still be a true claim. It was true with the natives that were “discovered” by Europeans; it was true with Guaman Poma; it was true in Guatemala with the Banana War; it was true in Cuba’s missile crisis; it was true when Mario Vargas Llosa wrote this… and it continues to be true today. In my opinion it’s not that Latinos see strangers as the Devil all the time, but when one of us feels threatened by a stranger, country or person, we tend to associate them with pure evil. The sad part is that, like in the text, we sometimes feel that even citizens of our countries are strangers, because of the huge cultural diversity that characterizes Latin America, and this has lead to war, murders and all sorts of crimes.

The red flag mentioned in Vargas Llosa’s  is also a big problem in Latin America. I have lived most of my life in El Salvador and when elections come around people usually take sides, hardly anyone stays neutral, but the bad part is the antagonistic nature of left and right wing parties mixed with the hot blood that flows through most Latinos. We are, mostly, very passionate about our football teams, political parties, religious views, etc. and that just leads to plenty of violence. What struck me the most about this text is that Vargas Llosa mentions that guerrilla movements are born among intellectuals and middle-class citizens and I guess I had never thought about it this way. In my high school we were made to think of these movements as emerging from resentful poor people who all they want to do is make the rich pay for their crimes. It’s a different point of view that Vargas Llosa gives me and I think he could, and probably is, right.

It’s a shame that in Latin America we see each other as strangers even in our countries. I have felt that some people see me as a stranger in my country and it’s odd although I had never thought about it until now. I can’t even begin to imagine how a foreigner must feel when visiting Latin America, do you feel welcome or do you feel that people see you as the Devil?

Augusto Sandino’s Political Manifesto (document 6.1) is a text with which I can really empathize. It’s strange for me to think of the Chamorro family as a malign one, as Sandino did, because I know their descendants. They’re people I have known for a couple of years now (I actually met some of them at a democracy conference in Panama) and while I did always wonder how it was that their family was so wealthy, I didn’t think it was because they were anti-patriots. However, I can see Sandino’s point of view in his manifesto, mainly because Nicaragua is notorious in Central America, even nowadays, for being a country in which wealth is spread out incredibly unfairly. People from El Salvador still go to Nicaragua to get wealthier because it’s stupidly easy to make money by taking advantage of family ties. The bad thing about this, and here’s how I can understand Sandino’s anger, is that Nicaragua is a country which, when you see it as an outsider, looks poor and dirty and not really developed. You have to really go into the few wealthy neighborhoods to see where most of their money has gone.

It’s interesting to think about oligarchs as traitors though because in some aspects they are; they are those who have little to no regard for the greater good of the community and mostly care about exploiting their social status to get even wealthier and more powerful. It’s a sad reality for Nicaragua because even though the Sandinista movement was/is very strong, and even got some oligarchs to support it (Chamorro family members included), it’s a country which is still run by oligarchs and hasn’t really developed much in terms of its power gap.

I don’t think Sandino’s manifesto is Bolivarian in principle because it doesn’t want to unite all of Central America to fight against the oligarchy; I believe he just wants the chance for the people in Nicaragua to fight against the oligarchy and doesn’t want foreigners getting involved. I believe that there is still going to be more revolutionary movements in Nicaragua because wealth hasn’t really been spread out in a fair way yet and the rich are still getting richer and it’s really sad to see Managua nowadays and how it looks like such a badly kept city.

Echeverria’s Slaughterhouse is a text that’s very hard to read through and not feel anything. It’s a text that’s made to evoke emotion in the reader, mostly due to all the grotesque images that we’re given but also all the hate and intolerance that you can feel flowing through the church’s depiction as well as the Federation.

The part that struck me most wasn’t the preamble nor the description of the slaughtering of the steer and bull, it was the killing of the “Unitarian”. Echeverria portrays the butchers/executioners as, I would say, victims of demagoguery. They hate Unitarians because the Restorer ordered it and that’s the only argument they give when they are confronting the sole Unitarian. The sentence that stood out to me the most was “The free men are made to wear one by force.” because it pretty much describes every “free” country in the world. In the US, for example, you’re an adult when you’re 18 but you’re not free to drink a beer, that would be a crime; if you’re caught doing it, the policeman will never give you an explanation as to why it’s wrong, he’ll just say that “it’s the law”.

When Echeverria talked about Lent in the beginning I could really identify to it because in El Salvador, even if I am not a religious person, I have been denied meat at a restaurant because it was that time of year. People really want to impose their views on others and that’s what I don’t like about the way the Catholic Church operates in Latin America. I never try to tell people not to believe in God, I have never been told by a Muslim or a Jew that my religion is wrong but yet in Latin America there’s lots of catholic people who will insist on converting you because it’s what they have been told all their life is the right thing to do. The Restorer in this text is the typical example of someone who controls society based on fear, like George W. Bush. I don’t like these kinds of people.

To me, these independence narratives felt as if though some of them weren’t written in the 18th or 19th century but instead yesterday. In the introduction to the book, it mentions Polanco and Ecatepec which are in my opinion great ways to represent Latin America nowadays. Criollos never really lost power in most Latin American countries, they are still the ones with the money and the power and the heritage to take high positions in government. Being from one of the smallest countries in Latin America, El Salvador, this power that criollos have is surely exacerbated to higher degrees than in most of the region. It’s always the same families ruling and it’s getting to a point where the less fortunate people are getting extremely upset.

I think it’s time for Latin countries to get the next Simon Bolivar, someone who will unite everyone and make us see past our differences. Like Dawson said, there are lots of tensions between countries (Brazil & Argentina, Venezuela & Colombia, etc.) and it might get to the point where the countries end up hating each other, just like Spaniards and Americans, “It would be easier to have the two continents meet than to reconcile the spirits of the two countries. ”

It’s hard for me to think of these events as isolated events when I can see that some of those problems still exist; I imagine that it’s a lot easier for Canadians, Europeans and Asians to think of these narratives as things of the past. I can still imagine a world where an elite rule over the poor; I grew up in that world.  Chavez like Dawson mentioned, was a big leader in Latin America, but the thing that bothered me about Chavez was that you had to either be with him or against him; political ideology hasn’t evolved past left and right wing in my country and it feels as if we’ve gone back to before September 15th 1821 when we signed the declaration of independence. We may be a sovereign nation but we did not claim independence over the racial, social and economical injustices that characterized “dependent” America.

When I read the Guaman Poma text I empathized with Inca Atagualpa because where I come from, El Salvador, religion is also something that is enforced on people and if you’re not Roman Catholic then people will see you as cursed or as if there’s really something wrong with you. Nevertheless, it’s not as gruesome as what happened to the Indians who stood up to the Spaniards. In general it was a slightly confusing text to understand, however, it was an interesting text to read because you get to see Guaman Poma’s perspective and how it must feel like to be invaded by a race that’s far more advanced than you. This also happens sometimes in Latin America nowadays, I feel, when there are local shops and businesses and then a huge multinational company comes, like McDonald’s or Walmart and then locals have to start working for the new companies since they lost theirs; modern slavery.

“Indian, Guanca Bilca, later named Felipe” is such a clear example of the transformation that the Americas underwent with that conquer, there aren’t very many people left in Latin America with native names, most of them have names that descend from the “old world”. It is rare to see someone in El Salvador who actually has an Indian name.

I think I can really relate to this text because even now in El Salvador it feels as if though people from European descent are wealthy compared to those from Indigenous descent, usually peasants. The lust for power and greediness still hasn’t completely left Latin America as well a large part of Latin governments are still highly connected to the Roman Catholic church of their respective countries. I can’t, however, say that my family hasn’t benefited from this and that I would be in the same position that I am right now where it not for the oppression of the indigenous people in El Salvador. Sad but true.

I didn’t really like Christopher Columbus’ journal very much. Although I did get some of the points that he made, like the poverty of the people in all aspects and the fact that they weren’t wearing anything and giving the conquistadors everything that they owned. It just seems as if Columbus knew at that very moment that it was a race that could be conquered because they were significantly less developed than Europe. It’s interesting.

My name is Daniel and I’m from El Salvador. Currently I’m a second year student in the Sauder School of Business, however I have recently acquired a particular passion for politics which is why I am taking this Latin American Studies course, as it will (hopefully) help me understand my country’s roots even more. Eventually I would like to become a politician in my country and help develop it into a top quality nation.