Tag Archives: Colonial

Week Twelve: “Speaking Truth to Power”

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This week’s reading was centered on the idea that Latin American States are seeing as not strong enough to maintain social order, collect taxes, or even maintain the normal level or political stability which is expected of them. In contrast, strong states are considered robust because they rely relatively little on violence and more on explicit deal-making to maintain order and to get things done. It was because of such weak leadership and the lack of political stability that many Latin American countries advanced towards militarized regimes. Governments such as the Argentine, Chilean, Guatemalan, and Salvadorian, were able to inflict terror upon their citizens and incorporate dehumanizing techniques such as coercion, terror and kidnapping which came from the cold war period. On the other hand, their victims, powerless, found in international allies a much strong support than what they could ever get at home. They also found a language which superseded the one the moment was using and which in a sense gave them strength to keep fighting. Many people with conservative views also thought that, in order to achieve order and prosperity, they needed to allow the government to track down the ‘bad guys’ and put some order in the country. This presumption of vulnerability allowed many of these governments to act with such disregard for the law and the well-being of the citizen that they became some of the most violent regimens at the time.

We also learned about Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, mothers of individuals who were disappeared by the Juntas because of the dissonance with the dictatorships and their political views. These mothers saw to become the voice of desperation at first, but later they begun to politically organize publically on the main squares in Buenos Aires in order to protest for the many abuses that the Argentinian government had committed against their children. Their demand was: their return of their children. This valiant act, allowed to put a face of grieves out in the open, making a stand where many Argentinian people did not want to voice their opinions out in the open. At the same time that, it also helped bring down one of the bloodiest dictatorships that the region had seen in decades. I think that the fear of thinking that chaos and instability was going to reign the streets of the country, many Argentinians wanted to have stability and the middle class and upper class, blamed anyone who did not looked like the typical or average good citizen, so feminist, freedom-fighters, peace lovers, and especially youth were targeted at the main causes of the problem which plagued the country.

The government of Argentina started to track down the Madres because they saw the enemy in them and because, by the time they were politically present in the Buenos Aires, the government could not get rid of them. Just by being vocal about the brutality of the government, and by talking about the loss of their children, many people within the country and internationally, started to pay close attention to the Madres, giving them a political platform from where they could fight back and know about the circumstances in which their loves ones had disappeared. The Argentinian government were conducting civilian executions, torture, extortion, and kidnapping of many citizens whom opposed to what the Junta Militar wanted for the future of the country. In some respect, this week’s reading reminds me of that short story we read, “The slaughterhouse”, in which barbarism versus civilization practices were presented to us also in Argentina. Later on, during the regime, the Argentinian government were being pressured by exterior forces (President Regan, ONGs, France, etc.) to change its aggressive and horrifying coercive measures.

Week Eleven (De Nuevo): Terror

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This is another period in which Latin America seems to be involved in conflict; this week’s chapter says that between 1960 and 1990, Latin America had one of its bloodiest periods since independence. And this got me thinking, has it this being happening since Christopher Columbus discovered America, I mean, the taken over, used other against their will, and treat them like peasants of an inferior class are direct consequences of the colonial period translated into post-colonial applications. The books also mentions that, during this period, authoritarian governments and their military allies carried unprecedented levels of violence against the civil population in what they called: a communist threat. From my point of view, it seems that every time a government wants to fight against a new opposition force (eg. Labour workers, teachers, syndicates, students, etc.), they always find ways to label them as the enemy which would in turn get the public’s support.

This period is called, the dirty wars but also has other names depending of the context in which this violent attacks took place. But the main ‘problem’ for Latin American countries was the creation all across different countries of guerrilla groups which in which their new members (students, middle class people) had heroic figures such as Che Guevara, a romantic figure which they could use to promote their fight, but which in the end were crushed by their authoritarian right-wind governments. The 20th century in Latin America is remember for being a period in which a series of holocausts, cruel acts of violence created an atmosphere of violence which welcomed new technologies of war. The participants of this cruel and violent period came from a variety of different fronts, such as radical and authoritarian governments which saw in any defiant acts the enemy, also in the formation of guerrilla groups whose base in Marxist’s theories saw to implements change throw any means necessary, included armed conflict and civilian deaths. In other cases, the racialized enemy, members of African descendants and indigenous people were the enemy just because they seemed different by their colour of their skin or because they were on the wrong side of the social scale. In general terms, the problem with having collective paranoia, when trying to identify the enemy was that, the enemy could be anyone.

Torture, random killings, and kidnappings, were at the centre of Latin America past, and in a way, the reason they became such a big deal during the 90’s and after, was because they increasingly more public and mass media published them for everyone to see. Latin America then, becomes a region where corruption in the state can be seen at all levels, where modernity was never at the centre of politicians interest, and where it populations where destined to be second-class citizens. At least this is what books such as “The Open Vains “(Las Venas Abiertas), tells us; however, I more inclined to think that explanations of such level of corruption and violence has much more complex origins and cannot all be traced to one source. In one thing I agree with this week’s reading is that, the everyday struggles of the poor, and the need for a more egalitarian future for all, where inclusion, justice, and wealth fare were policies of the state, was what caused people and students to protest fiercely in public. Hence, the consequence of the repression of such protest like the one that took place in Mexico City on October 2, 1968, caused the Tlatelolco Massacre where several hundreds of students were killed by government officials and covered up by the Mexican President of the time.

Week Seven: “The Export Boom as Modernity”

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This week’s reading was very centered on the theme of modernity and it got me thinking. I mean, if you have taken economy classes, you probably have learned that the fastest way for an underdeveloped country to embrace progress is through forest investment and international borrowing. Many countries in Latin America followed this policy after the colonial era was over. Many governments in power did not want to remain behind of what they saw as a very tight door leading towards prosperity, modernity, and enlightenment. It must have been very difficult for Porfirio Diaz to resist the temptation of inviting American investors and military machinery personnel to help him show a more prosperous and less backwards Mexico. After all, at the time what counted as modernity was the appearance of the electricity running through public streets, new modes of transportation (railways), and new fashion stores selling European clothes symbolizing a continued fixation for the foreign, while undermining the locality. However, these 18th and 19th century ideas of a modernity in Latin America, were centrally planned and implemented by a few people who had the intellectual, political, and economical capabilities to implement, sometimes by force, theories of order and progress designed to rule over marginalized classed whom were already used to be told what to do. This is not to say that, when oppressed people did not revolved in Latin America; on the contrary, many rebellions and revolts were initiated in order to fight such repressive forms of governments.

That many governments in Latin America and their elites (oligarchies) thought that the only way to achieve modernity was to clean their indigenousness and their blackness out of their veins, was another scientific approach to what a few saw as the problem and leading the region towards barbarism. How can you get rid of who you are as a nation? Destroy many indigenous monuments, build upon previous indigenous cities and think that somehow the answer could still come from Europe through immigration, economic policies, imports, exports, fashion, and technology? What it is more troublesome, oligarchies never thought to incorporate traditional ways of life that many indigenous and other minority groups had successfully had in the local communities in Latin America. I’m sure that when they actually did, like in the case of Mexico during Porfirio Diaz, they only saw to parade them as relics of the past and never as functioning vibrant sectors within Mexican society. Now, I see the connections that such oligarchic measures inflicted upon modern Latin America and one that still can be seen as current economic dependency in foreign policies. Hence, the incorporation of the region into international forces such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Trade Organization (WTO), and NAFTA, has catapulted new post-colonial, imperialistic, and neoliberal modes of domination over many Latin American counties and other marginal societies.

To conclude, I would like to say that James Creelman’s “Porfirio Diaz, Hero of the Americas”, was a bit too much. How can a professional writer like I imagine he was, could be so adulating, and exaggerated, almost blind towards a man who he did not know very well at all. Once you have finished reading the excerpt, it is hard not to question him uncanny extreme admiration for Diaz, which makes you wonder of his real political intentions.

Week Two: “The Meeting of the Two Worlds”

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Week Two: “The Meeting of the Two Worlds”

As we have seen in the videos and readings, there is a problem when trying to locate Latin America in a geographical sense. Now, we know that Latin America, more than a place which actually exists, is an idea. Its borders are fluid and what is considered as Latin American keeps changing through time. I often ask myself how much of Español, indigena, or even what other races reside inside me. For once, I know that we, Colombians, are a mixture of races. However, we have been thought to see ourselves as a homogeneous race of mestizos with Spanish ancestry. As a result, I am the mixture, and therefore, the product of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial history, which in turn had to learn to adapt and experience his culture, or at least, interpret what means to be a Latin American living outside his continent.

Going back to the reading and the video, the arrival of Christopher Columbus to the small island of what is now called the Bahamas, is for many the breaking point of what we know as modernity. It also serves as a cultural, racial, and status marker for Europeans to see themselves as superior, the inner-group, and therefore, as conquistadors. With such declarations, differentiation, and separation (Casta Paintings); they established a system in which to assure their superiority claiming their knowledge as superior and as exclusive from those conquered. By doing so, Europeans created divisive lines which put the new mixing categories in the Americas as less worthy than the Europeans. These previous results of the colonial conquests did not show right away. In fact, these results came to be understood much more lately from when Columbus fists visited the Americas. That is to say that, Christopher Columbus died not completely knowing the extent of this ‘discovery’ and perhaps believing that he arrived to what the thought to be the distant orient.

To be honest, I have studied Christopher Columbus dairy entries and letters before. For instance, I know from previous Spanish and Latin American classes that, Cristobal Colon as he’s known in the Spanish world was an ambitious man who captivated the queen into financing his uncertain voyage to the orient. I also knew that he had previously tried to convinced the king of Portugal to back him up; however, the Portuguese king refused his request and commissioned other sailors to do the same on the side. It was at this precise moments when he visited his religious friends, catholic priests, and asked them to intervene on his behave to gain an audition with Queen Isabel. Furthermore, I find Christopher Columbus’ story to be sad. I say this because, even though we all think of him as being one of the first, if not the only man, who discovered the Americas, he died as a poor man, and worse of all, he died not knowing the extent of his accomplishment.

I think that, one of the things I take from Columbus’ dairies and letters is that, we cannot think of the production of history as one-sided and/or all-encompassing true. Hence, we should think of history not as linear but rather as a multi-dimensional social creation with many ramifications.