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Towards an Uncertain Future

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After reading this week’s last chapter, I got the feeling that there is a bit of anxiety when it comes to predicting the future of an entire region, especially one so volatile like Latin America. If we know something about current international politics, and specifically of the United States, is that this powerful nation does not hold the same dominance over other regions like it used to do. Currently, other nations such as China have allied internationally with most Latin American nations to create new bilateral commercial agreements which could solve the necessity of having to negotiate deals with only one partner. The reading also talks about how ready Latin American elites were against the economic meltdowns that shocked the developed north, such it was the economic downturn of 2008. Such preparations were based on the willing of these elites and more importantly of daily citizens, to understand that power could come from their own willing to act. By being politically vocal, protesting in public and by revolting, many Latin Americans were able to change the face and outlook of their nations. Another big reason why Latin America was ready to withstand economic hardship, when other countries were not, was that Latin America has placed itself as a commodity export region which in turn allowed it to enjoy an economic boom.

Many Latin American countries incorporated into their national politics, foreign govern policies in hopes of achieving better economic prosperity. In the early 1970’s, many Latin American right-wind countries wanted to stablish the ‘Washington Consensus’, an economic model promoted by the IMF and the Wold Bank, for the privatization, deregulation, and opening of local markets to foreign investors. By 1973, almost all countries in Latin America had drifted to the right given that most of their commodity prices (coffee, maize, potato, etc.) had fallen and interest rates gone up. Latin America during the 1990’s had a political and economic period called: the ‘lost decade’, where inflation was so high (1000 %) and unemployment rates were greater than 40%. It was at this moment that many rich people, including the elites in Latin America, ‘exited’ their respective nations in order to save their financial future. But what happened to poor people who could not leave that and had to face reality at home? ‘Campesinos’ (peasants), poor people everywhere, and particularly indigenous people, were unable to farm or work in their normal habitats and were obliged to ‘exit’ the countryside and move into the slams of the big cities. There they sold their labour as a means of earning wages. In countries such as Colombia and Peru, where armed conflict was at its most intensive pick, many of these peasants had to settle in very inhuman communal conditions.

 

We also have other political models in Latin America fomented by presidents such as Hugo Chavez (Venezuela), Morales (Bolivia), and the Kirchners (Argentina), who became really good political allies and formed what is called the ‘pink wave’. Chavez with is capacity to petro- help their fellow friends, while undermining and attacking his enemies, could only be sustained for a while within the political arena of the country. When people saw that his policies did not help them directly, they started to lose patience. I think all this is just a political game that some presidents in Latin America play in order to accumulate and perpetuate their power. However, people are not stupid and one way or another they are going to seek to remove those political figures that do not render the economic, political, and social benefits that promise a more egalitarian society where a more fair state listens to what they have to say.

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 4: “Independent Narratives, Past and Present”

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After doing this week’s readings there are a few things I’ve learned:

First, I’ve learned that Media can be used as a tool for propaganda and that in order to motivate people into believing in any case, actors of war create social division of ‘us’ against ‘the other’, which leads to labelling individuals and often used at will in discursive devises (‘freedom fighters’ and the ‘Bolivarian dream’). On the other side, many atrocities were committed in the name of independence and we need to bear in mind the losing side: Indigenous people, slaves of African descendants, and other minority groups such as women who were not heart but actively participated in the war. Furthermore, the struggle of independence in Latin America was created in various countries and did not have a unified time-line. Conversely, the independence narratives we hear containing heroic names (such as Simon Bolivar), are directly connected with people’s perception of heroism and weather people considered them to be heroes or not. Hence, in Latin America, ‘criollos’, were at the center of the revolts again the Spanish/Portuguese Empire.

The first document, Simon Bolivar and his “Letter from Jamaica”, contains a message to the duke of Manchester but also a self-reflection of how how Latin American should be organize politically and economically, without the intervention of any empire. His intent is towards forming a ‘Pan-American’ central government in which an authoritarian ruler would control the continental affairs for the good of the liberal majority. From the start, Bolivar knew that, at the time, his dream was a just a dream. However, there are people currently in Latin American who think and wish to maintain Bolivar’s dream alive because the current political arena still doesn’t favour the mass majority of people at the bottom of the social scale. In fact, Bolivar’s letter invites his national counterparts to stop “suffering at the hands of that unnatural mother-Spain”; this evil characterization serves as a rhetoric tool to appeal to the hegemonic control that the Spanish Empire had in many countries in the region. On the other hand, there is a lot of exaggeration (hyperbole) used throughout his letter; for example, “examine as I may the entire history of time and the politics of all nations”. This is, for a lack of words, humanly impossible to do; however, Bolivar’s goal was to appeal knowledgeable to his reader about previous models of governance. Also, there is used of many metaphors such as in “the veil has being asunder”, pointing out that ‘criollos’ now see Spain for what it is: an abusive mother whose main self-interest of insatiable greed was to extract wealth out of her colonies without carrying for her sons and daughters.

Jose Marti’s “Our America”, talk in a very poetic manner to his audience but his intent is very political and wishes to awake a Latin American population whom has been comfortable for way too long. Marti aims to appeal to the power of the ideas and his goal is to cause an appropriation of the land, of being mixed race, which in turn, would reflect the majority of people in post-colonial Latin America and who are not participating or deciding on what is best for them. Furthermore, Marti invites Latin Americans to instruct themselves and to obtain local knowledge from their own communities and stop going to school outside their countries (USA and Europe). Marti also calls for the respect Indians and nature. The government has to be born within the country and run by local countrymen.

Lastly, Hugo Chavez speech at the opening of XII G-15 summit has some very relevant points in the economic, political, and socio-cultural arena of current Latin American. However, I must confess that I do not liked his political agenda and personally I know of many Venezuelan friends who had to fled their country because the situation inside was unbearable. Nonetheless, while I was reading his speech I wanted to know who wrote it because from an International Relations point of view, there were many spot on points which speak to the inequalities of the global division of the North versus the South, technology superiority of USA, economic development and Keynesian Theories of open markets, NAFTA’s negative effects on rural development in Latin America, and lastly, American interventionism and their imperialistic agenda. To sum up, I could go on and on, but generally speaking, I must agree with much of the message of his speak, but the mare idea of agreeing with him makes me want to vomit.