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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 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 Three: “The Colonial Experience”

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Week Three: “The Colonial Experience”

The ‘discovery’ of the Americas must have been a tremendous cultural experience. I mean, just by encountering new and different peoples, territories, and climates, these circumstances created new socially constructed categories of ‘Otherness’. As commented in the video, what King Ferdinand and Queen Isabela had started with the expulsion of two very important social and economic powerhouses: the Moros and the Jewish people in Spain; conversely, in the Americas and with Christopher Columbus voyages, he created new categories which undermined previous imperial efforts for homogeneity. However, I wonder, is this totally true? I believe that while this may seem to be the case originally, social, political, and economic division continued to happen in the Americas with the favoritism of the white-Spaniard, ruling class at the top of the social lather.

It’s true. There were some defenders of indigenous populations in the Americas. And yes, we can definitely count as Bartolome de las Casas as one of the leading early defenders of indigenous in the Americas. However, it is important to remember that, at the beginning of his administrative career as a servant of the Spanish crown, de las Casas owned slaves, of both black and indigenous origin. Later on, he had a change of heart and saw this as cruel and unequal practice in the eyes of God. Consequently, I think that, in a way, de las Casas gave Indians the godly right of having a soul as a way to indoctrinate them into the catholic region; hence, forcing them to assimilate into an imposing culture that brought them damaging consequences. Conversely, and no less important, it has to be present that many Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves with the solely purpose of helping with the production of staple products such as sugar, tobacco, and corn. This is to say that countless, African slaves lost their lives and were forced to work under despicable human conditions.

Homogeneity was a social preoccupation which hunted many white Spaniards who resided in the Americas and whom saw racial mixing as a direct threat to their social status. Consequently, it is because of these social challenges that the creations of Casta paintings were formulated to ensure, at least at a superficial level, that the superiority of the white-Spanish elite was preserved. When I see these Casta paintings, I recognized a clear hierarchy of race and class having a few at the top, mostly Spanish ruling classes and underneath them, the majority of other racial categories. There is also a patriarchal vision of power within the Casta organization putting the white-male figure, as the most important political embodiment of social control. In the same token, the only practical use of the Casta system was to exercise political control and dominance over a majority whose rights were oppressed and sometimes taken for granted.

On a side note, I find the story of Catalina de Erauzo fascinating. She is an adventurous figure who, not only challenged the stereotypical female roles of her time in colonial America, but also as a heroic persona who made her own destiny.