Towards an Uncertain Future 

Dilma Rousseff’s acceptance speech, October 26, 2014

After lengthy thanks to colleagues and supporters and long pauses for cheering, and after explaining that she was using what remained of her voice and calling for some quiet, she began:

My dear friends, we have reached the end of a campaign that mobilized all the forces of our country. As the winner of these historical elections I have words of thanks and solidarity, for my Vice President Michel Temer, for the political parties and their militants, who sustained our alliance and were decisive in our victory. I thank each and every member of this combative militancy that was the soul, the force of this victory. And I thank without exception each and every Brazilian. I thank, from the bottom of my heart, militant number one for the causes and for the people and of Brazil, President Lula.

I call without exception on all Brazilians to unite in favour of the future of our country and of our people. I do not believe, sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, I do not believe that this election has divided the country in two. I understand that it mobilized ideas and emotions that at times were contradictory but were inspired by a common sentiment: the search for a better future for our country. Rather than amplifying differences between us, I have great hope that this mobilizing energy has prepared the ground for the building of bridges. The heat liberated in this dispute must be transformed into constructive energy for a new future for Brazil. With the force of this mobilizing energy, it is possible to find points of agreement and build on them on the basis of understanding to allow our country to advance.

Sometimes in history, close election results lead to stronger and quicker changes than do victories by a wide margin. That is my hope, or rather, my certainty of what will happen now in Brazil: that the debate of ideas, the shock of contrary positions may create spaces of agreement, able to move our society forward along the lines of change.

My first words are therefore to call for unity. In mature democracies, unity does not mean necessarily unity of ideas, nor does it mean monolithic action as one. Rather, it presupposes openness and disposition for dialogue. This president before you is open to dialogue, and this is my first commitment for my second mandate: dialogue.

My friends, every election has to be seen as a peaceful and secure form of change for a country. Every election is a form of change, principally for us who live in one of the largest democracies in the world. [Chants of ‘Dilma, Dilma’.]

When a re-election takes place, it should be understood as a vote of hope given by the people for a better government. I know this is what the people say when they re-elect a leader. This is what I have heard from the polls, and I intend to be a much better president than I have been so far. I want to be a better person, I want to be an even better person than I have tried so hard to be.

This feeling of betterment should not only influence the government and me but all the nation. The road is very clear. A few words and themes dominated this campaign. The word most repeated, most spoken, most dominant was “change”. The theme most widely evoked was reform. I know I am being sent back to the presidency in order to make the big changes that Brazilian society demands.

As far as my force, my role and my power can reach, you can be sure, I am ready to answer that calling. I know that this feeling comes from the depths of the Brazilian soul, I know the limitations on any president, and I know also the power that any president has to lead a great popular cause, and I will do it. My disposition [chants of ‘Dilma, Dilma’ and of ‘Olé, Olé Olé Ola, Dilma, Dilma’]… my most profound disposition is to lead in the most peaceful way – please everyone, I can’t shout any more – my most profound disposition is to lead, in the most peaceful and democratic way, this moment of transformation. I am ready to open a great space for dialogue with all sectors of society, to find the quickest solutions for our problems.

My friends here present and all who are hearing us, and all the Brazilian people, among these reforms, the first and most important must be political reform.

My commitment, as was clear throughout the campaign, is to bring about this reform, which is the constitutional responsibility of Congress and which should mobilize the people in a plebiscite, in popular consultation. Through the use of this instrument, of this plebiscite, we will obtain the force and legitimacy demanded in this moment of transformation to take forward political reform. I intend to discuss this theme deeply with the new Congress and all the Brazilian population and I am sure there will be interest in all the sectors of Congress, of society, of all the forces active in our society to open a discussion and deliver concrete measures.

When I mention political reform, it doesn’t mean that I don’t know the importance of other reforms. [Cheers.] Reforms that we have the obligation to push forwards. I will have a rigorous commitment to fighting corruption, strengthening the institutions of control and proposing changes to the law to do away with impunity, which is the protector of corruption. During the campaign I announced measures that will be very important for Brazilian society and for all, to confront corruption and end impunity.

I will take urgent action specifically on the economy to allow us to resume our rhythm of growth, to continue guaranteeing high levels of employment and ensuring increases in salaries. We will give more impulse to economic activity in all sectors, especially in industry. I want the partnership of all sectors, of all productive and financial areas in this task, which is the responsibility of all us Brazilians.

I will continue to fight inflation with rigour and to advance in the area of fiscal responsibility. I will encourage as quickly as possible dialogue and partnership with all the productive forces of the country. Even before the beginning of my next mandate I will proceed in this task. More than ever, it is time for each and every one of us to believe in Brazil, to deepen our feelings of faith in this incredible nation to which we have the privilege to belong, and to deepen our responsibility to make it more and more prosperous and just.

This Brazil, our dear country, has emerged better form this dispute and I know the responsibility that weighs on my shoulders. We will continue to build a better Brazil, more inclusive, more modern, more productive, a country of solidarity and of opportunities. A Brazil that values work and entrepreneurial energy, a Brazil that cares for its people with a special eye for women, blacks and the young, a Brazil more and more concerned with education, with culture, with science and innovation. Let us join hands and advance on this journey, which will help us build the present and the future.

The warmth, affection, love and support that I received during this campaign give me the energy to go ahead with much more dedication. Today, I am much stronger, more serene, more mature and more ready for the task you have delegated to me.

Brazil, once again, this your daughter will not shirk from the battle. Long live Brazil, long live the Brazilian people.

Summary/Analyses 

Last month Dilma Roussef was re-elected by a narrow margin, this way ensuring that Latin America’s biggest nation will remain under the control of a Worker’s Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores or PT) which is committed to tackling inequality. The only issue now is that Rousseff must pull together a deeply divided Brazil. Capturing 51.6% to her rival’s 48.4% in a second round run-off election, as her second term begins, she faces the challenge of governing a nation that is more divided than ever. This was Brazil’s tightest election for 25 years, a bitterly fought election that ended with the narrowest presidential win since the nation’s return to democracy three decades ago.

Both Rousseff and her challenger Aécio Neves coincide on a common set of resolutions, which are: to renew and restore the economy, to continue with social inclusion, control inflation, and to invest in education, health, infrastructure, public security and public transportation. By the end of Dilma Rousseff’s second term, PT will have been in power for 16 years. Partido dos Trabalhadores was founded in 1980 as a new party of the left, committed to structural economic change, participatory democracy, and working-class mobilization, the PT played a big role in ending Brazil’s military regime of 1964-85 and in constructing a new democracy. In 2003, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva made a space in Brazilian society for a reformist left in the early 21st century. However, widespread protests during the 2013 Confederations Cup (and ongoing protest for the following year), revealed public anger at overspending on the World Cup, poor quality of public services and government corruption – as well as alienation from political representatives and political parties.The impact of these difficult years showed in the second round results: despite winning the presidency for the 4th time in a row, this elections weren’t particularly good for the PT.

Dilma’s acceptance speech was an attempt to reach out to those who did not vote for her. She starts her speech by assuring the listeners that the election, had not divided the country in two – although the results, with 51.6% to Dilma and 48.4% to her rival, suggested it had done just that.

Her first commitment, Rousseff said, was to dialogue. She also said that her narrow margin of victory could actually be a force in favour of speedy reform rather than against it, which personally sounds very contradictory. She promised and assured the people that she would be a much better president than she had been in her first term. But despite promising change she gave little hope that reform would advance. Political reform was her top priority, she said. The hearts of seasoned Brazil watchers sunk at those words, on the knowledge that this is a debacle. By promising to discuss such reform with Congress and all society and then put it to a plebiscite, she basically buried it before it was born, for plebiscites have a history of not working in Brazil. She promised briefly to fight corruption and even more briefly to bring the economy back to growth. She would continue to fight inflation with rigour – something critics and public say she has roundly failed to do – and to advance in the area of fiscal responsibility. 

In conclusion, Rousseff in order to have a successful second term, she must change and improve from her previous mandate. The most important thing at the moment is that she needs to restore the credibility of economic policy, especially tax policy. Personally, I believe she has a lot to prove to the Brazilian people, even though PT had positive results in the elections, I feel that it has a rough phase ahead of them, and problems will surge starting 2015. 

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Price Riots Erupt in Venezuela, February 28, 1989, New York Times

Caracazo, 1989

Demonstrations against price increases across Venezuela turned violent today as thousands of protesters threw stones at the police, broke store windows and looted businesses. Hundreds of people were reported injured.

The violence was most severe in Caracas and its surrounding communities, where gangs of youths wearing hoods blocked streets, set fire to buses and garbage piles and attacked policemen with rocks, homemade weapons and in some cases firearms.

The riots in Caracas were the most violent and widespread in many years. Rioting was also reported in six other cities and towns, including Maracaibo. San Cristobal, Valenica and Puerto La Cruz. Fares Increased by 30 Percent

The protests began this morning when students and other commuters discovered that the fares for buses and jitneys had increased by more than 30 percent. In some cases the fares exceeded levels set by the Government.

Prices in general have been rising rapidly in Venezuela over the last two weeks as the new Government of President Carlos Andres Perez has moved to ease official controls on the prices of many goods and services.

An increase in the retail price of gasoline, which went into effect on Sunday, pushed transportation rates upward nationwide. The higher fuel costs contributed to today’s protests.

The removal of price controls is part of a general economic program aimed at making the economy more efficient. The Government embarked on its new economic measures to persuade the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to led int more money.

As of late tonight, officials gave no estimate of how many people were wounded in the rioting.

A doctor at one of the municipal hospitals in Caracas said that hundreds of injured, including many suffering from gunshot wounds, had been treated since this morning. President Appeals for Calm

Both President Perez and the Minister of the Interior, Alejandro Izagyrre, called for calm and said the Government would not tolerate looting and violence.

In several areas, National Guardsmen were called out to assist the police.

The rioting is the most serious problem faced so far by Mr. Perez, who began a five-year term on Feb. 2.

The President inherited a deteriorating economic situation and his Government moved recently to implement a variety of tough economic measures.

Summary/Analysis 

The newspaper article, written a day after the first riot outbreak of what will famously be come to know as Caracazo, talks about the violence, and political instability in which Venezuela was undergoing at that moment in time, results of the abrupt increase in prices in general all over the country. 

A mass insurrection, which had a stand out role in reshaping the political landscape of Venezuela. Even though this rebellion seemed to be a spontaneous uprisings, it was a the result of a long history of unresolved grievances. It reminded me of protest in Brazil that took place in 2013 after the rise in price of public transportation. It was just about the 20 cents increase, it was a much bigger picture, the 20 cents was just the trigger. This insurrections demonstrated the fragility of state power that Venezuela was in during this new era of instability in Latin America. This is where the voice comes in, the voice of the people, the public, along with the emergence of the popular coup, and the ever-present angst of mass mobilization. 

In 1989, Carlos Andrés Pérez (CAP), in presidency and with the power and opportunity to change the destiny of Venezuela, proposes to implement a neoliberal program of economic reform. This program comes to be know as “paquete económico” (economic package), which was designed following the recommendations made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These measures were part of a strategy to balance the country’s economy. CAP announced the macroeconomic program, whose consequences did not take long to take its toll on the population. 

And while the “paquete económico” had the support of those who saw it as the only way to save the economy, the process of change was very drastic and sharply affected the most disadvantaged sectors of the population, who did not hesitate to defend what they considered an attack on the poor. The economic measures taken by Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1989 were the trigger to a revolt that marks the history of Venezuela. 

The social upheaval took place in various cities in Venezuela, starting in the outskirts of Caracas in 1989. Known as the “Caracazo”, it was the publics response to the implementation of the announced measures, which produced an abrupt elevation in transport prices, food and among other things. The settings applied resulted in revolts which broke out on the 27 and 28 of February and ended on March 8. Hundreds of Venezuelans were killed at the hand of the military and police forces that suppressed the protest that took form in looting and burning of vehicles. There was huge material and economic loss for the owners of local shops and the public/urban transportation. The program was amended and on March 7th it was decreed the liberations of prices.  

As a result of this, in 1992 two attempts at a coup d’état were made, one in February and another in November. The Caracazo is said to have has a profound impact on young Hugo Chavez, who was deployed to crush the uprising. His experiences in this conflict inspired both his failed 1992 coup and his run for the presidency in 1998. As Dawson helps us understand “Chavez rode the anger of those masses throughout his career, never entirely in control and forever needing to rely on them to maintain his grip on power”.

The obvious consequence of the Caracazo was the political instability that present even today.

This week’s reading focus on the period in which Latin America underwent the “dirty wars”, a period filled with armed civil conflict, authoritarian government, terrorism, and overall violence. In periods like this people tend to look for a “hero” and a “villain”, so it makes sense for testimonio genre to become popular in Latin America during this time. But I believe that nothing is black and white, an example of this is Alberto Fujimori in Peru. The public’s opinion of Fujimori varies around Peru, people dislike him because he dissolved congress in ’92 (thus becoming a dictator for a while), because he committed human right violations, such as carrying out mass sterilizations (involuntary) to women in the andes, having a special forces group who targeted suspected terrorists usually without sufficient evidence, therefore eliminating countless innocent people (two famous cases: Universidad La Cantura, in which he stormed dorms and killed an abounding number of students and the Bairros Altos) and because he stole money and fled the country and resigned to the presidency via fax from japan. But then again, people like him because he dissolved congress in ’92 (thus actually getting stuff done). Alberto Fujimori dissolves the parliament, places opposition politicians under house arrest on the pretext of coping more effectively with the country ‘s rampant inflation, drug trafficking, and terrorism. After rewriting the Peruvian constitution to allow himself to run for office again, Fujimori was re-elected in 1995 with over 65% of the vote. Although Fujimori’s undemocratic methods provoked criticism at home and abroad, the achievements of  his government won widespread domestic and international support: inflation was cut in half, the country recorded impressive rates of economic growth; the leader of Sendero Luminoso (terrorist organization financed by the sales of narcotics) was captured and jailed; both el Sendero Luminoso and Tupac Amaru revolutionary movement declined in influence; and incident of political and drug-related violence dropped for the rest of the decade. So this just demonstrates how complex the notion of “good” and “bad” truly is. How one can’t brand the stereotypes of women as passive (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo), indigenous peoples as mystical, primitive, and non-political (many had a great deal of experience living in the cities, and understood the law) and that all Latin American men are ‘violent machos’. So my question is: Was “mildly authoritarian government” the only way forward for certain countries in Latin America?

This weeks reading talk about the renunciamento, which highlights the power that Eva Perón had as an ambitious politician. It also demonstrates how the masses and the people have control; it shows the full strength of the crowd, in a good way and also its capacity to be a powerful and disruptive political force. The documents in this chapter illustrate the various different renderings of the renunciamento, each one with a different point of view and each with its own truth claims. The first document, Foster Hailey, “Peronist will head Argentine Ticket”, is a newspaper article from the New York Times reporting the event. The following document, The Peronist Version of the Speech, comes from the Peronist Party of Buenos Aires’ account of the renunciamento. The document was the proposal of her speech, what calls my attention about this specific text is that the dialogue with the crowd (which was unexpected, of course) is absent, and also the fact that the speech in the text is not the same speech she ended of giving. Therefore making the proffered of her speech completely different from what actually happened. This makes me think of how much of the speech we hear everyday in the radio, TV or that we see in the newspaper etc, are actually the words of the speechwriters which prepared the texts or improvised by the speakers when delivering it, and lastly its a reminder to not alway rely on written texts from archives when reconstructing a past that did no take place through the medium of written word. While on the other hand, the third document, The Renunciamento as compiled from Newsreel and Archival Footage, gives a better approximation of what was actually said the speech that August 22. It’s a transcript prepared by the Argentine scholar Monica Amare, who assembled this document (dialogue) from the extracts of newsreel she found. They are partial glimpse of the moment, fragments more or else, of the event that took place. Unlike the previous document, this excerpt includes the dialogue between the crowd and Evita, it also gives us a better sense of the ambient and what was actually like to be there (with the whole introduction in which it describes Eva entering crying). And finally the last document, Eva Peron’s Final Response Broadcast over the Airwaves (at 8:30 pm on August 31, 1951), is a more accurate depict of what was said. In her speech she announces that she would not run. Something that left me curious is whether Eva stuck to the script (unlike her speech 9 days prior) since in this situation, there wasn’t an immense crowd intimidating and demanding answers. I would think that she did so, since unlike the third document, this speech, in my opinion contains a lot less emotion and its more controlled, since the speech given at Avenida Nueve de Julio at the Cabildo Abierto, began as a stage-managed moment, but one can quickly notice how it turns into an improvisation, a dialogue between Eva and the descamisados. 

All the text in this chapter convey in one way or another the complexity of the American presence in Latin America. The first text, a manifesto composed by the guerrilla leader Augusto Santino in 1927 as he confronted the Marines, the most visible sign of United States hegemony. Moreover the second document, a film called Silent War, suggest that the US can use its position on the cutting edge of all things modern to help Latin America. The document shifts our attention away from the anti-imperial project and towards a more benevolent version of the United States – Latin America relations. While on the other hand, the second film available in this chapter Journey to Banana Land, is a propagandistic film. The United Fruit Company used this film to demonstrate North Americans the positive impact the company had in Guatemala (note that the company was under a lot of pressure because of its vast landholdings). In the film the audience is shown Guatemala´s relative modernity and how banana production benefited everyone there, workers and consumers alike. As Dawson says, the film also represents a powerful source for interrogating a series of other assumptions about class, gender, and ethnicity in both the United States and Guatemala. And finally, the last document From the Noble Savage to the Third World, the author Ariel Dorfman critiques the US imperialism during the 1960s, by arguing how one must comprehend the set of assumptions about the primitive and the modern in order to understand understand American imperial practices. The text describes a nakedly imperialist United States.

All the documents in this chapter were penned during the export boom. Each documents attempts to make sense of said boom in such way that it draws moral conclusions about the sort of political and economical transformations taking place in Latin America during that period of time. Even though all documents tackled the same issue, they all offer a different account, or different point of view of what happened.

The poem “To Roosevelt” by Ruben Dario is a reaction to the involvement of the United States during the separation of Panama from Colombia. The title refers to Theodore Roosevelt an ‘American’ president who represented the US incursions into Latin America that outraged in this case, even a nonpolitical nicaraguan poet such as Ruben Dario. Roosevelt supported a 1903 revolution in Panama, which resulted in the annexation by the U.S. of territory for the Panama Canal. Latin America came to fear the bullying of the northern neighbor. Dario uses the poem to ‘tip’ USA assumptions of their own superiority. The poem is a criticism and rejection towards the actions of the ‘all-powerful’ United States. What I liked the most about the poem is that in it, it is Latin America who as Dawson says “posses virtue, spirit, and a glorious civilization”, which is rare when comparing to North America. The second document, EL Plan de Ayala was a documented by the revolutionary leader Emilia Zapata during the mexican revolution. It was a political proclamation in which he criticizes the government of Francisco I. Madero, whom he accuses and denounces for betraying the “causas campesinas” the revolutionary ideals. Though El Plan de Ayala was much more practical than Dario’s poem, it’s larger insight was no less profound. The penultimate document was ‘The Cosmic Race’ an essay written by the mexican philosopher Jose Vasconcelos, written in the aftermath of the previous document, in which he expresses his ideology of a future whit a “fifth race” in the Americas. He describes it as an agglomeration of all races in the world with no respect to colour or number to erect a new civilization, he calls its Universópolis. Vasconcelos tackles the issue of colonization by addressing the race problem. From this document what called the most my attention was Vasconcelos drive, his desire to reconstitute and celebrate a country torn apart by years of fratricidal violence. And finally, the last document was by Mariategui a Peruvian journalist, political philosopher and activist; and also considered one of the most influential Latin American socialist of the 20th century. We focus on an excerpt of his most famous work Siete Ensayos de Interpretacion de la Realidad Peruana, and the representation of Marxism, which curiously instead of focusing on emerging working class, he looks to Peru’s indigenous people as the “source of an organic Peruvian form of communism” as Dawson explains. He believed that it wasn’t the modern proletariat that would defeat capitalism in Peru, but rather the communist Indian.

The readings this week all have to do with the limitation of citizenship, and emancipation (focusing on race and gender). With the 19^th century liberalism at force, societies start to discard ideas such as scientific racism, and inferiority and inequality of the sexes. However, with the world changing, there’s bound to be people with very strong opinions from both sides of the issue. This can be seen in all the documents in this chapter. To start off, the first excerpt, The Fetishist Animism of the Bahian Blacks by Nina Rodrigues, who is considered the first Brazilian anthropologist, and whose work is also famous for being slightly racist, and often having a “darkly negative view of blacks” as Dawson puts it, is a book, divided in four chapter, in which Rodrigues described the rich universe of the “candomblé baiano”. Personally, I found this excerpt remarkable and curious. In Brasil we tend to pride ourselves in being a non-racist nation, as Brasil has the world’s second biggest black population after Nigeria, the largest number of people of Japanese ancestry outside Japan, and more people of Lebanese or Syrian extraction than the combined populations of Lebanon and Syria, just to state a few. So reading about the research of Rodrigues, the whole text to me in the end sounded a bit hypocrite, the way he dismisses the candomblé religion, mulattos and black people as inferior, even though he says he has an unbiased view. On the other hand, the second text Partido Independiente de Color, shines a different light in the issues regarding emancipation of races, and the limitations regarding the citizenship of said individuals. I was rapt by the fact that even though the document was written in 1908, the points it makes are very “modern” and open-minded, I personally enjoyed reading it, I liked the phrase “… so that the republic can be represented in all its hues”. Furthermore, this chapter also discusses feminism, and the fight for social, political and economical equality of sexes. It does so by providing two texts, with opposing views, and in which the second one is directed to the prior. The first one, Brushstrokes by Maria Eugenia Echenique, deals with the issue that women lack political rights and access to education, the two things women need in order to be self-sufficient. While the second one, Women: Dedicated to Miss Maria Eugenia Echenique by Josefina Pelliza de Sagasta counterattacks by stating her beliefs about women’s natural subservience to men… while reading it, at the beginning I seriously thought she was being sarcastic. While there isn’t anything wrong with a women aspiring to be a mother and/or a housewife, what bothered me about this text was how she made it seem that the ONLY role a women could possibly play in society is the role of a mother and/or housewife. Women shouldn’t be deprived of choices, as I believe there is no right or wrong way “to be a woman”. She goes on to describe the emancipation of women, which by definition means ‘the process of being set free from legal, social, or political restrictions’ harmful. It was an interesting (and honestly a bit angering) read, especially coming from a woman.

Esteban Echeverria was an Argentine poet, writer and political activist and also one of Latin America’s most important literature figures, as he said to have written the first romantic ‘Castilian’ (castellano) novels. A man with strong political ideals and social opinion, and an Unitarian leader, Echeverría wrote “El Matadero”, a short story, considered throughout not only Argentina but also all of Latin America as a cornerstone of national literature and remains one of the most studied texts in Latin America. The text is an outspoken and aggressive criticism to Juan Manuel Rosas’ Federalist regime in Argentina at the time, filled with sarcasm, irony and a certain degree of sardonic humour.

Echeverria starts the short story by questioning The Church; he makes use of religious allusions and metaphors. He remarks on the ability of the Church to control the law, for example when talking about lent, on how the Church would not only decided when people could and could not eat meat, but also who is and isn’t exempt from these rules. This can be said to be a metaphor to Rosas governance, to demonstrate, how De Rosas did not only make the laws, but also decided when and how to enforce them. He then goes on to introduce the Unitarian vs. Federalist. Depriving the Unitarians of personal identity, and comparing the Unitarian to a bull (with balls). Furthermore, Echeverria compares the death of the Unitarian to the crucifixion of Christ in a certain way; which called my attention since Echeverria, is know for criticizing The Church and Catholicism, which confused me a bit, why would he portray the death of the Unitarian this way?

Another remarkable thing about the text is how Echeverria doesn’t refrain himself from using very evocative words when describing “El Matadero” The Slaughterhouse – as if his intention is to disgust the reader, in order so, that once you are done reading, you are aware of how truly barbaric were the events that took place in the story. A few years back I had to analyze this story for a Spanish literature class, and the original spanish version manages to be even more explicit and grotesque. “From a distance the view of the slaughterhouse was now grotesque, full of animation.  Forty-nine steers were stretched out upon their skins and about two hundred people walked about the muddy, blood-drenched floor” (lovely imagery).

In conclusion, the whole reading can be seen as a big metaphor, the story is there to demonstrate how Esteban Echeverria believed the Argentinian people were being treated under the governance of Rosas. The slaughterhouse was Argentina and the cattle were the people.

I believe that anyone that has lived or visited Latin American could identify with the example used at the begging of the chapter regarding Ecatepec and Polanco. It’s an issue that’s present in almost any big metropolis in Latin America, and it’s a perfect way to introduce to topic that even though someone can identify themselves as Latin American, within this region, there is an immense diversity of language, culture, customs, beliefs, economical stance, political view etc. Which reminded me of one the discussions in our first class, in which a group when trying to use two words to describe Latin America agreed on “Diverse” and “Unified” (or something along those words). Dawson mentions how “the idea of Latin America offered a vision of strength through unity”, yet Latin America is a region whose multiple histories are not easily reducible to a single narrative, since deep divisions can be found here, division that are rooted in centuries of experience and history. So many times it happens that people generalize our culture and customs, and it comes from the very ‘project’ as the author describes it, of trying to tell the story of Latin American past as a common history, when in reality the “efforts to keep this vast region in the frame requires a series of intellectual risk”. Though the author mentions how “stories we tell are invariably limited by the incompleteness of the historical record, and its tendency to reflect the views of those (in) power”, I enjoyed how he gives us “fragments” of history, in order to better understand the actual occurrence of events, and so he is able to offer some insight into the complexity of what is and what was the story of Latin America. Schoolhouse Rock – something that really called my attention, was the passage which he mentions the children’s show Schoolhouse Rock, and the way they portrayed history. Which was something that I personally experience when I moved to the USA. I had lived in Latin America and gone to ‘non-american’ schools until the age of 13 when I moved to the USA for a year, and the class that confused me the most was history, because even though, it wasn’t a very intensive or detailed class, the way they taught history was completely different from the way I had learnt beforehand, which only emphasizes how history isn’t really “what happened, but is what is said about what happened” (Michel-Rolph Trouillot).

Casta was a Portuguese and Spanish term used during the colonization period to depict as a whole the mixed-race people who arose from the post-conquest period. This system was established on the principle that the quality and the character of the person varied according largely to their birth, color, race and origin of ethnic types. This was not only a system of social-racial classification, but rather it impacted every aspect of a person’s life, even to include economics and taxation. In Latin America,  a person’s socio-economic status usually correlated with their race or racial mix in the know family background, or simply on phenotype if the family background was unknown. In other words, many high government officials and wealthy people were of ‘Iberian’ background, while indigenous or african ancestry, or even just darker skin, was usually relates with poverty and inferiority. So in that time, the ‘whiter’ the heritage a person could claim, the higher status they could claim, contrarily, darker features meant less opportunities. Unfortunately, this is still something that shows itself relevant in the present day. The Casta Paintings depicts images of of mixed-race families; Meztizos, Castizos, Cholos, Pardos, Mulatos, Zambos etc. At the beginning of the spanish colonial period, there were four primary categories of races: Spaniards, Criollo (a person of European descent born in the Americas), Indio and Negro. And with this the spaniards developed a very complex caste system, which they used for social control and which also determined a person’s importance in society, so for some (especially the spanish elite) it caused them great angst to see a disruption of their clear social-racial hierarchy in colonial society, which privilege them. So for them the Casta Paintings in a sort of way represent the end of the ‘white supremacy’. While on the other hand the Casta Paintings show as Deans-Smith put it a “colonial life and mixed-race people in idealized terms”. At the time this paintings were made it conveyed a lot of controversial views, and each viewer responded to them according to their own contexts and points of reference. I personally really loved the Casta Paintings, and the images and the purpose behind the provocative genre. Coming from a family that has an immense diverse background, I believe that that to a certain extent we are all mixed-races.