In this week’s materials, we have seen how the notion of progress and the restructuring of society into an export-oriented economy were alternately beneficial and harmful to different classes within the same society. Although more wealth was brought into the region with the onset of industrialization, the vast majority of it was distributed to those who were already on top of the social hierarchy. This was especially true as rural workers saw their land taken from them and their accustomed livelihoods no longer possible.

The various revolutions that have characterized the history of Latin America all seem to come as a response to mounting inequalities and limited work options. As Dawson brought up, it is difficult to say when these revolutions ended, and in many instances political leaders today still claim to be representing a revolution from the early twentieth century. This makes the idea of picking the “winner” of a revolution the wrong way to approach this. Nevertheless, by looking at Latin America today, we can see some of the long-term effects of the revolutionaries.

Today in Latin America, labor conditions have improved greatly as the twentieth century went on, although there is still certainly much work to be done. However, to me it seems that the modes of thinking of the nature of progress are unchanged. Around the world, including in Latin America, societal progress is still largely thought of in absolute economic terms, and a drive to export still dominated the economy.

The series of revolutions has had profound effects on the social structuring of Latin America. The clearest example of this is in the geographical concentration of entire populations. The social pressure from these upheavals, combined with a number of other processes (such as industrial jobs being available only in cities and increased linkages between Latin America and North America—both of which were key points of conflict during the revolutions) has resulted in a predominantly urban society in Latin America.

According to United Nations data from 2014, Latin America is among the most urbanized regions of the world. Today, roughly 80% of the total population is urban, up from only 40% in 1950. After the agrarian revolts in early twentieth-century Mexico, where peasants fought fiercely to take back their farms and return to their ‘traditional’ ways of life, today Mexico is urbanizing rapidly. In Argentina, where the conflict between “urban civilization” and “rural barbarism” has existed for centuries, it seems clear which side has won, as modern Argentina is one of the most heavily urbanized states on the planet, with over 90% of all people living in cities.

This week’s reading and videos were on modernization and its ramifications in 19^th century Latin America, which is a many-sided concept that means wildly different things for the different people involved. Numerous processes converged to reorganize society, but in many ways the basic power hierarchy seemed to adjust but stay in place. A reliance on export-led growth was fundamental to the rise of “modernism” in the region; but rather than something unprecedented, it can also be seen as a continuation of the colonial infrastructure that was put in place to extract wealth from the Americas. Ostensibly, this reinvention of the economy was an attempt for the new nations of Latin America to emerge into the world community, and become an integral part of global networks along with Europe and North America. To many, modernization and the indebtedness that came along with it seemed like trading an extraction-oriented colonial overlord for a profit-oriented domestic elite funded by foreign investors.

The reconfiguration of national economies to maximize production of a single, lucrative product made independent countries overly reliant on the unpredictable foreign demand for that good. This phenomenon is called a “banana republic” precisely because of the hardships that many Central American labor pools went through when they were enticed into only growing bananas, and all in the name of progress. Effectively, however, many marginalized groups saw themselves as part of a machine that was built to generate wealth for those who were already rich.

This week’s materials also touched on how the concept of order, rather than universal freedom, took hold among the elites in Latin America. This mentality that justifies exploitation is still pervasive around the world today. This philosophy is inherently classist, and existed only to fight off social change, even in the face of the unprecedented technological change that was introduced to the region. Instead of letting the masses of Latin America participate in government, it seemed like a better idea for many of the white landowners to maintain society as it was and leave unchanged Latin America’s place in the world.

Even though on the surface level, the economies of Latin America were expanding during this era, we have to change our thinking and consider that perhaps an expanding economy is not a perfect indicator of “progress,” whatever that may be.

I found this week’s readings about how the concepts of race and class interacted very interesting. As Alec Dawson pointed out in the podcast, the entire society was organized around this hierarchy of difference, where a small ruling class categorized and ruled over numerous other diverse groups. It goes without saying that the people who found themselves at the bottom of the constructed social ladder would desire change.

Given this nature of this system, I wonder how it lasted for centuries of colonial rule. Of course, we read about the occasional slave revolt or an idealist who campaigned against the casta system, but nevertheless it seems as though a method of organization that alienated such significant portions of the population would have collapsed much sooner. What was it about this racial governance that allowed it to carry on?

Again, there are numerous historical examples of indigenous or slave revolts throughout Latin America, but they were rarely successful. Were these slaves who revolted accurate representations of the general thought among the entire population of slaves in their particular country, or were they exceptions? In other worlds, did most people of Indigenous or African descent see themselves as equal to whites, or were these ideas about race so pervasive that it effected the thinking of the very members of those groups? There is evidence for this from Josephina Pelliza de Sagasta, who argued that women should just accept their role in society rather than push for systemic change. In this time of transition, where the very notion of belonging to a nation was changing.

In this weeks readings we also saw how after emancipation, the ruling elites found scientific evidence (or rather, what was accepted as scientific evidence at the time) to claim that whiteness was an indicator of general fitness to rule. This shows how deeply embedded the want of racial categorization still was in post-emancipation societies. Even after hard-fought campaigns to eliminate slavery, the ruling class maintained racialized institutions to attempt to keep other groups in line.

It seems to me that history has shown that people in positions of power adapt to a changing political climate. Even as there was increasing desire for change among non-white groups and women, the balance of power merely adjusted but remained functionally intact. Ultimately, it was up to members of a social group to change their thinking about themselves, rather than accept changes handed down from the top of the social hierarchy.

After reading Esteban Echeverría’s “The Slaughterhouse,” it seemed to me that the main purpose of this story was to construct a dichotomy between the organized, urban centers and the pastoral inland provinces. The story seems to simplify the complexities of a young nation down to a struggle to find direction between ‘urban civilization’ and ‘savagery.’ Echeverría clearly broke it down this to present his readers with two visions of the country’s future, with one clearly being superior to the other.

The unfortunate hero of “The Slaughterhouse” is a young man described as a Unitarian, or a person who supports the political concept of a central government run from Buenos Aires. This upstanding man somehow finds himself where he shouldn’t be, surrounded by Federalists, or those who want more autonomy devolved to the hinterland provinces. The setting of the story plays an important role is defining the rural people as barbarous; a grotesque slaughterhouse where the savage people take pleasure in gruesome killings. If this story is meant to be an allegory for the establishment of a new country, then the message may be that Federalism is turning Argentina into a big slaughterhouse.

Although he was passing through a wild, seemingly ungovernable frontier, the Unitarian doubtless comes from an urban center. Cities are meant to impose order on the wilderness, and have long been the seat of authority in Europe. It seems that Echeverría intended for Argentina to be modeled in the same way. Perhaps in the settler cities of Latin America, which Echeverría might have seen as islands of proper European civilization in the savage wilderness of America, the complex notions of a social contract and republicanism have been accepted. It therefore would become their burden to forge a national identity and bring the rural provinces into civilization.

One thing that stuck out to me what the presence of a judge in the slaughterhouse. A judge would ordinarily indicate civil institutions and the rule of law, but in this story, the judge seems to mock the institutions of European civilization. In “The Slaughterhouse,” the judge seems to be a human manifestation of a rejection of a social contract and republicanism.

Echeverría’s portrayal of the Unitarian’s appearance as European points to the idea of following a this path of creating an orderly, European society in the still undomesticated Americas. The Federalist villains are seen as savages precisely because they are not part of this European tradition, but Echeverría’s clearest evidence of this race. This is an extension of established social hierarchies from the colonial era. Furthermore, the frequent biblical allusions (such as the Unitarian’s execution compared to the martyrdom of Christ) draw parallels to a pro-imperial narrative of colonial history where a Christian hero tames a race of savages or dies trying. From this, we can see that the invention of an independent nation-state was a long, turbulent process that took place much later than the actual date of independence.

My main question while reading this story is “Who was Echeverría’s audience?” How many of the rural people who turned to caudillismo—who Unitarians like Echeverría would want to convince of the value of their path—were literate? I imagine that most Echeverría’s readers would have been educated people already living in major cities. In that case, this entire story seems like an exercise in self-justification.