Monthly Archives: October 2019

Week Ten: The Power of Art

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It was very surprising to see the power that art, particularly music, had in 20th century Latin America. While it isn’t unusual for individual artists to make political statements, I generally see that as the limit to any interaction between art and politics. Yet music was so significant in some Latin American countries that it was acknowledged and used by politicians. People were able to rebel against their government with as seemingly simple and small an action as listening to a particular song that they enjoyed. I couldn’t tell who, exactly, gave the music so much power. Did the people give it so much power that their leaders had no choice but to acknowledge it, or did the leaders give it power by acknowledging it that the people were later able to use to their advantage? Would samba in Brazil or tango in Argentina have had so much power if the governments had simply ignored it? In a way, the leaders of those two countries created their own enemies in the music. By trying to limit or ban it, those governments were telling the people that they were bothered by it, therefore giving it political significance. Listening to music, even if the message was anti-government, wouldn’t have carried the same weight among the people if the government hadn’t banned it. It is hard to say then if the power surrounding music was something that the people took for themselves, or if the power was inadvertently given to them by their governments. Among politicians who didn’t understand or even like their people, music was a dividing factor that deepened existing separations between the lower and upper/ruling classes. However, Peron was able to use that music to unite people and create a connection between himself and the lower classes by incorporating elements of it into his speeches. I found it strange, at first, to learn about rulers giving so much respect and significance to popular music. I can’t imagine that happening in Canada or the US(where I’m from). Presidents and Prime Ministers may make the occasional reference to pop culture, but I can’t remember any times in which one of them gave that kind of honor or respect to art, or made any attempt to incorporate in into their political strategies or use it to better connect with the people. I’d be interested to hear any examples of a time when a President or PM did give art that kind of recognition, if you can think of any. 

Week Eight: Fear in the Gilded Age

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I was very interested in the aspect of fear that seemed to drive most of the events that the readings discuss. It seemed that throughout the Americas, every group of people was scared of another group. That fear sometimes led those groups to lash out at another, creating a self-sustaining cycle of fear as violence was answered with more violence. In Mexico, people of the lower classes feared the loss of land and liberty, so they continually overthrew leaders who didn’t return their property to them. Meanwhile, the upper classes feared the “uncivilized” lower classes, particularly after the occupation of Mexico City by Zapato’s and Villa’s armies, so much that they chose to support the Constitutionalist enemies of the peasant revolutionaries. When the Constitutionalists took over and started silencing political dissidents, lower classes again began to fear the government, and more fighting broke out.

Similarly, that fear between groups caused mass violence in Argentina. The working class feared for their ways of life after stagnating wages started to impoverish them, and some began turning to socialist ideas. The upper classes, who would lose much if communism or socialism was instituted, and who were distrustful of foreign workers, feared for their way of life if the working class gained power. This mutual fear eventually caused the mass killings during the semana tragica.

There also seemed to be the ever-present, overarching fear of the USA throughout all of Latin America, which makes sense given that American imperialism was starting around that time. While the US primarily focused on islands such as Hawaii and the Philippines, Latin America’s proximity to the US and its abundant natural resources were more than enough reason to cause concern. In 1893, the government of Hawaii was overthrown, and the country later annexed by the US, entirely for business purposes; American planters wanted more control over the land. America also had business interests in many Latin American countries, which might further explain why the lower classes were so concerned over their rights to land. In addition to wanting their own land to be more independent from cruel landlords, they may have also feared allowing the US to get any more land in their countries. I wonder if the widespread fear and panic caused by WWI might have also contributed to the general fear throughout Latin America in the early 1900s.

Week Seven: “Hero of the Americas” by Creelman

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I was shocked by how incredibly positive and obviously biased Creelman’s article was. It seemed less like an objective article written by an American journalist about the leader of a foreign country than a propaganda piece written by a dictator about himself to convince his country and the world of how amazing he was. The way Diaz’s every gesture, expression, and action was excessively fawned over made the article as a whole less and less credible, as it became increasingly apparent that the writer had no intention whatsoever of portraying Diaz in anything but the best light, no matter what. It was slightly disturbing to see how easily some of Diaz’s questionable actions were glossed over or made out to be good. The article portrayed the brutal suppression tactics and harsh, unjust laws that Diaz had enforced as very minor, necessary evils required to ensure peace and order. These cruel practices, and his undemocratic practice of staying in office for so long, were portrayed as being for the people, especially for the lowly peons who needed him. Yet it was those lowly peons who were suffering under his unfair economic policies, none of which were brought up in the article at all. The few times that Creelman did bring up some subject that might cause discomfort among American readers, such as Diaz’s many terms in office, he was obviously doing so to allow Diaz to explain them away rather than to truly challenge some of Diaz’s actions.

Despite Creelman doing everything in his power to make Diaz seem like the most perfect, accomplished person in the world, I couldn’t help but get the impression that Diaz was condescending and either naive or deceitful. He claimed that the poor couldn’t properly participate in democracy because they were too uneducated, yet he claimed that universal education was one of his main goals. If his country’s poor were uneducated, that would be his failing, not theirs. I struggled to tell if Diaz was naive or deceitful because I couldn’t tell how much he truly believed what he was saying. He claimed that as soon as the USA gave Cuba and the Philippines their independence, any fear or hatred between those countries would vanish and there would be peace. If he really believed that long, bad histories of oppression could be forgiven that easily, he was naive. It is possible, however, that he knew that was an oversimplification, but he just wanted to say something that would gratify the American readers and make them like him more. He also claimed to believe that, after his decades of brutal policies, power would transfer peacefully and easily from him to whoever succeeded him. Considering that when the time came to retire as promised, he refused and ran for President again, this seems like it might also have been a manipulation tactic. The more he stressed how much he wanted to retire, the more selfless he would seem when he chose to stay in office for the supposed good of his people.

Week Six: Citizenship and Rights in the New Republics

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It was really interesting to read about all of the differences and similarities between the USA and Latin America in regards to how they treated women, racial minorities, and slaves. The thing that surprised me most was the stereotype in Latin America that women who worked in any job had “loose sexual morals” and were therefore little better than actual prostitutes. While women in the US at the time were also discouraged form working, as far as I know people achieved that by making jobs unavailable to them and teaching them that their place and duty was in the home. I’d never heard that harmful stereotype about their sexuality before, so I’m not sure if the stereotype wasn’t present in the US or if I’ve just never been taught about it. It does seem like it would be a sadly effective way of keeping women in homes and not at work. In a time when a women was only valued for how well she married, and she couldn’t marry well if she was branded as a “prostitute”, women would almost never want to risk getting a job. I wondered where the stereotype came from. Maybe it was a way of enforcing gender roles; it implies that real jobs are for men, so by taking a real job a woman is acting like a man. Men could have sex with whoever they wanted, so a woman acting like a man must also have sex with whoever she wanted. The stereotype manages to shame women into staying in the domestic sphere while reinforcing other beliefs about masculinity. I wonder when that stereotype began disappearing from society enough for women to start working alongside men as they do now.

The differing stories of emancipation and discrimination between various countries in the Americas were also intriguing. In the US, we learn more about how white people brought about emancipation during the Civil War. While we are taught about slaves and former slaves joining the fight for their freedom, it’s not focused on very much. I wasn’t aware that slaves had been such a major part of the fight for abolition anywhere except Haiti, where I knew there had been a successful slave rebellion. It was depressing to see how across the Americas, slavery was almost always immediately replaced by systems that were almost as bad. Systems of sharecropping, which tied a farmer to their employer and limited their choices and freedoms almost as much as slavery did, became common in the US and many Latin American countries, as did de facto or de jure discrimination. The Americas took a huge step forward in the 19th century by abolishing slavery, but it seems that most countries then started backtracking as much as possible to make sure things didn’t change very much. In the US, the process of abolition went fairly quickly once started; slaves in Confederate states were freed as soon as the war ended, and an amendment banning slavery in the rest of the country followed within a year. In Latin America, countries put strange limits on slavery that would only free some or would only free them at some point in the future, but ultimately the process of abolition had similar results across the Americas.

Week Five: The Slaughterhouse

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I wondered, while reading “The Slaughterhouse”, who Echevarria was writing the piece for. He was obviously denouncing caudillos, Rosas in particular, but I couldn’t tell who his intended audience was. He was so condescending and insulting to supporters of Rosas and the caudillos that I doubt he was trying to speak to any of them, and any fellow libertarians would likely share his view of caudillo-controlled areas already. Maybe he wanted outsiders, those in North America and Europe, to read it and become convinced of the righteousness of his cause. While he was clearly trying to make liberalism seem superior to caudillo rule, I don’t think he did a very good job of making liberalism look good. He mostly focused on how bad the caudillo-run town was, but didn’t do anything to show how the situation would be improved by liberalism. He also made the Unitarian character seem a but naive and idealistic; he rode into a caudillo town covered in posters demanding the death of Unitarians, yet acted perfectly at ease until people began threatening him, as if he hadn’t guessed it might happen. In a way, I think this does represent liberalism, although not in the way I’m sure Echevarria was trying for. Liberalism is very idealistic, and often seems unaware of itself and the situation it’s in, like the Unitarian of the story. It preaches good ideals, but often doesn’t put them into practice, and either ignores or hides its own flaws while criticizing other systems for their shortcomings. Liberal systems can contain violence and mob mentalities, just like the town in the story, the difference lies mainly in how the system presents itself. The caudillo system is much more honest and straightforward about itself, while liberal systems tend to paint themselves as better than they really are. Rather than proving why liberalism was needed in Latin America, I think that this story could be used to discourage anyone trying to spread it. The story very clearly shows that most Latin American people hated liberalism and anyone associated with it, and didn’t want anything to do with it. Trying to establish a form of government that the majority of its people hate would be extremely difficult, if possible at all, and would likely end badly for anyone involved. Instead of showing why liberalism was needed in Latin America, he showed how unlikely it was for Liberalism to be established. I think this story would be more effective in proving his intended points if it included sections better showing why liberalism was better, instead of focusing to much on how horrible caudillos were. One system being bad doesn’t automatically make a different system good, but he didn’t seem to take that into account.