Monthly Archives: November 2019

Week Thirteen: Protests in Colombia

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    Protests throughout Colombia began on Thursday November 21st, and continued the next day. They were led by labor unions, and student and indigenous organizations. The were protesting potential changes in minimum wage, tax reforms, and pensions, as well as the privatisation of state companies, alleged corruption, and the government’s supposed failure to follow a peace deal that was made in 2016 with left-wing rebels. Initial reports of the protests were positive, referring to them as “peaceful and joyful”. The article in question (linked below) briefly mentioned that there were a few cases of minor violence, but overall it focused on the good, highlighting the generally calm reaction of police officers to the protest and the fact that some of the protestors in the city of Cali were campaigning against violence. This article was published on the 21st, the day that the protests began. An article published on the 22nd, however, had the opposite focus, only briefly mentioning that the protests were mostly peaceful and then going into detail about the violent exceptions. According to the more recent article, the protests resulted in 3 deaths, 98 arrests, 122 civilian injuries, and 151 security force member injuries. While the first article painted a better picture of relations between the protestors and the police, the second article reported potential police brutality, vandalism by protestors in Cali (the city with “anti-violence” marches), the use of tear gas in the capital city of Bogotá, and a ban on alcohol sales in the capital from Friday to Saturday. Comparing the two articles was interesting, because they gave two completely different impressions of the protests. I think the difference between the articles shows why it is sometimes better to wait a little while before reporting on something rather than trying to get articles out as soon as an event begins. I assume that the earlier article was written before any of the deaths that occurred became public knowledge, or else it likely wouldn’t have brushed off the violence as so minor. While people who follow news closely may like getting reports as soon as events begin, not waiting long enough can mean that you don’t end up telling the whole story, and readers may come away with incorrect or incomplete portrayals of what happened. 

Research Assignment – The Terror

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For our video on The Terror, we are going to be focusing on the civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala. We will use testimonials from people who survived these wars to give a more personal perspective on the events. For more general background information on the region as a whole, we will use Latin America Since Independence: A History with Primary Sources, by Alexander Dawson, and Guerillas: War and Peace in Central America, by Dirk Kruijt. We will likely use this information in the introduction of the video to explain what was going on throughout Latin America at the time before going into the specific examples of El Salvador and Guatemala. Knowing the regional and global context of the time period, specifically regarding the Cold War, is important for understanding the events of the Terror, as US interventions to stop communism were very significant factors in starting, continuing, or worsening conflicts. US Presidents and Latin American Interventions, by Michael Grow, has a chapter on Guatemala that we can use to explain the role that the US played starting in the Guatemalan Civil War. Escaping the Fire: How an Ixil Mayan Pastor Led His People Out of a Holocaust During the Guatemalan Civil War, by Tomas Guzaro, the pastor himself, is a first person account of the Guatemalan Civil War, and tells the story of the occupation of his village by a guerilla army and his subsequent escape from it with many other refugees. This book provides a lot of information on how the guerilla armies operated, gathered support, and recruited followers. It also gives information on the genocide of Mayan peoples during the war, which will also be discussed in the video to show examples of violence during the Terror outside of the wars themselves. Stories of Civil War in El Salvador: A Battle Over Memory, by Erik Ching, provides a detailed history of the El Salvadorean war and includes memoirs and testimonials from people who lived through it, which we will be able to use to create a better understanding of what was happening in the war and what life was like for those who had to live through it. We want to use personal testimonials to make the video more interesting and to create a more personal and sympathetic connection between the viewers and the events being discussed, as history can often feel disconnected and distant. For students who were raised in relatively peaceful countries like Canada, and who weren’t even alive when these wars were taking place, it can be especially difficult to relate to the material or understand what wars are really like.

Week 12: Repeating History

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The thing that I noticed the most in this week’s reading was how history was repeating itself in Latin America. In particular, the rise of drug lords was very reminiscent of the rise of caudillos a century before. Just as caudillos took advantage of a power vacuum to become local leaders by giving out favors, the drug lords took advantage of weakened central powers to exert influence over communities. They gained favor and power in communities by giving back to the people, and eventually became very powerful. I was surprised to learn about Pablo Escobar being elected to the Colombian Congress, as it seemed strange that a famous drug lord could ever win a government seat, but I saw that it made sense in the situation. In the US, drugs and those who deal them are vilified and seen only as threats to the society, but in Colombia they were seen by many as beneficial to society; drug lords were thought to be helping the poor by employing and aiding them. In that context, electing one to office would seem logical, while in the US it would be laughable to even consider it.

The US was another repetitive issue. It was very frustrating to hear about the constant counter-productive, failed interventions staged by the US. Just decades before, the US had sent billions to Latin American militaries so they could fight the dangerous communists, resulting in more conflict and violence. All that conflict weakened those countries, leaving power gaps that were filled by drug lords, so the US sent billions more to Latin American militaries so they could fight the dangerous drug cartels, resulting in more conflict and violence. One would have thought that the US would learn its lesson the first time, and realize that sending weapons into already fraught situations was a bad idea, yet they did it again only years later. The first time, the American attempt to prevent the harm that would supposedly come from communism or socialism caused harm under military dictatorships instead. The second time, their attempt to combat drug cartels with weapons only put weapons in the hands of the cartels, making it harder to fight them. The second failed attempt to remedy a problem by funding the militaries is even more frustrating, because there were so many better ways that the US could have spent that money. The drug cartels were able to gain so much power in part because they had so many people in them; the extreme poverty throughout the region left many with little choice but to join a cartel. Instead of throwing billions of dollars at the military, which had already proven many times over to be a horrible idea, the US could have used that money to strengthen the economies or governments of Latin American countries, or to fund social programs to help people out of poverty.

Week Eleven: The Terror

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I think that this is the topic that I’ve struggled with the most, because of how complex it is. The Terror encompasses so many different conflicts that it was very had for me to keep track of what was happening where, and why. The conflicts were all related but somewhat disconnected from each other, so it’s difficult to talk about all of them at once. There doesn’t even appear to be a consensus on what to call this period; the textbook calls is “The Terror”, but I couldn’t find many other sources that refer to it as such. The textbook says that the wars are also called the “Dirty Wars”, but other sources say that the term “dirty war” refers only to the war that occurred in Argentina. I got the best results from the term “guerilla wars”, likely because that is one of the main similarities between the many conflicts. Yet even the presence of guerillas in all of the conflicts seems questionable. Dawson mentioned Chile as one of the countries in which guerilla movements never threatened go to war. Can they be considered guerilla movements with so little fighting? When he later described the Chilean conflict in more detail, it didn’t seem like guerillas played much of a part at all. A socialist was democratically elected, then overthrown by a military coup, who immediately arrested, exiled, or killed most leftist opponents. If there were guerilla uprisings against the new military dictatorship afterwards, it wasn’t mentioned at all, making Chile seem a bit out of place among the other countries that had guerilla insurgencies. This stood in especially sharp contrast to Peru, the country that was discussed at length in the lecture. The entire conflict in Peru was caused by the war between the government and a guerilla insurgency, and the conflict mostly ended once the leader of the insurgency was captured. Strangely, while the video made it seem as if the Peruvian Civil War ended in 1993 with the collapse of the Shining Path, it apparently didn’t officially end until 2000, when Fujimori left office. Did fighting continue after the collapse of the Shining Path, and if so, who continued it?

I often forget that the Cold War was actually a relatively recent event. It seems as if it was so long ago to me, even though it didn’t end until the 1990s. Seeing that the Peruvian Civil War didn’t end until 2000, only a year before I was born, reminded me of how modern these issues are. I would be interested in learning about how the events of the Terror have influenced current events in Latin America, and how things have changed since this textbook was written. Dawson said that democratic institutions in Peru are healing, but not fully intact after Fujimori’s dictatorship, and that Peruvian people still fear any criticism of the government. I believe the textbook was written around 2014, so I imagine that things could have changed since then. I would guess that social media in particular could make a change in free speech and criticisms of the government by allowing people the anonymity to say whatever they want without fear.

Week 10a: Fidel Castro

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Reading this week’s chapter reminded me of how biased education systems can be. While I will be talking mostly about the American education system, because that is the one I grew up in, I doubt that it is a purely American problem. Subjects such as math are fairly objective, as there are universal rules governing them, and they’re not related to politics or ideologies. Subjects such as literature and history are very subjective, the way that they are taught varies based on agendas and beliefs. Classes in American schools are very anti-communist. Communism, despite being a major economic system that has had a huge impact on history, is barely talked about. The few times it is mentioned, it is usually to enumerate its failures and the superiority of capitalism. Fidel Castro, in particular, is always depicted as nothing but a horrible dictator. That picture isn’t wrong, but it is incomplete. He silenced dissent through unfair laws, exile, or execution; he cruelly oppressed certain minority groups such as gay people; his mismanagement of the country led to economic chaos within years of his taking office. All of this seemed to fit the picture of him that I had always been given by my schools: a stupid violent brute who remained in power through fear and oppression. So I was surprised to see that in many ways, he was actually very intelligent and capable. Upon taking office, he had to navigate a complex web of conflicting demands from every group across the country. He wisely made the US a scapegoat as the enemy to be blamed for any problem or failure. He was able to summon extraordinary amounts of patriotism and loyalty, even after his policies stopped working and suffering became widespread. He was so popular that even after years of massive failures, people still wouldn’t let him resign because he had made them believe so much in him, his ideals, and his idea of Cuba. Even some of his programs that eventually failed had started out as very good ideas. His mass organizations were a very smart solution to his problem of keeping control while allowing his people political power. I may have found these organizations morally questionable, as they were mostly in place to ensure that true power stayed with him instead of the people, but I recognize that it was a very good political move at the time. I wondered why I was never taught about this side of him in school. After all, knowing that he was intelligent and politically savvy doesn’t lessen any of his evils. I suppose Americans generally don’t want to give him any type of credit; they don’t want to acknowledge any possible good that any of his programs might have done, and they don’t want to call him smart or capable in any way. It’s easier to view see things only in black and white; America is a prosperous capitalist country, Cuba was a mess under the terrible communist brute Castro. It’s also easier to downplay America’s role in hurting Cuba. I don’t think that all of Cuba’s problems were America’s fault, some of them were caused by inherently flawed policies, but I think America should get better at acknowledging the part that it played in the downfall of many communist countries.