Citizenship and Rights in the New Republic
I liked this video because they explored the progression of civil rights movements for women, slaves, and independence from European colonizers. It linked together how the countries themselves fought for freedom to the liberation of slaves and giving women more choices in their life outcome across South and Central America. I think that focusing on specific countries at a time, rather than the whole region, made it easier to explain and also helped to show the differences in how each area tackled human rights issues. This is especially important too me because I feel as though there is at times a lot of generalization when discussing Latin America.
The Meeting of Two Worlds IV
I liked how this video gave a detailed look the Columbus’s “discovery”. It brought out the others that were involved in his expedition an informed about how the rest of the crew were and the presence of Africans on the boat, to which I was previously unaware. I believe that this is an important topic to discuss because although it is not the beginning of the story of the inhabitants of the Americas, the cruel ways in which the marginalized groups were treated was a foretelling of how colonization would affect such groups. It would be interesting to follow the story of one such group to the present day, to see how their treatment has changed over time.
Caudillos
The reason that I didn’t really enjoy this video is because I felt that it was too vague. I think it was a good idea to use examples of caudillos from different countries to give some variety and it was interesting to link President Trump to the personality traits of past Caudillos. However, we still don’t know much about the effects each of the leaders mentioned really had on their people and on their country’s progress. We’re also left wondering why so many Latin American countries have given rise to dictators. Because this seems to have been one of the shaping factors in Latin American history and culture, I believe that more time should have been taking to delve into each caudillo mentioned.
Modernity in Latin America
The issue I had with this video was similar to the reason I didn’t enjoy the caudillos video; vagueness. From the beginning, it talks about how South America was important for trade due to it’s abundant resources and thus, it was set up to be an “important participant in Global Trade.” Though this is evidently true, it leaves out that the only ones truly benefitting from this trade were European descendants. Though this inequity is addressed later in the video, the main focus is on the role railroads and exports played in the modernization of Latin America. But for me, I wonder if a country can be truly considered modern if only a few (at that time) have access to amenities such as railroads.
