I apologize for my lateness.
This week I was very struck by how humans constantly try to make sense of what is happening to us. The export boom in Latin America was so huge and so impacting in people’s everyday lives that the effects of it could not be ignored, and thus had to be rationalized. The global influence of other nations also struck me, as many of the Latin American revolutionary unrests came from what seen to be the success of the Russian Revolution and the economic influence of the United States upon Latin America.
The constant disappointment of unfulfilled promises in the political sphere that trickles down to people’s lives can often really fire people up to want to change current processes and revolt. I think one of the largest ‘problems’ per se, in almost all revolutions are that either there are too many sides that are fighting at the same time about different things, or there are not enough sides that fully represent what individuals may want and have a VERY narrow political agenda.
I very much enjoyed Dawson’s conclusion that no one really ‘wins’ a revolution because either some are more represented than before or not at all. That in itself sounds so very disappointing when you’re often risking your life or your job to fight for something you believe in, because like he said, no one chooses to take up arms willy nilly, but a lot of thought and effort goes into it.
Revolutions come out of necessity, but I wonder if better organization would lead to the ‘success’ of a revolution. How do you get recently-arrived immigrants to understand your fight? How do you get indigenous peoples that are constantly marginalized to want to revolt (without the racist connotations we came across this week?) If the leaders of revolutions are romanticized because they die young, do people really revolt without any deeper political agenda? How do we measure the ‘success’ of a revolution anyway?
I wonder if you measure the success of the revolution by how much change is imparted. I think often people’s expectations are too high. The entire system can’t change over night, and if it did, people, even the ones that wanted it, would be overwhelmed with the work involved.
I wouldn’t say the Mexican revolution was a failure, but from what I have learned/read/been taught, things like land reform (an integral issue of the revolution) were hardly effected and Mexico became even more of a capitalist society. Seems a bit all for naught to me.
I also enjoyed Dawson’s comment about nobody ever really winning a revolution. I had always thought of a revolution having a winner and a loser but many time the behaviour that caused the revolution in the first place continue to exist after the revolution.
I really enjoyed your thoughts about how the “unfulfilled promises” can add up and lead to stirring up the people’s revolutionary tempers. I also agree with Dawson’s thoughts about how there are no real winners in a revolution, and how it is only the victors who determine the success of a revolutionary model.
Great blog post! I totally agree with what you were saying about how revolutions, and the complexity within. Things can get pretty complicated, as we can see through Latin America’s case.
Great post and very interesting questions that you posed towards the end that can be very difficult to answer. Without a doubt, revolutions are a very complicated topic especially with the case of Latin America and it’s size trying to lead a successful revolution and getting immigrants who usually have one-sided opinions (because of what they have gone through as they usually just want to be free) can be very difficult
Your thoughts on how narrow-minded groups can harm revolutions is spot on. Usually, revolutions that are successful have varied factions but all under the same umbrella, with each group granting certain concessions.