Author Archives: laura moreira

Week 4: Independence Narratives, Past and Present

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The independence of countries in Latin America is something that i find really quite interesting. Each different country has their own story of how the events leading up to separation happened, and what effects those events had in the overall identity and history of the country today.

The process of independence that I know the most about is the Brazilian one, since it was the one we learned in school growing up. Early Brazilian history was always my favourite topic in history class, especially the Brazilian empire, which later became a constitutional monarchy. I find the story of the Brazilian independence very interesting and quite different from many other countries in Latin America because of the parties involved in the process.

The fact that the Portuguese monarchy was forced to reside in Brazil for years and made Rio the capital of the empire definitely affected the relationship of colonizer-colony. The royal family brought with them many changes to Rio de Janeiro, they implemented roads, theatres, schools and the city became a centre of culture and wealth where all the important nobles resided. And so Brazil stopped being a colony and became a “United kingdom of Portugal”.

But it was also more than that. Dom Pedro, the young prince, having been raised in Brazil from a very young age, grew to be very attached to the country and when the royal family moved back to Portugal and were being pressured to make brazil bow down to Portugal, Dom Pedro refused and proudly declared independence on September 7th, 1822.

Brazil was no longer a colony, nor was it tied to the Portuguese Regime, But its king was still a Portuguese royal, who ruled the country based on the interests of the white aristocracy and the big coffee plantation owners.

So the whole process was kind of a singular one, in the sense that Brazil was now independent, yes, but in many aspects, things continued to be the same. It would not be until later that the need for a different kind of government would make people rebel against the old authority figures, and demand more equality for the citizens.

Week 3: The colonial Experience

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As a mixed race Latin American person, I have struggled with my racial identity. I think this is pretty common for all mixed race people, but I think especially in Latin America where, for a lot of people, they are mixed, their parents are mixed, their grandparents are mixed and so on. It’s not a matter of I’m 50% this and 50% that, it gets pretty confusing and hard to keep track of.

The Casta paintings indicate a bit of the confusion created by the mixing of different races that has been happening since the beginning of colonization in America. They tried to illustrate and create categories for all the different “types” of people, and your position within society was based on which category you fell into. This was obviously an attempt of the europeans to assure white superiority and control the people who had power. The “whiter” you were, the better, and the idea was that even if you were black, you could create a better life for your child by marrying a white person,  because the baby’s colour would be lighter and if the generations kept that behaviour, eventually the children would be born “white”.

But even at the beginning of this whole thing, people were confused by all the categories, and many painters did not agree in the correct denomination and position for each “category”. Now imagine the mess that it is today, trying to determine the race of a mixed Latin American person.  In my experience (and I can be wrong) , race is not something as relevant to individuals in Latin America as ethnicity is. From my perspective in North America people are very open and proud about their race, and it appears to be something vital to their identity. Whereas in Latin America, what I have seen more is people defining themselves by their country/ethnicity first.  “I am first of all Brazilian, and i guess i have some Portuguese and African and indigenous DNA in me from a while back but i don’t really know” type of thinking. For me, my country is definitely my identity, and my culture and values come from my country, not my race.

It is interesting to think that in the future, mixed people will be the majority, and having one defined race will become less and less common. What issues will arise from that? What role do genetics really play in culture? Is there a point in “conserving the race” or is culture in the upbringing, rather than race?

 

Week Two: The Meeting of Two Worlds

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The reading of Columbus’ journal was very intriguing to me. Growing up in school, I have always been taught a rather biased version of Columbus, that he was an evil colonizer, who came barging in to the Americas and taking advantage and tricking the indigenous people that lived there to submit to his country and religion. I kind of always assumed that that was the case and that everything that happened afterwards with the violent colonization of Spain and Portugal was Columbus’ fault .

But, reading the journal made me think twice about that notion. Yes, it is true that he most definitely had a superiority complex in relation to the indigenous people, who he thought of as savages, and that he wanted to convert them to christianity. It is also true that he described America already thinking of all the ways Europeans could explore it and take it for themselves. But, the way he wrote the journal did not seem to me like he was this evil, sadistic conqueror who wanted to cause harm to everyone there, and steal all the gold and silver, like I was led to believe before.

Rather, the way he wrote on his journal gave me the impression that he was actually semi-respectable with the indigenous people (at least at first), and tried his best to make them feel safe and happy around him. He was obviously stomped with culture shock, for he had not seen anything like that community before, and the way he described the islanders did not have a tone of mockery, but of astonishment and maybe a hint of pity. He obviously thought he would be doing them a great favour by converting them to the catholic faith, and he truly thought he could help them. Of course when we are looking at it from today’s perspective, his way of acting and thinking was tremendously wrong, but I don’t think that that is quite fair considering Columbus was living in a completely different age, a completely different context from ours.

This becomes even more clear when comparing Columbus’ journal to the second reading. In the second reading it is abundantly clear that people were solely driven by their greed for gold and silver and that resulted in a violent attack on the Inca Civilization, that left many people from both sides dead. I guess my discussion question would be, in light of the social context of the time, was Columbus a bad person? Was he a good person? If you were a normal person in Spain at that time, reading this journal, what do you think your opinion of Columbus would be? And the second part of my question would be, how do you think the representation of Cristopher Columbus should be done in today’s textbooks, considering that this content is being taught for today’s children? Should his actions be portrayed on a good light? A bad light? and why?

 

 

Introduction and Video discussion

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Hello everyone!

Let me introduce myself. My name is Laura, I am 19,  and I am on my second year of UBC, planning to major in Linguistics with a minor in Spanish. The main reason I am interested in Latin American studies is because I was actually born and raised in Brazil. But despite that, I feel like I have much to learn about Latin America in general, and that is why I decided to enroll in this course.

About the student videos, I have to say my favorite one was “The meeting of two worlds III”, because of the way it was structured and presented. The way the content was said was like listening to a story, and the tones and voices used by the creators made for an engaging video that was very interesting to watch, and kept me paying attention to the end. Another thing I liked about this video were the images and, most importantly, the videos. They were very representative of what was being said and the videos helped create this “storytime” illusion. This video is a perfect example of a simple, but effective video.

My second favorite video was ” The Meeting of two worlds: Aztec Edition” because of the amazing animations used to describe what was being said. The animations were a great addition because it really helps the viewer visualize and be engaged in what is being communicated. The only reason this was not my number one favorite was because I felt that this wasn’t as well-written and clear and the previous mentioned video, but they did an incredible job nonetheless. This makes me realize the importance of writing a cohesive and well thought-out script, which is not so easy to do.

Now to my least favourites. One of the videos I did not like that much was “The meeting of two worlds IV”. The reason for it is that, although it did seem like the person who made had researched and knew their topic, the execution of the video was not great. The majority of the video consisted of one person reading from a script and talking to the camera. Now that would be ok, except the intonation and mannerisms displayed by this person were monotonous and made the material they were talking about boring and hard to pay attention to. They did try to include some images, but they served more as awkward pauses in the video and I didn’t feel they contributed that much to my overall understanding of the subject.

Another video I did not like so much was “Caudillos Versus the Nation State”. The reason I did not like this video as much as some other ones was because of the layout. The two people are just sitting and reading from their notes into the camera, without much of engaging discussion or visual aids. The sepia color layover also does not do this video any favours. Again, the creators did seem to have researched a lot, and know what they were talking about, but in my opinion they failed to present that knowledge in an engaging way.