Monthly Archives: October 2015

Week Eight

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The Mexican Revolution has always been a very interesting topic for me to study, as I have studied it in the past in high school. We often debated who was essentially the father of the Mexican Revolution, if it was Madero since he was originally the moving force behind it, if it was Pancho Villa or Emiliano Zapata since they essentially lead the revolution after they realized that Madero was not going to follow through on his previous promise to uphold the Treaty of San Luis Potosi. Maybe it was none of them and the father of the Mexican revolution was the people of Mexico itself who so desperately wanted the land that they believed was theirs.

Madero can be seen as the father of the revolution in that he was one of the orginial people who started the movement, and was the one who took the step to over throw Porfirio Diaz and his dictatorial regime, and become the new leader of Mexico. However he was far to moderate to be considered a revolutionary leader, as can be seen in the Plan de Ayala multiple times. In Article 1 “President of the Republic Fransisco I. Madero has made the Effective Sufferage bloody trick on the people already against the will of the same people… [he] follows the pattern of a new dictatorship more shameful and more terrible than Porfirio Diaz.” Madero can be seen as the first step towards the revolution but it seems unlikely that he was the father of it since he did not follow through and change anything drastically in regards to laws.

People more commonly see Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa as fathers of the Mexican revolution. They were the ones who continued the fight after Madero became a corrupt official who failed to keep his promise to the people. However it can be argued that they were not fathers to the entire Mexican revolution. Often Villa focused more on social reform within his own region in the north. Giving the land he won back from Maderos government to the soldiers in his own army. Zapata had a similar mind set but within the south, however he did attempt to expand out of his own region more so than Villa ever did. The two of the combined can indeed be seen as the leaders of the Revolution undoubtedly.

Perhaps it was the people who were the fathers and mothers of the Mexican Revolution, for it was their passion and yearning for justice in regards to land ownership that the revolution was originally brought about. It’s hard to exactly say who the father of the revolution was.

Week Six

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I found this week’s readings extremely interesting, regarding the human rights movements within Latin America. Being from the United States, they teach us from a very young age about slavery in America from the past. From youth we’re shown that it was usually just the white man in power while the other races were overlooked and treated poorly. However it was interesting in the case of Brazil, to learn that there were also quite a few blacks who were the masters of other blacks. Its interesting to think that slavery was more than just a race issue, but for man’s greed to have power over other human beings. It wasn’t taught to me like that. The way I learned it was that people were afraid of people who were different looking from each other so they tried to control what they could not understand, but this new information makes me view slavery in the United States in a different way.

It was also interesting to read that different countries that has different economic backgrounds gave slave rights because of these economic reasons. Dawson states on page 78 “Those places where slavery was not a centrally important part institution generally produced different kinds of histories than those where it was.” Meaning that places where the economy relied heavily on the use of slaves, gave up slavery a lot later than places where slave labor wasn’t as widely used. This even came down to regional level in the case of Cuba, where certain regions relied a lot more on slave labor than different parts of the nation did. Also interesting were how different slaves were granted rights if they  decided to fight for a certain party in Civil Wars. That could be seen in Latin America but also in the United States. The American Civil War was a war fought primarily about slavery.

Its also important to note that even after slaves are emancipated that full rights are not always given to them. For instance Argentina, Cuba, and Brazil had free womb acts, meaning that any child born into the family of slaves was free, however the child would be forced to work for the master until he was 25 years old. Also especially in America it was very hard for free slaves to find work after emancipation because the world’s view point on blacks had not completely changed and few were willing to let them work.

Slavery is a dark stain on humanities past, but time has shown us that eventually people will get the justice that they deserve.

Week Five

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In my past studies I always found the caudillos a very interesting Latin American cultural phenomenon. In previous readings it says the origin of a caudillo state was not the civil war stricken environment that was so common in Latin America after Independence from Spanish rule, but rather it was the cultural idea of machismo. The machismo man was a man whose characteristics were extremely closely aligned with the ideal characteristics of a caudillo. They featured an extremely powerful man who was charismatic and portrayed a superiority over other men.  However to say that caudillos were caused by machismo alone is outlandish. It appears that the rise of the caudillo was more a mix of these two things; a cultural identity as well as the circumstances that lead to the regional need for a strong leader who will protect the people.

 

Its also easy to look at the caudillo as an enemy of the people, especially coming from a democratic country like America. They forced people to agree with what they said, if they didn’t comply to the ideas of the caudillo their lives were at stake. There are instances of caudillos tying those who were not loyal to his reign to posts along the side of the roads and leaving them to die there as a threat to others whose loyalties might lie elsewhere. However the reason the caudillo is so popular and how it rose to power in Latin America was because it was the protector of the people in a small region. The people in the region believed that if they were left to a central autonomous government that because of this they would lose their land and their rights. The caudillo acted as a guardian in a community against external threats. One of the most prominent caudillos was Juan Manuel de Rosas from Argentina. While he was of wealthy background he spoke to the people as if he were one of them, and made them feel included and protected. However unlike most caudillos he didn’t simply try to just maintain social order within his own region, he also created a coalition, while be it a loose one, of caudillos that allowed him to create a more centralized government in Buenos Aires, all the while allowing the caudillos to rule their own regions. The government was never as strong as the liberals wanted it to be but it allowed for peace to exist. It also laid the groundwork for a more centralized government in the future.
The caudillo played an important role in the development of Latin America and the effects of this type of government can be seen even today in their rulers.

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