I found this week topics extremely interesting, mostly because I’ve only heard of “Banana Business” but haven’t really made a profound reading or research on it. My perspective of the imperialist symbol that the banana has did not actually change. United States has been pointed for many times by the Latin American countries as the most imperialist power, even when the same US denies it. I remember the Monroe doctrine that literally established: “America for the Americans” when they indented to defend Latin American countries from European domination, but this was not a noble act just to protect us; it definitely was an act filled with a personal intention; have a big amount of control in America. And a dangerous or worrying significance of this statement is that US actually thought because all of us were situated in America it was on their natural right to appropriate of our labor. In the natural right they think they have (and they exercise) many military intervention has been observed, while they impose their “lifestyle” and most importantly their ay of thinking.

Another concern I would like to point out is the price of producing bananas, and I’m not referring to the money, but the social cost that come with transnational corporations and its interests. One of them is obviously the use of illegal substances to secure their mono crop, but that damages many plantations of fruits and vegetables. (just to set an example). On the other hand, the social impact that has not changed in the 21^st Century; the long working hours, low salary, bad medical conditions, etc. I mentioned this, because I did not really have scared or impressed myself. You might wonder why?… Well, because nowadays these precarious conditions still exist in our Latin American countries, such as Mexico, in which small children would work 8 or 9 hours in a cotton field with his father and receive no salary, besides not having medical insurance or even the opportunity to get education. But let’s not only think about Latin countries,; this happens also in Asia, the new best power economy of the world (China) has extremely precarious conditions for their workers. These examples are the result of an imperialist regime; shall we “blame” it only to US? Well, it depends on the perspective, but definitely blame it on the imperialist thinking.

Latin Americans lived in a fragmentary world; one person’s boom was always another’s crisis. I think this stills been true until nowadays; for example one of the most richest man in the world is a Mexican (Carlos Slim), and also almost 60% of the Mexican population live in poverty.

In the book it is established that progress came at a great cost, because the inequality increased; well, I would say this is very typical of Latin American societies because the positive economic changes that occurred in that time had a negative effect on the political stability and many of the times it came with great violence. When reading this passage of the book, I immediately thought about the current situation in Mexico, in which almost all of the positive changes in economy have extremely negative effects in some people’s lives. It mostly affects indigenous groups, who are not officially accepted by the same society, they’re just put on another side. When it comes to make a decision rather it is political, economic or any other kind, there are specific groups in society that are marginalized.

Another important point is the fixed political game, in the book it is presented like if it only happened at that time, but actually this political game has always been controlled by a small oligarchy, that group that has influence in every part of the society; people who has a lot of contacts, the ones that reassure their place in politics, and at the end of the day lead the “democracy”.

It is true in the textbooks that teach about Mexican or Latin American history the “good” part of the characters is showed, for example: about Porfirio Díaz (the 11 times president) he is definitely not a villain, he is the Mexican ex-president who changed Mexico, the one that introduced the railroad among many other things. But of course the negative repercussions are not thought. Talking about heroes and villains, it is hard to decide who plays what role; the Zapatistas and the Villistas were different groups that actually had the same interest and were looking for the same things to achieve, autonomy and they wanted their interests to be represented in a legal manner.. Indigenous communities across Mexico participated in revolutionary movements but all of them had ambiguous terms.

As always the Catholic Church is involved in the society and plays a role of a leading institution in Latin American societies; religion used to guide people what to do or not to do, the immoral behavior undermined their sense of order.

Freedom and equality have always been the product of local circumstances. Certainly it depended of the cultural context, even tough Latin America is considered as one region; rights would differ even in the same section, (this would definitely apply in the Mexican case, for being such a big country). The most impressive fact is that rights changed depending on the social class, the customs, languages spoken, and mostly importantly the gender. As a comparison, we could take the ancient Rome, in which only certain kind of people could be called citizens and had the right to vote wisely; in these two opposing civilizations there’s a common variable: women were not considered citizens; my wonder is, at what point in history did this happen? Weren’t women privileged and respected for giving birth? One way or another, man dominated the public sphere back in those times.

In addition to cultural struggles, this chapter reminded me to the “Casta Painings” because it mentions that in colonial Mexico there were at least eighteen caste categories, and the importance of this castes is that they basically defined your work, rights, clothes, etc (in a dramatic way, it could be said that the caste you belonged to, defined your destiny).

On the other hand slavery played an important role among the Latin American nation states. They were not considered as humans, but objects. They were sold, interchanged, replaced, among other horrible things. Despite the fact slavery was inhuman and evidently an unfair situation; it was different depending on the society. Taking for example Brazil, where slaves were easily replaced and their “owner” (whatever that word might been back then) wouldn’t really worry about their health. This passage of the Latin American history made me remember the feudal system and the feudal lords, who basically owned their workers; provided them food and a place to live, but under which conditions? They had to do all the hard work, same as Latin American slaves. So, could we say that Latin America has always been “learning” about their “colonizadores”? That instead of taking steps forwards, we’re only being repeating the same history. How can’t we realize we shouldn’t follow the same path without analyzing the negative outcomes?
But, at the end of the day it is important to recall and recognize the efforts that “slaves” made to get out of their situation and achieve “social equality”.