Through this week’s reading and videos, it was very powerful to see how las madres de plaza de mayo used…
A conversation with Rita De Grandis (video)
As I write this blog post, pro-democracy protesters are taking to the streets in Peru amid a political crisis. Today,…
The thought of a Caudillo, a village strongman, invokes a distinctly Latin American story. A legendary character, straight from Macondo. The typical macho man at the head of the table. And from what I understood through the lecture and readings, this image is not so far from the truth. Like the head of a largeContinue reading “Week 5: Caudillos Versus the Nation State”
Video by Jessica, Elena, and Valeria
In this week’s readings and videos, there is a large emphasis placed on the role of technology in Latin American political campaigns between the 1920s and 1950s. Tools such as the radio were extremely important at this time in history because they were one of the first tools available to almost all individuals poor or …
Of course no one can possibly predict the future, but in the case of Venezuela, it seems that the Latin American country could very well become the next Soviet Union, at least when it comes to its collapse[1]. Considering the recent drop in the price of oil, and given that oil exports remains to this … Continue reading “Towards an Uncertain Future: The Case of Venezuela”
I found the notion of “weakness” of Latin American states to be really interesting “no Latin American state had the capacity to effectively dominate all its opponents”. It seems like it actually benefited the poor somehow because they could renegotiate and have some influence over matters like taxes and laws. But the Argentine state was … Continue reading Week 12
I thought this week’s topic was rather interesting. While I appreciate the strides made by Porfirio Díaz, I am left to wonder who benefited from these strides. James Creelman’s article paints the portrait of a magnificent hero, but what about the lower classes, or the indigenous people from whom he took land and sold it […]
