Colonial involvement in Latin American discussion This is a persuasive essay (5 paragraphs / 500 words) that should answer the promptWas colonial involveme

Colonial involvement in Latin American discussion This is a persuasive essay (5 paragraphs / 500 words) that should answer the promptWas colonial involvement a positive development for Latin America on balance, or a negative one? To answer the question, please read the text that I have attached. PLEASE READ! You do not need to cite any sources. ONLY USE THE TEXT TO ANSWER.Please write the essay on the assignment paper that I have also attached. I would answer, “no, colonial involvement was not a positive development for Latin America because it caused them to become an export-only economy, took away their natural resource – gold and silver, and caused a lack of a stable government (colonial governments were unstable).” Unit 9,
xx,Lesson
Lesson13xx
Unit
Unit xx, Lesson xx
Worlds Collide
Essential Questions
Keywords
•
Briefly explain the fragmentation and political experiments that took
place in Latin America.
gaucho culture
•
What was the significance of Juan Manuel de Rosas in Argentina?
•
What were the key events and outcomes of the Mexican Revolution of
1911–1920?
•
What was the Latin American experience with industrialization and
economic development?
•
Briefly explain the colonial legacy in Latin America.
•
Describe the migration patterns to the Americas that emerged in this
time period.
•
What are the key characteristics of ethnicity, identity, and gender in
Latin America?
machismo
Mexican Revolution
of 1910
Monroe Doctrine
tierra y libertad
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Unit 9, Lesson 13
2
Set the Stage
The wars of libration that Simon Bolívar and Jose San Martin had led in Latin America
succeeded brilliantly—but the peace that followed was not nearly as joyous or as clear-cut
in its results. Shortly before his death, Bolívar looked back on his accomplishments with
mixed emotions, commenting wistfully that “We have achieved independence . . . at the
expense of everything else.” The grand plans that Bolívar had for a unified Latin America
had crumbled, as the large nations he had mapped out had splintered into smaller ones.
For example, Gran Colombia fragmented into Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. The
Republic of Central America broke away from Mexico, and then split into half a dozen
countries because of resentment of Guatemala’s dominance. What followed was a century
of failed experiments in different forms of government. These experimental governments
were repeatedly frustrated by the power that wealthy land-owning elites had over the
populations and the economic and political systems of those countries. One Latin American
nation after another teetered from military rule to democratic experiment and back.
The Push for Greater Democracy in Latin America
Regional differences, economic rivalries, the personal ambitions of local leaders, and
the lack of a democratic tradition combined to make Bolívar’s dream of a continentwide republican ideal unrealizable. An important reason his dream failed was because
Latin America lacked a tradition of constitutional representative government that
honored the rights and interests of ordinary citizens. Great Britain had had such a
tradition for centuries, and its former colonies, the United States and Canada, had
come to independence with experience in establishing republican governmental forms
and living by constitutional restraints on power. Spain and Portugal were absolute
monarchies, and so their former colonies, the Latin American nations, lacked the civil
liberties that would have made citizen participation in government a reality. They
did not have the experience of creating and living by constitutions, and of governing through elected bodies. The Latin American nations took great care in writing
bold, ambitious, forward-looking constitutions, but those constitutions were often
rewritten when power shifted from one governmental administration to the next.
In its place, Latin America had a tradition of domination by elites who owned
most of the region’s land. The elites themselves were divided among different types
according to whether they were urban or rural, Catholic conservatives or secular
liberals, centralists or federalists in governmental policy. (Centralists favored a strong
central government, federalists a looser system in which local governments held
more power.) Non-landed people, the vast majority, had little outlet for dissenting
political views except through rebellion.
Another factor working against democracy in Latin America was the tendency
for military leaders to wrest power away from the civilian governments. Given the
weakness of the civilian authorities, Latin Americans tended to gravitate toward
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Unit 9, Lesson 13
3
individual leaders who seized power through the strength of their personalities,
and even their physical strength and masculine appearance, rather than through
their governmental competence or their policies. Often they were charismatic
strongmen, called caudillos, who originated in local armies and then bloomed into
national leaders. They might represent the interests of the landed elite, or take a
more populist approach and claim to be fighting for the good of the masses, but
under the surface they were uniformly ambitious for their own personal power.
They included men such as Juan Manuel de Rosas, who ruled Argentina between
1829 and 1852; General Antonio López de Santa Anna (1797–1876), the military
dictator of Mexico during the Texas rebellion of the 1830s, and Jose Antonio Páez
(1790–1873), a Venezuelan former guerrilla leader who ruled with an iron hand
from 1829 to 1847, and who presented himself as a champion of the poor while
he was amassing wealth and currying favor with the landed elite.
The influence of foreign countries in Latin American affairs further confused
the picture. The United States took away half the land of Mexico through the Texas
rebellion and the Mexican-American War (1845–1848). Business investors from the
United States and Great Britain, seeking inroads into the control of Latin America’s
agricultural and mineral resources, often bolstered the local elites in opposition to
the interests of the native Indians and the peasant farm workers. The United States
expanded its influence in the region, taking Puerto Rico and Cuba from Spain after
winning the Spanish-American War (1898–1899), and used the Monroe Doctrine
to justify its actions.
Monroe Doctrine
U.S. policy, instituted by
President James Monroe
in 1823, that created
a sphere of influence
throughout the Western
Hemisphere for the
United States
machismo the trait of
traditional masculinity;
highly prized in
traditional Latin
American culture
Juan Manuel de Rosas
A noteworthy example of the caudillo style of governing
was that of Juan Manuel de Rosas (1793–1877) in Argentina.
The elite of Argentina were divided between the affluent city
dwellers of Buenos Aires and the cattle ranching society of
the pampas, or plains. Rosas, a cattle rancher, gained control
over both elements of the Argentine upper class. He came to
power on a federalist platform of regional autonomy, which
was a popular approach to satisfying the competing interests
of Argentina’s diverse economic and political groups, but his
policies favored the landed interests, and he counteracted federalism by centralizing power to the national leader—himself.
During his regime, Rosas strengthened Argentine unity and
nationalism and helped increase his nation’s international
prestige, but his methods were exceptionally harsh. According
to one of his opponents at the time, Rosas was responsible for
more than 22,000 opposition deaths, either through armed
conflict, hanging, poisoning, or assassination. Rosas established a personal army that was loyal to him rather than to
the nation, and he used an image of machismo to cement
his popularity with the common people. Opposition to him
arose from other caudillos as well as from the liberal sector of
Juan Manuel de Rosas is remembered for being one of
the most ruthless of caudillos. His critics compared him
to famous tyrants of the past, such as the ancient Roman emperor Nero, calling him “the Argentine Nero.”
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Unit 9, Lesson 13
the populace, and a combined force of caudillo supporters defeated him in 1852 at
the battle of Cesaros. Rosas went into exile, and died in England in 1877.
Revolution in Mexico
In 1824, Mexico developed a written constitution based on American and French
models. This constitution included respect for civil rights and a federalist structure
of government. The economic and political problems of Mexico, however, could not
be resolved by a constitution alone. Most of the nation was poor and uneducated;
its citizens of Spanish colonial descent discriminated against the native Indians;
ownership of 85 percent of the land was in the hands of a small group of wealthy
families who had lived under Spanish colonial rule. British and American companies controlled most of Mexico’s mining and railroads. Peasants who had lost
their lands through intimidation had lost their sources of pasture and firewood in
the process. Working as field labor for the large landowners, they had to buy food
from the landowner’s store, often on credit at harsh terms, and spent their lives
trying to work off a permanent debt—a practice known as debt peonage.
A reformist government came into power from 1832 to 1835, but its goal of
separating church and state was unpopular, and in reaction, General Santa Anna
appointed himself as leader. Although he was harsh in his methods, Santa Anna’s
grip on power was unsteady. He lost Texas, was captured by the Texans, returned
to power, went into exile when the United States occupied Mexico City, and briefly
but ineffectively returned. By that time, he faced a burgeoning reform movement
that cut across Mexico’s social classes, from middle-class intellectuals and lawyers,
to rural peasant leaders, to American Indians.
They sought to install a secular, economically successful government in which
the church and the military did not have special privileges. Their revolt, which
began in 1854, was called La Reforma, and its leader was a Zapotec Indian named
Benito Juarez (1806–1872) who had been educated in the law and had become a
state governor. La Reforma swept to power and, in 1857, made a new constitution.
New laws provided for the sale of church property and the sale of communal Indian
lands to individual farmers, in the hope of creating a society of independent farmers.
The land reform effort failed miserably however, for when lands were put up for
sale, they were more often bought by speculators or large landowners rather than
by individuals of modest means. Mexico’s native and mestizo (mixed Indian and
Spanish) peasants ended up with less land than they had had before. In addition,
the reform government’s actions against the Roman Catholic Church provoked
the church to retaliate, such as by threatening supporters of the new constitution
with excommunication. A civil war resulted, and in 1861, antireformists forced
Juarez’s government out of Mexico City.
Juarez also took the risky step of suspending loan payments to foreign nations.
As a result, France, one of the countries that held much of Mexico’s debt, intervened, with the approval of Mexico’s elite. Napoleon III saw in Mexico a possible
linchpin for a revived French empire in the New World. In 1862, the French
landed in Mexico and gained control of the capital city. Mexico was transformed—
briefly—into a monarchy with the support of France. An Austrian archduke,
4
1
Self-check
On what did
caudillos base their
governmental power?
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Unit 9, Lesson 13
5
A Piece of
History
Ponciano Arriaga
Calls for Land Reform
One of the most deeply rooted evils of our country—an evil that
merits the close attention of legislators when they frame our fundamental law—is the monstrous division of landed property.
While a few individuals possess immense areas of uncultivated
land that could support millions of people, the great majority of
Mexicans languish in a terrible poverty and are denied property,
homes, and work.
Such a people cannot be free, democratic, much less happy no
matter how many constitutions and laws proclaim abstract rights
and beautiful but impracticable theories—impracticable by reason
of an absurd economic system.
A land tenure system in which the great majority of land was owned
by a few wealthy families plagued Latin America. Ponciano Arriaga,
a liberal voice of La Reforma spoke on behalf of land reform at the
Constitutional Convention of 1856–1857. In this excerpt, he speaks of
the liberal ideas of freedom and democracy and claims that without
the opportunity to own property, Mexicans will not be free and happy.
Despite the abstract language in the constitutions and laws of the newly
independent Mexican state, the majority of Mexican people had little
opportunity to exercise the right to property. Arriaga claimed that by
refusing to redistribute their lands, the wealthy elite supported the
oppression and poverty of millions of Mexicans. The right to property
had been enshrined as one of the natural human rights by British liberal
philosopher John Locke, whose phrase “life, liberty, and property” had
been changed to “life liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the U.S.
Declaration of Independence. A fruitful topic for debate might be the
question of which side had the greater right to land: the people who
owned it or the people who had been deprived of it. Arriaga, in this
piece, wrote with the aim of stirring readers to demand land reform.
His commitment to that cause marks him as a radical thinker in the
context of his time and place. As such, he is prepared to call for drastic
changes in his nation’s laws of property
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Unit 9, Lesson 13
6
Maximilian von Habsburg (1832–1867), was placed on the throne. Maximilian
fell out of favor with both sides. He disillusioned his conservative backers by
supporting some of Juarez’s reforms. Juarez, however, refused to accept a foreign
monarch as the ruler of Mexico. When French troops withdrew in 1867, Maximilian and his generals were captured and executed. Juarez returned to power, as
liberal-minded as ever in his policies but not as democratic in his methods. He
became a widely beloved figure of national pride against foreign interference, and
of concern for the poor. In 1876 one of his generals, Porfirio Diaz (1830–1915),
ascended to power and instituted a reign of political repression. Unlike Juarez,
Mexican Revolution
Diaz welcomed foreign investment, which became a driving force in increased
of 1910 populist,
prosperity for Mexico in the late 1800s.
reformist uprising
that overthrew the
Diaz became increasingly dictatorial and corrupt. He was known for rigging
dictatorial presidency
elections—by hiring gunmen called rurales to intimidate voters. Diaz modernized
of Porfirio Diaz
the country, turning Mexico City into an up-to-date capital that boasted street lighting, streetcars, and well-kept parks. In contrast,
however, land ownership during his rule became
even less fair, with 95 percent of the peasants
left landless. Diaz, though a mestizo himself,
discriminated against his own people and played
up to the white wealthy class, who, during his
regime, increasingly turned away from traditional Mexican food and apparel and strove to
imitate European fashions.
Middle-class Mexicans joined poorer ones in
launching the Mexican Revolution of 1910–
1920. An opposition leader, Francisco Madero,
who had been imprisoned by Diaz and then
escaped, defeated Diaz’s army in 1911. Madero
was a liberal reformist, the son of a wealthy family who was educated in the United States, but
he was outflanked ideologically from two sides:
by more radical elements in his revolution, who
sought more rapid change, and by conservatives
who opposed the revolution from the start. The
latter group carried out a military coup in 1913
and killed Madero. The new military government
run by General Victoriano Huerta only lasted one
year. Venustiano Carranza, a populist, replaced
Huerta’s government, and brought in a new constitution, the Constitution of 1917. It was a progressive document that called for universal suffrage, minimum-wage and maximum-hour labor
This U.S. editorial cartoon from c. 1914 shows two Mexican revolutionarlaws, an end to debt peonage, limits on foreign
ies, Pancho Villa (l) and Venustiano Carranza (r) flanking U.S. secretary
ownership of Mexican resources, redistribution
of state William Jennings Bryan (c). The three men are portrayed as the
Three Musketeers, implying that Bryan supports the revolutionaries.
of land, and government-run secular education.
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Unit 9, Lesson 13
Enforcement of the Constitution of 1917 suffered because of the weakness of
Carranza’s grasp on power. Radical revolutionary leaders were increasingly active,
demanding tierra y libertad. Zapata and Villa both came from poor backgrounds;
they captured the imagination of Mexico. Zapata, a farmer of American Indian ancestry
from the state of Morelos, led a peasant cavalry that carried pistols and rifles. Scorning the government despite Carranza’s willingness to meet many reformist demands,
Zapata took it upon himself to distribute the lands of the wealthy to the peasants.
He and his soldiers descended periodically from their mountain hideouts to burn
haciendas and give ranch land to the villagers. Villa was a ranch hand and former
youthful bandit from the state of Chihuahua, where 17 people owned 40 percent of
the land. Captivated by the idea of revolution, he, too, formed his own cavalry, and
allied himself with Zapata. Villa decided to attack and kill U.S. citizens in Mexico, in
revenge for U.S. support of the Mexican government, and even rode across the U.S.
border to attack a town in New Mexico. Both Zapata and Villa led poorly equipped
forces; neither could overturn the Mexican government in the long run, and both met
violent deaths. Zapata was killed by government forces in 1919, and Villa was assassinated in 1923. In 1920, Carranza was killed by one of his own generals, effectively
ending a revolutionary period during which almost 2 million people had been killed.
Carranza’s most important ally, Alvaro Obregón, took his place. Obregón
was a former schoolteacher who had helped overthrow the military dictatorship
7
tierra y libertad
“land and liberty,” the
slogan of the Mexican
Revolution
2
Pancho Villa at his camp in 1914; Villa lost whatever goodwill he enjoyed with the U.S. government
when he and 500 of his soldiers crossed the border into Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916.
U.S. and Mexican forces did not succeed in capturing him.
Self-check
Despite his dictatorial
way, what positive
accomplishment
did Porfirio Diaz
bring to Mexico?
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Unit 9, Lesson 13
8
of General Huerta in 1914. Obregón was succeeded by Plutarco Elias Calles, who
founded the National Revolutionary Party (PNR). This moderate party enabled
compromises among the competing economic and political interest groups of
the nation. President Lázaro Cárdenas, who held office from 1934 to 1940, further liberalized the government, removing generals from civilians’ governmental
positions and welcoming labor and peasant organizations into the PNR. Cárdenas
instituted many, though not a…
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