Daisy, Latin American Studies 2019

For this week, I decided to write about Chile. Chile is in the middle of a decisive moment as students went to the streets to protest against a rise in metro costs. The unrest is surprising as Chile lauds itself for being one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America. For my articles this week, I picked two opinion peaces that look into the nuances of the situation. The first piece, by the New York Times, titled Chile Learns the Price of Economic Inequality, examines the protests in the context of economic prosperity. While the Chilean economy is quite strong, the economic inequality means that only a few benefit from the wealth. Public spending on hospitals, public welfare, and more general methods of distributing wealth are virtually nonexistent. The article also points out that while the protesters began their movement after the rise in bus fare, tensions have existed for a long time due to this evident wealth inequality. The wealth gap in Chile is incredibly visual; San...

Second Source A.P. Archive. “Mexico: Zapatista Leader Comandante Ramona Joins Student Rally.” Youtube. June 21st, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcvl4V1L0uY Three years after the official start of the Zapatista Revolution in 1994, Comandanta Ramona attended and spoke at student protest in Mexico City. The EZLN was highly popular in the 1990s as the organization represented significant pushback towards the government and demanded justice for indigenous communities. Based off of Emiliano Zapata’s principles, the modern EZLN carried the spirit of the Mexican Revolution, strengthening youth participation. Simultaneously, the guerilla warfare style reimagined earlier struggles of Che Guevara. In 1996, students accused the president Ernesto Zedillo of not following through with peace agreements signed a year prior to protect indigenous rights. Due to the modern nature of the EZLN rebellion, the protest and speeches were captured on film while EZLN organizing began to take plac...

First Source Comandanta Ramona. “Message from Comandanta Ramona, to the students of University City.” March 11th, 1997. https://schoolsforchiapas.org/library/comandanta-ramona-speech/ Dressed in a black balaclava, Comandanta Ramona looks incredibly similar to her male and more famous counterpart, Subcomandante Marcos. In 1994, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), organized an uprising against the Mexican Government over land policies that threatened the livelihood of indigenous communities. Named after Emiliano Zapata, a revolutionary figure who famously advocated agrarian reform in the Ayala Plan, the EZLN continues to advocate for indigenous rights to this day. The EZLN ran an unprecedented campaign, utilizing guerilla fighting styles while incorporating the use of internet and radio to craft a modern-day revolution. The EZLN was highly successful due to the strong leadership, which embraced a variety of figureheads who connected with the disenfranchised. Wearing...

This week's reading was incredibly powerful to read. I have learned about the Madre's before; their white bonnets seem to have become a symbol of resistance. The concept of the disappeared within Latin American politics is an interesting positionality. In the eyes of the state, individuals are reduced to bodies where no rights are guaranteed. Its such a devastating position as there is no sense of justice; the feeling is alien to me as I have always lived somewhere with a certain extent of due process. The Madres were successful because of their position as older women; the government could not kill mothers and grandmothers in the public sphere without large reproductions. This could be attributed to significant gender roles. As women were seen as fragile, homemakers, and child-bearers, there was an element of weakness associated with their murder. However, I believe this was true for the Madres because they had already gained global attention. The Argentinian government had no...

I was really happy this week to see that we would be discussing the Cold War in Latin America. I think that the reason why by the 1980's few of the countries mentioned had democratic governments was largely due to U.S. subversion in fear of communism. Latin America during this time seems to be heavily ideological; groups are created within every subset of identity and strongly politicized. Peasants, hacendados, caciques, politicians, and elites all existed within political niches with varying levels of credibility and political capital. I found the story of Peru to be especially confusing this week. I think this is largely because from what I have read, I have always viewed socialist groups within Latin America as the sort of moral underdog; I think of Che and the sort of heroism he generated ideologically. The Shining Path, due to their embrace of gratuitous violence lost any form of heroism. The kind of violence they employed lacked any real justification and seemed largely depen...