Modern Latin America

Argument: As we’ve been discussing over the past couple weeks, Latin American liberal reform movements were successful in creating the ground work for economic development and stable political nation-states.  By 1870, cities like Montevideo, Santiago, Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Lima had street cars, telephone polls, electricity and railroads. In a few years, silent films, bicycles, and eventual automobiles would appear among the wealthiest neighborhoods.  Also, these cities, as agrarian capitalism expanded they became the financial and administrative centers for the new export economies. Yet, the life of Latin America’s rural population, according to E. Bradford Burns, improved little if at all. Indeed, agrarian capitalism laid waste to the countryside and destroyed traditional life ways, impoverishing the rural people spiritually and materially. Despite many transformations, Latin American countries failed to develop truly independent economies. Why?

Within these lectures we are going to explore a phenomenon which scholars and social critiques identify as “neocolonialism.” The “neo” implies a new form of colonialism, without direct political control of the subject territory by the colonizing power. Between 1870 and 1930, no Latin American country returned to being a colony, strictly speaking (excluding Puerto Rico). Rather, Latin American countries found themselves increasingly trapped within the gravitational pull of European, and eventually, North American, economic and ideological sphere of influence.  Finally, we are going to examine the ideological nature of neocolonialism through out discussion of scientific racism, construction of national identities, gender views,  and the exclusion and struggles of Afro-Latin American in the process of nation formation.

Points to consider:

I. Three Types of Product Exporting Economies

a. Economies exporting temperate agricultural commodities: cereals and beef (Argentina & Uruguay)

b. Economies exporting tropical agricultural commodities: coffee, sugar, tobacco, indigo, henequen, bananas, rubber (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Central America, the Caribbean, & parts of Mexico, Venezuela)

c. Economies exporting mineral products: oil, tin, copper, iron, silver (Mexico, Chile, Peru, & Bolivia – & Venezuela after 1930)

II. Impact of  Lack of diversity or One product economy

a. Boom/Bust Cycle

b. Growth without Development

c. Concentration of land in the hands of a few local or foreign individuals or corporations.

III. Impact of Ideologies

a. Menacing use of science to exclude groups or eliminate them.

b. Continuation of old attitudes towards Indians and people of African ancestry.

c. Subordination of women to patriarchal control.

d. Distrust towards the working classes and the development of mechanism to exclude them from politics.