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Latin America - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Poverty exacerbated by unbalanced trade, debt, monopoly power
      - There was still deep seated polarization between the support for the Guerillas and those who did not support them an obstacle to overcome to forming a functional democracy and society
  - - - Multinational companies gained vast power over domestic policies
        
        At the end of the 19th century US companies decided to take over production in Latin America to achieve "vertical integration" - control over production, transport, marketing.
        
        Banana companies first started this process and acquire vast amounts of power over domestic policies in countries like Guatemala and Honduras.
      - US funding of counter-insurgency campaigns
    - - Lead to Ernesto leaving and ended up meeting Fidel Castro in Mexico, who was also in exile. After the US installed a puppet government
  - - - Zapata, led armies of peasants against the government, demanding the restoration of lands that had been stolen from them by wealthy landowners who were driven to expand sugar production. Displaced peasants rose up in the thousands.
  - - - Especially the revolutionaries in Peru or Shining Path who viewed violence as the only means to achieve their goal
      - Guerrilla principles (Mao): Go to countryside, cultivate peasant support, hide among population, hit-and-run tactics
      - FLMN
        
        5 resistance groups united to form the FLMN - accepted the principals of communism.
        
        rebels killed civilians but not on the levels of the government forces with their death squads. Was a huge human rights concern.
        
        In November 1989 large offensive by the FLMN
        Wanted to force negotiations, the army responded strongly by bombing the populace and killing priests.
        
        Positive effect of negotiation with US backing a peaceful resolution.
        
        Jan 1992 FLMN finally signed a peace agreement
        
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  - - - Their actions were spurred by the Mexican government's decision to re-write the constitution to eliminate the protections of indigenous communities when they signed onto NAFTA
        
        This constitutional change paved the way for land grabbing and emboldened large landowners to take advantage to expand their production to meet the new demand from their free trade partners in Canada and the US
        
        They made it clear that they were not like the revolutionaries of old who fought for power. Their revolt was intended to force people to listen to them. They specifically demanded indigenous people's rights and autonomy, along with the protection of their lands, their culture, and way of life
  - - - He was an overconfident and charismatic leader, an extraordinary speaker, a brilliant thinker, and a political strategist who never doubted he would succeed
        
        Before 1959, Cuba was described as the epitome of all that was wrong in Latin America that inspired reformers and revolutionaries, with significant US presence and power making it essentially a colony or protectorate
        
        Cuba was ruled by a brutal dictator, Fulgensio Batista, and attempts to remove him electorally failed
        
        Fidel gathered a handful of men and plotted to take up arms against Batista and his US-backed military
        
        He and a small band of 80 guerrillas launched their efforts in the mountainous region of Cuba in 1956. Despite being almost wiped out initially, down to 17 men, they regrouped
        
        They worked to gain support from rural Cubans who despised Batista and the landlords' overseers
        
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  - - - His face is one of the most recognizable in the world, and he has become an icon of young radicals and revolutionaries globall
        
        He was Argentine
        
        He was raised in an aristocratic family and was a medical doctor, specialising in allergies
        He lived with crippling asthma and sought a cure
        
        During road trips in Northern Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, he was transformed or 'woke' by encountering poor indigenous peoples, peasants, and mine workers living in miserable conditions. A deep-thinking and passionate person, this experience drove him to be part of a movement for social change
        
        He went to Guatemala where a reformist government was attempting radical labour and land reforms in the 1950s, but had to leave after the US orchestrated a coup
        
        He ended up in Mexico where he met Fidel Castro. Ernesto and Fidel hit it off immediately
        
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- - - - It didn't benefit the majorities
        
        Independence highlighted the injustice present in the colonial era
        
        Creole oligarchy were still on top of the social hierarchy
    - - The first fifty years after independence were a time of political and economic chaos, but from the 1870s onward, a new commodity boom took off, lasting until the Great Depression of the 1930
  - - - Since 1960, Third world countries have suffered a 70% drop in prices of agricultural exports compared to manufactured imports
  - - - Large/wealthy landowners benefited from the colonial system and used their power and military allies to resist any change in the status quo and impose it by force
  - - - Created a boom/bust economy which lead to economic instability,
    - - Decreased food sustainability for indigenous people and pushed them into wage labour and seasonal workers on plantation as a means to get by to pay for food
        
        Pushed indigenous people to the mountains. Poverty and the eviction from their land would develop into further problems, but secured labour for plantations
  - - - Washington consensus
      - Capital account liberalization
      - Trade liberalization
      - Reduce the taxes paid, stimulate growth, tax revenues went down.
      - Sell off of states assets - developing countries got minimal out of the sales of these - was privatized.
  - - - Driven by external demand
        
        concentration of landownership and wealth
        
        Surpluses lead to inefficient government spending and corruption
        
        Surpluses lead to inefficient government spending and corruption
- - - - Two centuries after the defeat of the Inca, the exploitation of natural resources persisted.
        
        Exploitation of natural resources and human labour was the
        indigenous and slave labourers that worked the mines in Potosi, Bolivia
        
        The "mita" a Spanish imposed system where indigenous men were to be sent to work the mines for 36 hours and robbed of any due payment
        
        Introduction of Monocrops (Sugarcane)
        
        On his second voyage to the Americas in 1493, Christopher Columbus brought sugarcane to Hispaniola
        (now the Dominican Republic) and it flourished. Sugar subsequently drove Brazil’s first and greatest commodity boom.
        
        Per acre, “white gold” produces four times the food energy of potatoes and ten times that of wheat, and sugar was in great demand to feed Europe’s new industrial working class.
        
        Sugar required investment for it to processed just after it was harvested, and before it was exported to foreign countries for refinement.
        
        In Brazil, the Dutch West Indies Company initially financed the sugar industry. The monotonous cane fields rapidly spread across Brazil’s northeast,
        
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      - Serve economic needs of motherland (resources, labour, revenue, markets
    - - Portugal, Spain, Britain and Holland - stole all the riches of the Inca and the Maya (gold jewels), confiscated land
        
        19th Century - The British arrival, justify expropriation of land through British laws
        
        December 13 of December 1897. Justified colonization in countries where there is no settled form of government the Queen of England owns the land. Went through legal hoops to enforce this and legitimize it, then give settlers thousand year leases.
    - - Colonialism is the reason why poor countries are poor, left legacies of violence, one reason being the slave trade.
        Capitalism cannot operate without free labor. Labor is a key to the cost of production.
        
        Plantations were worked by African slaves, victims of a deadly but lucrative trade dominated by British slavers. Today the people are largely a blend of black African and white European immigrant stock, with an unmistakable “pigmentocracy.” Although the Brazilian government
        denies claims of racism, most black people are poor, most rich people are white.
        
        Prolific-exploitation of Labour was profitable
      - Spanish brought slaves in from Africa to work the mines as well as indigenous, more than 8 million people died in the mines of Potosi in Bolivia. From 1503 to 1660 Spain took enough silver from the New World to multiply the European reserves by 4
      - Europeans superior, Indigenous/Blacks considered natural slaves
    - - They had all the political power while the indigenous peoples and blacks were excluded and marginalized
      - In Latin America the oligarchy include the European elite (European born or their descendants born in the Americas), who owned large estates called Latifundios that produce export crops which provided them with enormous wealth.
      - They control the government to preserve the existing order of land ownership, exploitation of labour and political exclusion of majorities.
        
        The military are part of this oligarchy and provide the muscle when force is needed to preserve this status quo.
      - Creole wealth was based on the preservation of the colonial order- the ownership of vast land holding by European settlers that produced export crops using the labour of indigenous and black slaves
    - - Indigenous believed in community and shared wealth,
        Individualistic Christianity and individualistic view of private property were tied. One of the roots of capitalism.