Week 12: The Strength of Mothers

In one of my courses, we talked about war, and how women’s bodies are always the site of battle. In history, women’s bodies have always been a location for violence. To systematically ruin and destroy an entire nation, it’s enemies will go after its women — the daughters, the wives, the nieces and sisters and aunties of the nation. They will seek to murder, assault, kidnap, and rape women because women are the foundation to any society. In this week’s readings with the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo it was clear the power women have, it was clear that they were and are the center of the community. There’s this strange illusion we have of mothers being harmless, kind and helpless, but in Argentina we saw the real and true power of women. Just by rallying, sitting together in groups and asking for their children back, they arguably were the dominant force in collapsing an entire authoritarian regime. The state perpetrating crimes against members of Madres de La Plaza de Mayo revealed just how much power they did have, enough of a rallying force and presence that the Argentine government was afraid. If you don’t think that’s incredible, I don’t know what is. The strength and power of women, more specifically mothers, to continue to fight and persevere against an oppressive regime even though they were at risk of dying is nothing to underestimate.

Not only that, the actions of those mothers produced a global phenomenon, they transformed motherhood (which has always been associated as an act in the private and domestic sphere) into a public issue. Women are always used as catalysts and objects for war, but they are indiscriminately and conclusively the most affected by war and consistently targeted. We talked about the dirty wars last week, but we never really went through who it affected, the families and lives it took hold of, and this chapter really shed light on that. However, I do agree with Dawson that shedding light on these issues does not always fix the problem, and more often than not it normalizes violence against women, eventually desensitizing us to the issue but we have to begin somewhere.

Week 11: Writing About War Is Weird

I put off writing this blog post for a while because I didn’t really know how to write about this. Reading about the atrocities that occurred on both sides and just listing them down seems so arbitrary and clinical. I think the meaning is lost and the importance of the wars is ignored when you’re just writing down bulletpoints. But it’s hard to conceptualize the atrocities and when you do conceptualize them, how do you explain them without belittling the meaning? There’s a strange and unique tension when you’re reading or writing about war, because unless you live something personally, you will never be able to give a worthy analysis on whatever it is you’re writing about — at least that’s what I believe. So then the question must be asked, how do we write about war? And as I went through Dawson’s accounts of the dirty wars taking place in Peru and Argentina I don’t think I’ve found an answer and I’m not so sure there will ever be one.

Reading the documents made me really uncomfortable; I didn’t know if what I was doing — reading about these gruesome acts would provide any service to anyone or if I was just fascinated by the death and gore and participating in a sort of voyeuristic violence. It was a hard line to tread. With that being said, the document that stuck out the most to me was Mario Vargas Llosa’s piece on the killings of the eight journalists in Peru. I know what that sounds like… however, it wasn’t because of the violence that drew me to it, but his departing words in the piece.

Llosa said the story of their deaths revealed the fissures of democracy in Latin America. It’s difficult for people who don’t gain anything from democracy (i.e. free press) to defend it. The Uchuraccayans didn’t understand the press, they were constantly bullied and degraded by the press, their circumstances didn’t allow them to benefit from democracy because of the inherent flaws of democracy. These events, although brutal and horrifying and should never have occurred disclosed to the public how vulnerable democracy was/is in Latin America. Democracy fails the lower classes because of constant class warfare and privileges given to one class over the other.

Llosa’s words reminded me of the absolute failure of modernity in Latin America; modernity has  always been viewed as the final point a nation should reach, the end goal for everyone. But in every step to “modernize,” Latin America has suffered immensely. The western notion of modernity is not applicable to other nations, it makes development seem like a straight forward line, but it’s never that easy. I think nations should be allowed to progress in their own timeframe within their own circumstances, pushing that idea of modernity forward has never worked, I mean look at any African nation who tried to modernize using the west’s methods. And Llosa voiced an idea I had been thinking about for a long time, but didn’t know how to phrase: guerilla movements and communist revolutions are almost always spurred on by the elite intellectual class, the privileged in society. It’s always heralded as a peasant, a proletariat revolution but that’s never the case. Especially with the Sendero’s, university students comprised the largest of the group, and I kept thinking how ironic it was that they were fighting against the bourgeoisie class when they were literally the bourgeoisie class…    

Week 3: The Totally Unbelievable Events of Catalina de Erauso

In week three, we discussed quite a bit about Casta Paintings and Catalina de Erauso’s autobiography, “Lieutenant Nun.” I’ll start off with the Casta paintings since they’re the most prominent in my memory.

When I was looking at the Casta paintings I could almost feel the frustration of the artists trying to place people into racial categories. There were too many mixes of people, too much difference in class and gender and race, etc.… and the more divisive lines the artists tried to create, the more they were blurred. The very form of a Casta painting (a grid) attempts to put everyone into boxes, but the more lines they tried to create, the more blurred the boxes became. It was a futile task, casta paintings simply could not provide a permanent place for everyone.

And in almost complete contradistinction, Catalina de Erauso’s autobiography seemed way too unreal. Honestly, it seemed like they were taken from a 99 cent action adventure novel, rather than real events of someone’s life. Erauso was always coincidentally in the right spot at the right time. She was always being taken in by aunts and uncles who didn’t know her, or coming dangerously close to discovery by her father. Also don’t get me started on the fact that she killed her brother… how does that happen?? But I could’ve let that slide… although uncommon, those things happen. However, the main reason why I felt that Erauso’s story was fabricated was because she wasn’t executed for her actions. Disguising herself as a man, living the life of a soldier, running away from her convent… these are all actions punishable by death in the 1600’s. I mean women have been killed for a lot less… And the Pope, especially the actual, literal Pope, pardoning her? There’s just no way. Erauso essentially ran away from God and her duties to the Church, and the Catholic Church allowed that type of disobedience? From the stories we’ve read about the Church, they really aren’t as forgiving as they say they are, so I just can’t believe she got off easy. And I just remembered that Erauso took part in a lot of lesbian activity so now it just seems even more unbelievable.

Nevertheless, disregarding the truthfulness (or lack thereof) of Catalina de Erauso’s life… her story and the Casta paintings served multiple purposes rather than just entertainment for me. They were narratives that showed the tensions in the new and old world. Tensions of representation and belonging. Both demonstrated the always evident racial and gender distinctions in Latin America as well as class warfare. They revealed the cracks beneath the surface, disproving the notion that there is one Latin America as so many believe, which is something we’ve been discussing since the start of class. It forces us to question what our notions of Latin America are and what/who Latin America is comprised of.

Research Assignment: The Meeting of the "Modern" and "Unmodern"

Source 1: n.a. Christopher Columbus - Voyages to the New World. (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2016, from <http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/columbus-christopher-voyages-to-new-world.html>

This particular source outlines the four expeditions to the New World Christopher Columbus embarked on. The author’s list the four ships that accompanied Columbus into the New World and explain each expedition in detail. They provide a chronicle of the location, date and time, and summary of the events that occurred once Columbus landed in the New World. The website also includes a historical perspective of Columbus’ voyages. It situates his journey in the landscape of what was occurring at the time, i.e. Columbus was not the first person to travel to the Americas but his expeditions mark the European’s continuous attempts to navigate and colonize the Americas. They also include the ongoing discussion of Columbus’ legacy — whether or not he should be lauded as a hero or a villain in contemporary retellings of his life. This source is crucial to my group’s presentation because it gives us the starting point of Christopher Columbus; from all of these excerpts about his journeys, his successes and failures, and historical perspectives we can begin to piece together a presentation about the meeting of the two worlds. We can seek out the nuances in the story rather than brute overgeneralizations.

Source 2: Todorov, T. (1999) The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other. New York, New York: Harper & Row.

The second source I used was Tzvetan Todorov’s “The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other.” Todorov, a French-Bulgarian philosopher and author writes that Christopher Columbus’ actions marks a profound moment in the creating of identity of the European self. Although his analysis has its flaws, it’s a good place to situate the context of Columbus in our presentation. Todorov stamps the European self as the founder of modernity while the starting point of modernity began on an isolated island in the Caribbean; we acknowledge this idea is problematic as it’s centered around European perspectives however… he does offer our presentation a different rhetoric rather than the constricting colonial subject and colonial power discourse. Todorov points out the uselessness in such a narrative as it destroys the nuances in history which are critical to understanding it; he claims that the “discovery” of America was an attempt by Europeans to destroy the “other” —  a means for Europeans to identify themselves as modern and natural while the Americas were unmodern and unnatural. This analysis gives us a much more complex understanding of history which aids us as we address the many issues in Todorov’s philosophy and Columbus’ actions and voyages.

Week 10: The Four Archetypes in Evita

In high school psychology class, i’m not sure if this is accurate since it was a while ago... but I learned about the four archetypes that people place women and femininity into. And it kind of weirded me out that the public (including the elites and peasants) put Evita into the same four archetypes. Firstly, she was the power-hungry manipulative woman; there were rumors of Evita sleeping her way to the top and that she was only with Peron for his money and status, etc. Secondly, Evita was the the femme fatale — she “used” sex as a tool, her sexual presence enveloped rooms completely unrestrained and uncontrolled. Thirdly, Evita was the mother — she was incredibly self-sacrificing, devoted her life and love to the people of Argentina… like a mother. And finally, Evita was the Virgin Mary after she died — she was pure, true, devoted to the people, loyal to only one man in her life and virginal. She also encompassed a religious icon feature, Evita was heralded and worshipped just as much as the actual Virgin Mary was. Isn’t it so crazy to see these projections put on her so she could fit into all the realms of the public sphere? I’m not saying she wasn’t part of contributing to this persona, and it probably immensely influenced the way she connected to people by playing up these archetypes, but seeing these archetypes play themselves out on the ground was surreal.

Also when I read the documents with Evita's speech, I felt really sorrowful for her. It was clear that she was suffering from cancer and she was weak and just wanted to rest. She couldn’t fulfill her duties as a public servant and even then I don’t think she even wanted to do it anymore; she just wanted to die in peace but the public bullied it out of her. I mean the woman literally told them she had always done what they wanted, and still they continued to speak over her, demand things that she couldn’t give and refuse to accept her answers.

Side note, I feel like I'm being picky, but I couldn't help but notice Evita always used the word "Fatherland" referring to Argentina; and most people, contemporarily and in the past always equated their country with a female pronoun (the Motherland). So it was interesting to me to see her use a patriarchal term after learning in class she was a huge anti-feminist. I wonder if her anti-feminist stance had anything to do with using the term, what do you think?

Week 9: Is the United States an Anti-Imperialist Nation?

For the past few weeks I've spent a lot of time trying to decide if critiquing modernity was useful and even more than that, justified. The way Dawson's framed development in the last few chapters is that it more often than not detrimentally affects Latin America; even now in this chapter as Dawson discusses Belmont cigarettes, he talks about it as a harmful instrument used by the North to get Latin Americans to consume their products. Furthermore, from what I've seen modernity continues to reproduce harmful hierarchies about who is modern and who is not, who is rich and who is not. It frames people as traditional or westernized which is annoying to say the least. The idea of modernity is that if you're not assimilated into what the West thinks as developed, you're an uneducated savage.

However... I can understand the argument, there are certain medicines, ideologies, technologies, etc. that i believe are modern and everyone deserves to have, but then again that's a perspective from someone who has been raised in the West and thinks like a Western person. My critique then, is if modernity is so great and development is the natural point of which all civilizations grow towards why does it always seem like one person is always suffering at the hands of modernity? And is it not a form of cultural imperialism for a country to impose it's ideas on another?

I also don't agree with the way Dawson frames the United States as an anti-imperialist nation because the U.S. doesn't directly colonize nations. He virtuously ignores the violent colonization of Hawaii, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. But even if I disregard that, imperialism is the direct involvement of another country trying to extend it's powers upon a different nation — America's interventions in Latin American affairs could not be a clearer portrayal of imperialism. Dawson writes that framing the United States as a violent oppressor or noble saviour serves a political interest but does little to reveal nuanced truths. I sort of agree...? But he really doesn't even have a good argument for this. Like yeah okay both are consuming each other, but you can't deny that one is gaining way more than the other. It's like when Columbus traded broken plates for gold with the indigenous population... sure they're both getting something, but it's not equal by any means and to try to claim it like it is, is nothing short of egregious.

Week 8: Did Zapata Look Uncomfortable to You?

For this week's reading I actually found the text to be a lot more intriguing than the articles, I think it situated the theme of this class in a context I could better understand. One of the more memorable lines Dawson writes in the chapter was that “Latin Americans lived in a fragmentary world, one person's boom was another person's crisis.” A lot of our in class discussions always revolve around arguing if the ends justify the means, if one person’s boom is worth another person’s crisis, if we can overlook the brutality of tyrants by measuring their overall progress (President Diaz comes to mind when I write this). I disagree with any ends justify the means discourse, so I say no, but I’m curious to what you think. Do you disagree or agree?

One of the really interesting things from the text i read was Dawson's take on the photographs of the Zapistas eating at Sanborns, and Villa and Zapata in Mexico City. If you look in the Sanborns one, there's a man dressed in a three piece tuxedo suit staring directly at the back of the soldiers and he looks soooo uncomfortable — it’s really something else. In the beginning, I did disagree with Dawson’s proposed theory that the Zapistas and Zapata look uncomfortable to be there but the more I thought about it, it does make sense. I’ve met real country people and they’ve always seemed uncomfortable to be in the city, it’s not their home. They don’t really relate to what city folk think about or the customs or their fashion. Although it seems like a large presumption to make about a photo taken from over a century ago, I think it’s a rational one. The rural and peasant class never went to the city, and I know they were gawked at, stared at, probably even had expletives yelled at them while they seized Mexico city. So yes, I think Zapata and the Zapistas may have been uncomfortable there. And Dawson draws up a good theory that the way the peasantry occupied the city (through force, terror and violence) served as a reminder they did not belong there. If you belong to something you shouldn’t have to force yourself on it. They’re people who have been on the margins looking in, and once they’re finally in they realize they still aren’t in it. But i'm not sure, did Zapata look uncomfortable to you?