Ada Ferrar, “Cuba, 1898: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Empire”
I found myself thinking a lot about the connections to the United States and race while reading this. For example, 1898 is the year of the Wilmington race riots (it won’t let me put HTML links in the comments so copy and paste if you want to see the link: https://www.wfae.org/post/latest-effort-confront-impact-1898-wilmington-race-riot#stream/0 the year the Supreme Court ruled states could set voter registration requirements, and the year Louisiana restricted the right to vote for African American men to those whose fathers and grandfathers were eligible to vote in 1867 (in addition to other requirements such as literacy). In addition, the United States [illegally] annexes Hawaii in 1898, in a show of both racism and imperialism. Before reading this article, I had no idea that there were three separate wars for Cuban revolution, and the complexity of the politics reaching into the late 20th century wasn’t something I understood before. That wealthy elites wanted to maintain ties to Spain for protection because they feared an insurrection such as that in Haiti makes sense, but I hadn’t considered that there were people who didn’t want freedom from Spain (such is the pervasiveness of the American colonial myth that freedom is the ultimate goal of all colonists, perhaps—labeling those who disagree as “traitors”). It certainly raises questions about who belongs in a colony and whose culture it is. What I found perhaps most intriguing is the myth of racelessness—that the fight for freedom was so pure that no one saw race anymore (which is clearly clever messaging more than reality). In the 1800s, after the importing of enslaved people was outlawed, Chinese coolie labor of indentured servants were brought to Cuba, but so were many who were kidnapped and enslaved, with no cover of an indenture to hide the reality of slavery in Cuba. The story of the Chinese in Cuba, who were housed and lived with and fell in love with the enslaved people brought from Africa, is missing in this narrative, even though www.mccunn.com/Slave-Trade.html How is this erasure ignored? While the United States is guilty of exporting its racism to Cuba, http://cseas.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/JShufelt.pdf , complicating the narrative about American racism and American imperialism [that’s my uncle, by the way, in the last link, which is how I know about this research].
I think that this was my favorite article of the four, mainly because I felt that she was clear with her intentions and she didn’t try to do too much. I think that she did portray Cuba’s “raceless” nation as something that was more of an idea or something that was semi tangible. The “raceless” part of the nation was always in flux. It would be interesting to view Ferrer’s work on Cuba against some of the events that were taking place in the United States. There is an excellent book on the American and Cuban exchange during Jim Crow by Frank Guridy. It’s called Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow. It has more do to with the cultural exchanges between the two countries.
Michel Gobat's article on the origins of the term Latin America and its changing significance across history was particularly eye-opening. What I find most fascinating is the situation in which Latin American elites were faced with in the 1850s, where U.S. expansionism threatened Latin American sovereignty while popular class revolts threatened the Latin American racial oligarchies from below. Gobat mentions that these Latin American elites appreciated and aspired to the entrepreneurial spirit of the North Americans, but at the same time, they were worried about filibusterism's popularity. Gobat also points to the origins of Latin America as a proposed economic unit that would grow the region through economic integration, but at the same time these nations favored differing levels of commerce with the North American nations. Would this be Latin America's central crux in the history of the perceived regional unit? The elites understood the importance of maintaining economic ties with the United States, but did not want to lose their political and cultural power to the filibusters. Knowing this, they expanded the scope of national democracy to include the "inferior races" as a safety measure from being attacked on two fronts. However, ballot box expansion did not and does not mean socioeconomic equity. Rather, electoral expansion could be said to be the beginning of the multi-factor propagandistic notion of racial democracy across the region. In my opinion, this ties in with the notion of Latin America as an anti-imperial term because, in the 1850s, if Latin America elites came together as a political entity to stave off U.S. expansionist aspirations, they could rely on popular support because of the looming threat of the reinstitution of slavery, leaving non-white Latin Americans to fight for the lesser of two evils. While it was an anti-imperialist term that espoused against imperial intervention, it did not embrace anti-imperial economic autonomy, nor a radical imagining of hierarchies. So I see the origins of Latin America as a proposed political entity, whether a united one or simply a transnational alliance, as one in which allowed and allows Latin American white elites to retain their political and socioeconomic power.
Rafa, I agree your assertion that "Latin America" was the white elite's political and socioeconomic identification. And after reading that, it kind of feels weird to use the term to identify oneself as one, understanding the origins. But the article also mentioned that during that time, the term meant different things to different people and that is also important. While I think the white elite were the reason from Latin America not being at the forefront of ideas, we cannot only think that the elite completely defined Latin America. Perhaps, one of the living legacies of the American Republican Modernity and the discussion of what meant to be "Latin America", outside the white elites, is that I know many Latin Americans that identify themselves with their nationality first (Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, etc) rather than by their race like in the U.S. where you are Latina/o-, African-, Japanese-, Italian- American.
All four readings this week again offered some clarity for those of us who may be lacking in a understanding of the formation of the region. I was again struck by the commonalities between the formation of Latin America and the Untied States both culturally and politically. The formation of not only a regional identity by liberal elites who wished to forgo the possibility of US imperialist encroachment, while simultaneously rejecting the suggestions of European imperialist power is reminiscent of historical readings concerning the formation of a US identity shortly before the Revolution of 1775, where Euro-American whites regularly appropriated indigenous culture in order to force some kind of inherent ownership of the land and distance themselves from British rule. Not that any kind of true equating an be made here, however the similarities are very striking, especially when one considers the superiority the US has always claimed over Latin America. Why else would we benevolently need to "intervene" in the affairs of our "neighbors" to the south?
Additionally, the narrative of elites utilizing newly formed states to legitimize their supremacy to both defend against foreign powers, while developing racial and cultural divides in order to allow a minority elite to successfully rule over a working class majority seems to be the recipe for domination within the Western Hemisphere. The development of these national identities by liberal elites and the simultaneous cementing of class systems, built on exploitation, emphatically reveals the limitations of liberalism and its inherent tendency to only extend privileges to certain populations while oppressing and disenfranchising the rest. Additionally, the limitations and problematic nature of a republican systems of government is also called into question as the elites seem to always end up doing the "representing." These many commonalities with the United States, another liberal creation of the period, highlights the scant differences that exist on the macro level when analyzing these two supposedly very different regions. It would seem now that these implied differences stem from the same places that they originated from, a small group of liberal elites who in an effort to create an economic and systemic hegemony, developed false narratives of division and inferiority to serve their capitalist goals. Ironically, Cuba appeared to be a focal point of the kind of revolutionary ideal espoused by Marx and his followers, where a body of working people take up arms to create a truly egalitarian society. As the Ferrer reading shows this is not what happens ideologically or materialistically, however, that the idea of a society based on national, or communal, identity (and not race) first gained traction in a nation thought to be either a communist dungeon, or a backward Caribbean island, is not without some kind of historical irony. These histories also reveal the racialization of our public school curriculum which espouses the US as the harbingers of liberty and democracy the world over when apparently it was also happening only a few years later, in the part of America we do not claim when we has US citizens say "America."
Another point of importance for me was finding that the introduction to the imperialist threat of the US during the early days of the 19th century was not as benign as I had once thought. Outside the Mexican American War, I was under the impression that Latin America existed mostly unmolested and untroubled by US "intervention" until the Spanish-American War. The filibustering of Walker and other white supremacist anarcho-capitalists of the period was shocking.
Lastly, i found the remark by Sanders (in 2020), "If historians rely only on published texts geared to a small audience, they miss or underestimate the importance and pervasiveness of American republican modernity in the mid-nineteenth century," to be a very consequential statement that every potential historian should take stock in and ample time to consider. Ran out of room!
Hi Jason, I believe that their is a link between “The Smuggler's World: Illicit trade and Atlantic Communities In The 18th Century Venezuela” by Jesse Cromwell and the articles we had in today's class. The same way how Venezuela enjoyed its autonomy from Spain and how it was when that Autonomy was interrupted is when they came to oppose this Spanish identity. The same is with democracy and the United States. When the USA started interrupting into their affairs is when we start to see a turn from "white" elite and Latin America gets a stigma of not being as civilized as the United States when they tell the USA to mind their own business.
Sometimes I start to think that I have a handle on the degree to which Americans will go to impose American values/social structure on other countries and cultures, but then I encounter articles like “Cuba, 1898: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Empire” and I’m reminded of how much I still have to learn. Ferrer’s analysis that post-slavery and early Jim Crow United States needed to eradicate the very possibility — even elsewhere — of an anti-racist, multiracial society and that this is what led to U.S. intervention in Cuba was a reminder, yet again, of the lengths the U.S. would go to in its effort to maintain the theoretical underpinnings of its racist social structure. My jaw was on the floor reading about a multiracial army in the 19th century in which whites served under black officers. As I read this article, all I could think of was how my 1980s U.S. centered history education devoted about five minutes to the Spanish-American War, and that we learned so little about what led to U.S. intervention in Cuba beyond perhaps some hand waving about the Monroe Doctrine. Ferrer’s contextualization of the Spanish-American War as US intervention at the end of a steadily more anti-racist/multiracial Cuban struggle for independence over a 30 year period made far more sense, and reading the history of Cuban efforts to behave well and perform American values and American conceptions of civility in hopes that this would convince the Americans to leave were frustrating as they were so explicitly tied to readopting and reconstructing a racial society (not to mention having to place those they had just defeated back into positions of power and authority). The betrayal felt by non-“white” Cubans must have been beyond measure.
As an American in a course titled Latin America and the World, it is a reminder of how American eyes insist on remaking the world in America’s image, and of our visitation of our country’s own original sin of racism on non-U.S. countries/cultures.
I agree with you about the unbelievable lengths at which the United States imposed their values structures and racial ideologies on Latin American nations. I also agree with you about Ferrer's skillful contextualization of Cuba's multi-racial independence army, and just how different the initial Cuban visions of nationhood were from the American invaders and usurpers. That makes me think of how Cuba's largest advantage and obstacle since its independence is its distance to the United States. While many historians have pointed out this obstacle in concerns to the Cuban Revolution, I think it applies to Cuba's independence as well. I would imagine it was imperative for American technocrats to diminish the myth (or reality) of a relatively raceless society only 90 miles from the Jim Crow South.
Also, I do think that what would have driven the point even further was the racial composition of the Cuban political class that advanced notions of either Cuban annexation to the United States, or promoting the Platt Amendment as a civilizing agreement between two nations. It is not surprising that one of the most recognized critics of the Platt Amendment in Cuban history is Juan Gualberto Gomez, an Afro-Cuban journalist who would later have links with both the Garveyist movement in Cuba in the 1920s and the grassroots leftist movements that led to the uprisings against the Machado government in the early 1930's.
I agree with your frustration Sarah. I also think such histories provide the sadly left out contextualization to our historical relationships with central and South America. For me the realization that many of the revolutions and movements for democracy in the readings were more democratically inclined and inclusive than anything close to what the US was promoting circa 1779. Additionally, the influence of the US even at this point in Us history (before the official closing of the West) reveals that the imperial project of the US, while perhaps not monolithic throughout time, was a perpetual project that has yet to subside. Furthermore, that this imperialism also brought with it a demand to conform to US ideas about race, which initially served to divide the working-class, is an intrinsic part of the capitalist system which in its demand for perpetual growth, consumerism, and hyper-competition cannot allow the formation of racial solidarity to evolve into workers solidarity or to allow the process of disenfranchisement of entire populations to be taken away from the elite class who run this sociopathic system.
Sarah, I totally agree. The Spanish-American war (and most of our interventions in Latin America) are all but completely side-stepped in our US history curriculum. We teachers need to do a lot of extra work to incorporate information like what Ferrer wrote about in "Cuba, 1898." I will certainly be bringing the context we learned this week into my lessons because the history is incomplete without it.
The reason that US History curriculum does not really mentioned about US-Latin American relations, especially during the time period where this week's readings are about is that negative interpretations can made about US foreign policy. The United States, despite Washington's warning in his 1796 Farewell Address about getting involvement with European affairs has never apply to Latin America. It has occur time and time again that the United States has intervened in Latin America. I would argue that what occurs in 1898 will forever alter the relationship between the United States and Latin America that continues until today. It looks like every passing day that Washington was right centuries ago.
I think it was a great decision by our professor to include these readings following Sabato's book, as it supplements the history that "The New Republics" was trying to tell us, with more specific examples of grassroots politics in some Latin American countries. The one I found particularly interesting was Sander's "Vanguard of the Atlantic World" and it made me think about how the white elites sabotaged Latin America's chance to be at the forefront on how to establish an ideal and inclusive society. The American Republican Modernity was in itself an idea carried by some intellectuals and people of mixed races. Latin America's white elite had to follow this (but did not completely embrace it) because the armies who fought for independence were largely made out of people of different classes and ethnicity--it was only fitting for these people to claim this integrated agenda. By late nineteenth century, our white elites took Latin America and placed it in a "catch-up" situation with Europe by embracing their view of modernity and steering away from the vanguard by not envisioning themselves as part of the American Republican Modernity and the challenges that accompanied it--such as, working out the failed attempts to create a confederation that would defend them from invading European or US states. In our current times, some parts of France and the US are sold to the world as "modern" and "progressive," because, in part, they are places that have multi-racial populations. Latin America, through some intellectuals and other people of different classes and ethnicity, were attempting to create an integrated society 150 years ago. An ideal that white elites betrayed.
I agree that reading these articles in conjunction with Sabato’s book was an excellent call and Sanders’s argument that an American republican modernity built around republicanism, liberty, racial equality, as embodied both by abolishing slavery and by rejecting monarchy and inherited aristocracy challenged Europe as backward and stagnating for its adherence to monarchy and traditional class structure was quite an object lesson (especially read in conjunction with Ferrer and McGuinness) in how white elites sabotaged Latin America’s early claims to take the lead in establishing more inclusive, “ideal,” and “less barbarous” society. I particularly appreciated Sanders’s comment that despite the United States’s general recognition as a “model republic,” Mexicans felt that North American racism was a fatal flaw in U.S. claims to be at the vanguard of American republican modernity, as this was another place in which these readings flipped the dominated U.S. discourse on its head in a way that nevertheless entirely made sense. (117)
That all said, I had two issues with the Sanders piece that I hope we’ll flesh out further in class:
(1) the discussion on 113 of Mexico’s rejection of the French invasion in terms of accusations against the French of barbarism because “civilized peoples rejected violence and colonial control” made me wonder how this squares with Sabato’s discussion of the central role of the armed citizen in the development of American republican modernism (I see the distinction that one is about self-rule/policing against corruption while the other is about using violence in the name of colonialism, but I wonder if colonialism cannot be understood as corruption writ large).
(2) I thought the points about Western industrial modernity vs. American republican modernism were intruiging, but Sanders’s discussion of the development of thought that disorderly American republican modernism hindering the economic development necessary to enter a modern, industrial future was somewhat belied by the example of the U.S., especially the early U.S. where messy political modernity did predate Western industrial modernity.
Hola Sarah, your first objection is indeed very contradicting. I don't have an answer for how they made sense out of this. However, it does follow a long tradition of seeing one's violent actions as benevolent, just, etc. Just remember some of the inquisitorial records we've read. The things they used to do were barbaric, but they'd tell you that it was "in the name of God" and that God-bandaid "covers" it all. I see the same thing here, violence amongst Latin American's was viewed as fight for justice, etc. and violence from outsiders a barbaric act. It depends on who is legitimizing such acts.
When reading Sanders I could not help but think back to Sabato especially when going through the ideas about European intervention and almost this sense of competition for what modernity ought to be seen as. Early on in reading Sanders, I already had the feeling that there was going to be issues over how the different types of modernity, like social, political, or economic, would interact with each other and how they might be expected to progress differently. It's interesting especially to look at our own modern world and see what really did end up being considered the most modern form of government, and how that was considered to be a potential future so long ago, but then also be later abandoned for some time. For me, it was difficult to disconnect the idea of a more open and democratic society from industrialization, as it seemed like those two processes should go hand and hand but it now would seem, for at least Latin America, that this was not the case. Ultimately, it seems as though what doomed the economic modernity of Latin America despite its moves towards political modernity was likely the intervention of and even just presence of a more economically modern Europe. This now leaves me wondering what could have possibly happened if Latin America had been able to develop more so economically, alongside its political growth? However, it seems as though even trying to imagine this is only futile as it was likely the unbalanced speed of political and economic developments, as compared to Europe or even the US, that made the area less effective at competing with these other parts of the world.
From Kyle: I found The New Republics interesting for its general information on Latin American political thought and practice at the time (despite its evidential weaknesses at points). I appreciate how Sanders’ “The Vanguard of the Atlantic World,” expands upon the themes of that book by placing the Latin American (Colombia and Mexico) experience on equal footing with the United States; whereas The New Republics views Latin American politics as being influenced by the happenings to the north, Sanders shows that those politically involved viewed themselves as an equal part of the revolution and transition from the past to modernity, and from monarchy to republic. Again, I would always love to see more evidence from the bottom-up, those people who are ultimately being governed (ruled) over. Sabato, to my knowledge, ignored or didn’t have these sources; Sanders makes it part of his argument that “subalterns” took hold of their political status of citizen, but I couldn’t quite see where he demonstrates this other than “a petition from a small frontier village in Colombia” (Sanders 119).
The role that race played in politics it's something we have been talking about for the past 2 weeks as well as in my other course Race of the Medieval era. In that course this week's discussion was on how the Umayyad caliphate use their whiteness to consolidate political power and used their whiteness to discriminate against both African slaves and African Muslims in their society. “The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race” by Michael Gobert i found interesting Due to the role that race played in Latin America politics. In class we have discussed about the fluidity of race. race in this reading seem to be almost arbitrary. when the Anglo-Saxon settlers arrived in Texas they used their Anglo-Saxon heritage to discriminate against the local Mexican population. It was humorous that they describe themselves as Anglo-Saxon when It had been almost 1,500 years since the Anglo-Saxon migration into the British Isles. since then different Scandinavian, French, German, in various other ethnicities had intermingled with the local population of those settlers. that does not even include the previous inhabitants of the Isles before this incursion. This “ pick and choose” style of race also apply to the local Elites of the Latin American nations. Elites originally show themselves off as white, but due to imperialist actions of the United States distance themselves from their theoretical whiteness and displayed themselves more so as Latin. Gobert points to Samuel Huntington as the reason for the modern conception that Latin America is anti-west and therefore not as civilized. Our readings have also denounced this notion for how Latin American nations drew inspiration from the French Revolution.
I was intrigued both by the evidence of race fluidity and by the fact that identification as Latin American rested on dual pillars of race and language/culture. That duality can be seen today in who identifies as Latin American in the US and how Latin Americans are perceived as both Spanish, or Portuguese, speaking but also commonly "brown". It seems to me that the cultural element may have ultimately provided dominant as testified by the resilience of the term over time and as the political power dynamics of the region are changing.
These articles supported Sabato's point that politics and political change was at the heart of all change in 19th century Latin America. McGuinness, for example, mentions the growing political participation by referencing the voting records of Jose Manuel Luna (pg. 93), who was involved in the Watermelon Slice incident. Sanders also discusses how the idea of the "citizen" was a crucial part of the new American republican identity, which was reflected in increased political participation and understanding. As Sanders goes on to say, "American writers knew great material gains were being made in Europe and the United States but assumed that by creating politically modern societies, economic modernity would eventually arrive," which clearly echoes Sabato's idea of politics at the center (pg. 111). The United States' ideas of race's role in politics infiltrated even the meaning of Latin America as a region. Commitments to equality of races and the "raceless nation" in Cuba were in conflict with the U.S. ideas of white racial superiority. As U.S. political influence expanded, so did their definition of race.
Thanks for bringing up the point about how the spread of the US's political influence also spread our ideologies. I think that is an important fact to note not only in the establishment of Latin America as a region, but it goes far beyond that in the sort of internatinal relations the US has today.
All four of these articles show how identity and race were not forgone conclusions, but something that had to be consciously constructed. They also complicate the stories told about the history of Latin America and the United States. I think that these articles work nicely together, particularly the ones by Gobat and McGuiness. In addition these articles demonstrate how the United States didn’t just export democracy and capitalism , but racism as well. These articles demonstrate that Latin America was more committed to democracy and anti imperialism then I ever thought and that the United States was not just a benevolent neighbor, but a bad actor.
Ada Ferrer’s article was really eye-opening to me in terms of thinking about Cuban independence. Her approach to the U.S. involvement in the Cuban independence movement in terms of race further complicates the landscape of imperialism. Ferrer presents a very nuanced picture of the forces at work in Cuba over the thirty year struggle for independence as well as under U.S. occupation. This article presents both Cubans and Americans as having agency and that there were “limits upon what American occupiers could reasonably do (Ferrer 32)”. Another really interesting part of Ferrer’s argument is when she talks about how the post 1959 regime in Cuba, like the United States mitigate what happened over the course of the 30 year struggle for independence in Cuba, albeit for different reasons.
I found the article the Vanguard of the Atlantic World enlightening because it showed the ways in which both Colombia and Mexico were being shaped politically. Giving us a more in depth view and providing more context to Sabato's book. A particularquote from the bok that I think summarizes the basis of some of the arguments being made is "Latin America represented the future because it had adopted republicanism and democracy, whereas Europe, under the bootof monarchs and the aristocracy, dwelled in the past" (Sanders, 111). People in Latin America saw themselves as the future and as vital factors in the success of their country, a feeling they believed people in Europe could not have.
After reading this week's readings, I walked away with the reinforced theories of America's agenda in Latin America during the 1800s and in Cuba's case up to the 1950s. Not only were African and indigenous decent people in the Latin Americas disenfranchised by colonialism in the diaspora, they were furthered disfranchised by the United States under the guise of democracy and liberalism. The United States tried to take control of Latin American socio-economic status.
All the articles make hard case that the United States involved itself in the political and economic matters of many Latin American nations to the betterment of white Americans within those nations. With that many white Americans felt that their superior attitudes that was fully supported by the American government in the US gave them full right to continue in their racist ideals of superiority that they shared in the United States. All the readings give a great view of the peoples resistance to the American forced idea of a racial democracy. Unlike slavery, Jim Crow, and Civil rights were important events in American history. Any American resistance outside the US border into Latin America and the Latin Caribbean was muted due to the United States failed efforts for racial democracy and liberal rule.
Even though, many white Americans in the Latin Americas and in the Latin Caribbean were the clear minority, They felt that their whiteness would give them the same privileges across the globe. This came as a shock when confronted in countries that being white American does not give privilege over that countries citizens individual rights. The Conclusion in the Cuba article by Ada Ferrer give great insight into the American attempts to cause discourse among Cuban nationals the Latin American article by Aims McGuiness showed the resistance to the unsought of forced discrimination as the result of white American privilege to the people of Panama. Latin Nationalism and national pride won over racial decriminalization.
The articles that we had to read was about Latin America during the second-half of the 19th century. Some of these articles about how Americans, and later how the federal government got involve with the affairs of Latin America. The most infamous example was William Walker in Nicaragua in 1856/1857 where he took over the country and was recognized by US President Franklin Pierce causing outrage in both Latin America and the United States. It is an opening act to what would become an influence in the rest of Latin American history; American imperialism and intervention. This topic for me is shaping to become a potential essay question, possibly about William Walker for the final paper. Please let me know what you all think about that.
I was also incredibly interested about the story with Walker. As someone who had never heard anything about it I actually started wondering if I had somehow switched into an alternate dimension where the US had gone on to actually conquest all of the Americas. To me this seemed like incredibly crucial moment in the history of both the Northern and Southern hemispheres in the Americas for revealing insight into what kind of relationship the two regions would have. In addition to this, I think it was also a crucial moment for laying out the role that race would play in both societies, as we see it is this act that not only reveals how a state like the US believes they should act based on their perceptions of race, but it also reveals a story of how the idea of being Latin for the South Americans was considered as a response to this incident with Walker. I think this topic could work extremely well for a more in-depth exploration if that is also something you are interested in.
Despite what I consider some flawed or inaccurate uses of geographical terms I appreciated Gobat's article for giving me a context to understand the use of the term Latin America. Although it carries both the racial and cultural baggage of Iberian colonialism the rise of the term as method of combating US and European imperialism makes me more familiar with how it can be used, especially in the context of applying it to what I had only understood fuzzily as a broad collection of national identities rooted in a semi-shared colonial past. I now understand the term as founded on more than a linguistic heritage and I find that its origin as an anti-imperial statement of identity provides the kind of agency to the history of Latin America which I was hoping to uncover at the start of this class. I think that Gobat's thesis would have been significantly well stated and less contestable if he did not also link it with The Myth of Continents and apply the term continent to what is a trans-continental entity when Gobat elects to discuss South America separately from North America, and only a semi-continental group when America is considered as a single continental unity. There is no doubt that nations are historical inventions which exist mostly in the realm of political geography but continents are both geographic and geologic entities. That is not to deny that historical processes have played a part in defining the exact borders of continents (is the Sinai in Africa or Asia, Where in the Caucuses do you draw the border between what is a European and what is an Asian country) but the Rio Grande is not a border between continents and not all of Central or South America is necessarily Latin America, despite sharing the same continent. Gobat's argument did not need to invoke this term and is less clear for doing so. Not to mention the use of the term southern hemisphere when most of the nations in the supra-national identity he is discussing exist fully or partially in the northern hemisphere.
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ReplyDeleteAda Ferrar, “Cuba, 1898: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Empire”
DeleteI found myself thinking a lot about the connections to the United States and race while reading this. For example, 1898 is the year of the Wilmington race riots (it won’t let me put HTML links in the comments so copy and paste if you want to see the link: https://www.wfae.org/post/latest-effort-confront-impact-1898-wilmington-race-riot#stream/0
the year the Supreme Court ruled states could set voter registration requirements, and the year Louisiana restricted the right to vote for African American men to those whose fathers and grandfathers were eligible to vote in 1867 (in addition to other requirements such as literacy). In addition, the United States [illegally] annexes Hawaii in 1898, in a show of both racism and imperialism.
Before reading this article, I had no idea that there were three separate wars for Cuban revolution, and the complexity of the politics reaching into the late 20th century wasn’t something I understood before. That wealthy elites wanted to maintain ties to Spain for protection because they feared an insurrection such as that in Haiti makes sense, but I hadn’t considered that there were people who didn’t want freedom from Spain (such is the pervasiveness of the American colonial myth that freedom is the ultimate goal of all colonists, perhaps—labeling those who disagree as “traitors”). It certainly raises questions about who belongs in a colony and whose culture it is.
What I found perhaps most intriguing is the myth of racelessness—that the fight for freedom was so pure that no one saw race anymore (which is clearly clever messaging more than reality). In the 1800s, after the importing of enslaved people was outlawed, Chinese coolie labor of indentured servants were brought to Cuba, but so were many who were kidnapped and enslaved, with no cover of an indenture to hide the reality of slavery in Cuba. The story of the Chinese in Cuba, who were housed and lived with and fell in love with the enslaved people brought from Africa, is missing in this narrative, even though www.mccunn.com/Slave-Trade.html How is this erasure ignored? While the United States is guilty of exporting its racism to Cuba, http://cseas.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/JShufelt.pdf , complicating the narrative about American racism and American imperialism [that’s my uncle, by the way, in the last link, which is how I know about this research].
I had to delete and repost because my html made Blogger upset.
DeleteI think that this was my favorite article of the four, mainly because I felt that she was clear with her intentions and she didn’t try to do too much. I think that she did portray Cuba’s “raceless” nation as something that was more of an idea or something that was semi tangible. The “raceless” part of the nation was always in flux. It would be interesting to view Ferrer’s work on Cuba against some of the events that were taking place in the United States. There is an excellent book on the American and Cuban exchange during Jim Crow by Frank Guridy. It’s called Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow. It has more do to with the cultural exchanges between the two countries.
DeleteMichel Gobat's article on the origins of the term Latin America and its changing significance across history was particularly eye-opening. What I find most fascinating is the situation in which Latin American elites were faced with in the 1850s, where U.S. expansionism threatened Latin American sovereignty while popular class revolts threatened the Latin American racial oligarchies from below. Gobat mentions that these Latin American elites appreciated and aspired to the entrepreneurial spirit of the North Americans, but at the same time, they were worried about filibusterism's popularity. Gobat also points to the origins of Latin America as a proposed economic unit that would grow the region through economic integration, but at the same time these nations favored differing levels of commerce with the North American nations. Would this be Latin America's central crux in the history of the perceived regional unit? The elites understood the importance of maintaining economic ties with the United States, but did not want to lose their political and cultural power to the filibusters. Knowing this, they expanded the scope of national democracy to include the "inferior races" as a safety measure from being attacked on two fronts. However, ballot box expansion did not and does not mean socioeconomic equity. Rather, electoral expansion could be said to be the beginning of the multi-factor propagandistic notion of racial democracy across the region. In my opinion, this ties in with the notion of Latin America as an anti-imperial term because, in the 1850s, if Latin America elites came together as a political entity to stave off U.S. expansionist aspirations, they could rely on popular support because of the looming threat of the reinstitution of slavery, leaving non-white Latin Americans to fight for the lesser of two evils.
ReplyDeleteWhile it was an anti-imperialist term that espoused against imperial intervention, it did not embrace anti-imperial economic autonomy, nor a radical imagining of hierarchies. So I see the origins of Latin America as a proposed political entity, whether a united one or simply a transnational alliance, as one in which allowed and allows Latin American white elites to retain their political and socioeconomic power.
Rafa,
DeleteI agree your assertion that "Latin America" was the white elite's political and socioeconomic identification. And after reading that, it kind of feels weird to use the term to identify oneself as one, understanding the origins. But the article also mentioned that during that time, the term meant different things to different people and that is also important. While I think the white elite were the reason from Latin America not being at the forefront of ideas, we cannot only think that the elite completely defined Latin America. Perhaps, one of the living legacies of the American Republican Modernity and the discussion of what meant to be "Latin America", outside the white elites, is that I know many Latin Americans that identify themselves with their nationality first (Colombian, Cuban, Dominican, etc) rather than by their race like in the U.S. where you are Latina/o-, African-, Japanese-, Italian- American.
All four readings this week again offered some clarity for those of us who may be lacking in a understanding of the formation of the region. I was again struck by the commonalities between the formation of Latin America and the Untied States both culturally and politically. The formation of not only a regional identity by liberal elites who wished to forgo the possibility of US imperialist encroachment, while simultaneously rejecting the suggestions of European imperialist power is reminiscent of historical readings concerning the formation of a US identity shortly before the Revolution of 1775, where Euro-American whites regularly appropriated indigenous culture in order to force some kind of inherent ownership of the land and distance themselves from British rule. Not that any kind of true equating an be made here, however the similarities are very striking, especially when one considers the superiority the US has always claimed over Latin America. Why else would we benevolently need to "intervene" in the affairs of our "neighbors" to the south?
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, the narrative of elites utilizing newly formed states to legitimize their supremacy to both defend against foreign powers, while developing racial and cultural divides in order to allow a minority elite to successfully rule over a working class majority seems to be the recipe for domination within the Western Hemisphere. The development of these national identities by liberal elites and the simultaneous cementing of class systems, built on exploitation, emphatically reveals the limitations of liberalism and its inherent tendency to only extend privileges to certain populations while oppressing and disenfranchising the rest. Additionally, the limitations and problematic nature of a republican systems of government is also called into question as the elites seem to always end up doing the "representing." These many commonalities with the United States, another liberal creation of the period, highlights the scant differences that exist on the macro level when analyzing these two supposedly very different regions. It would seem now that these implied differences stem from the same places that they originated from, a small group of liberal elites who in an effort to create an economic and systemic hegemony, developed false narratives of division and inferiority to serve their capitalist goals. Ironically, Cuba appeared to be a focal point of the kind of revolutionary ideal espoused by Marx and his followers, where a body of working people take up arms to create a truly egalitarian society. As the Ferrer reading shows this is not what happens ideologically or materialistically, however, that the idea of a society based on national, or communal, identity (and not race) first gained traction in a nation thought to be either a communist dungeon, or a backward Caribbean island, is not without some kind of historical irony. These histories also reveal the racialization of our public school curriculum which espouses the US as the harbingers of liberty and democracy the world over when apparently it was also happening only a few years later, in the part of America we do not claim when we has US citizens say "America."
Another point of importance for me was finding that the introduction to the imperialist threat of the US during the early days of the 19th century was not as benign as I had once thought. Outside the Mexican American War, I was under the impression that Latin America existed mostly unmolested and untroubled by US "intervention" until the Spanish-American War. The filibustering of Walker and other white supremacist anarcho-capitalists of the period was shocking.
Lastly, i found the remark by Sanders (in 2020), "If historians rely only on published texts geared to a small audience, they miss or underestimate the importance and pervasiveness of American republican modernity in the mid-nineteenth century," to be a very consequential statement that every potential historian should take stock in and ample time to consider. Ran out of room!
DeleteHi Jason,
DeleteI believe that their is a link between “The Smuggler's World: Illicit trade and Atlantic Communities In The 18th Century Venezuela” by Jesse Cromwell and the articles we had in today's class. The same way how Venezuela enjoyed its autonomy from Spain and how it was when that Autonomy was interrupted is when they came to oppose this Spanish identity. The same is with democracy and the United States. When the USA started interrupting into their affairs is when we start to see a turn from "white" elite and Latin America gets a stigma of not being as civilized as the United States when they tell the USA to mind their own business.
Sometimes I start to think that I have a handle on the degree to which Americans will go to impose American values/social structure on other countries and cultures, but then I encounter articles like “Cuba, 1898: Rethinking Race, Nation, and Empire” and I’m reminded of how much I still have to learn. Ferrer’s analysis that post-slavery and early Jim Crow United States needed to eradicate the very possibility — even elsewhere — of an anti-racist, multiracial society and that this is what led to U.S. intervention in Cuba was a reminder, yet again, of the lengths the U.S. would go to in its effort to maintain the theoretical underpinnings of its racist social structure. My jaw was on the floor reading about a multiracial army in the 19th century in which whites served under black officers. As I read this article, all I could think of was how my 1980s U.S. centered history education devoted about five minutes to the Spanish-American War, and that we learned so little about what led to U.S. intervention in Cuba beyond perhaps some hand waving about the Monroe Doctrine. Ferrer’s contextualization of the Spanish-American War as US intervention at the end of a steadily more anti-racist/multiracial Cuban struggle for independence over a 30 year period made far more sense, and reading the history of Cuban efforts to behave well and perform American values and American conceptions of civility in hopes that this would convince the Americans to leave were frustrating as they were so explicitly tied to readopting and reconstructing a racial society (not to mention having to place those they had just defeated back into positions of power and authority). The betrayal felt by non-“white” Cubans must have been beyond measure.
ReplyDeleteAs an American in a course titled Latin America and the World, it is a reminder of how American eyes insist on remaking the world in America’s image, and of our visitation of our country’s own original sin of racism on non-U.S. countries/cultures.
Hi Sarah,
DeleteI agree with you about the unbelievable lengths at which the United States imposed their values structures and racial ideologies on Latin American nations. I also agree with you about Ferrer's skillful contextualization of Cuba's multi-racial independence army, and just how different the initial Cuban visions of nationhood were from the American invaders and usurpers. That makes me think of how Cuba's largest advantage and obstacle since its independence is its distance to the United States. While many historians have pointed out this obstacle in concerns to the Cuban Revolution, I think it applies to Cuba's independence as well. I would imagine it was imperative for American technocrats to diminish the myth (or reality) of a relatively raceless society only 90 miles from the Jim Crow South.
Also, I do think that what would have driven the point even further was the racial composition of the Cuban political class that advanced notions of either Cuban annexation to the United States, or promoting the Platt Amendment as a civilizing agreement between two nations. It is not surprising that one of the most recognized critics of the Platt Amendment in Cuban history is Juan Gualberto Gomez, an Afro-Cuban journalist who would later have links with both the Garveyist movement in Cuba in the 1920s and the grassroots leftist movements that led to the uprisings against the Machado government in the early 1930's.
I agree with your frustration Sarah. I also think such histories provide the sadly left out contextualization to our historical relationships with central and South America. For me the realization that many of the revolutions and movements for democracy in the readings were more democratically inclined and inclusive than anything close to what the US was promoting circa 1779. Additionally, the influence of the US even at this point in Us history (before the official closing of the West) reveals that the imperial project of the US, while perhaps not monolithic throughout time, was a perpetual project that has yet to subside. Furthermore, that this imperialism also brought with it a demand to conform to US ideas about race, which initially served to divide the working-class, is an intrinsic part of the capitalist system which in its demand for perpetual growth, consumerism, and hyper-competition cannot allow the formation of racial solidarity to evolve into workers solidarity or to allow the process of disenfranchisement of entire populations to be taken away from the elite class who run this sociopathic system.
DeleteSarah, I totally agree. The Spanish-American war (and most of our interventions in Latin America) are all but completely side-stepped in our US history curriculum. We teachers need to do a lot of extra work to incorporate information like what Ferrer wrote about in "Cuba, 1898." I will certainly be bringing the context we learned this week into my lessons because the history is incomplete without it.
DeleteThe reason that US History curriculum does not really mentioned about US-Latin American relations, especially during the time period where this week's readings are about is that negative interpretations can made about US foreign policy. The United States, despite Washington's warning in his 1796 Farewell Address about getting involvement with European affairs has never apply to Latin America. It has occur time and time again that the United States has intervened in Latin America. I would argue that what occurs in 1898 will forever alter the relationship between the United States and Latin America that continues until today. It looks like every passing day that Washington was right centuries ago.
DeleteI think it was a great decision by our professor to include these readings following Sabato's book, as it supplements the history that "The New Republics" was trying to tell us, with more specific examples of grassroots politics in some Latin American countries. The one I found particularly interesting was Sander's "Vanguard of the Atlantic World" and it made me think about how the white elites sabotaged Latin America's chance to be at the forefront on how to establish an ideal and inclusive society. The American Republican Modernity was in itself an idea carried by some intellectuals and people of mixed races. Latin America's white elite had to follow this (but did not completely embrace it) because the armies who fought for independence were largely made out of people of different classes and ethnicity--it was only fitting for these people to claim this integrated agenda. By late nineteenth century, our white elites took Latin America and placed it in a "catch-up" situation with Europe by embracing their view of modernity and steering away from the vanguard by not envisioning themselves as part of the American Republican Modernity and the challenges that accompanied it--such as, working out the failed attempts to create a confederation that would defend them from invading European or US states.
ReplyDeleteIn our current times, some parts of France and the US are sold to the world as "modern" and "progressive," because, in part, they are places that have multi-racial populations. Latin America, through some intellectuals and other people of different classes and ethnicity, were attempting to create an integrated society 150 years ago. An ideal that white elites betrayed.
I agree that reading these articles in conjunction with Sabato’s book was an excellent call and Sanders’s argument that an American republican modernity built around republicanism, liberty, racial equality, as embodied both by abolishing slavery and by rejecting monarchy and inherited aristocracy challenged Europe as backward and stagnating for its adherence to monarchy and traditional class structure was quite an object lesson (especially read in conjunction with Ferrer and McGuinness) in how white elites sabotaged Latin America’s early claims to take the lead in establishing more inclusive, “ideal,” and “less barbarous” society. I particularly appreciated Sanders’s comment that despite the United States’s general recognition as a “model republic,” Mexicans felt that North American racism was a fatal flaw in U.S. claims to be at the vanguard of American republican modernity, as this was another place in which these readings flipped the dominated U.S. discourse on its head in a way that nevertheless entirely made sense. (117)
DeleteThat all said, I had two issues with the Sanders piece that I hope we’ll flesh out further in class:
(1) the discussion on 113 of Mexico’s rejection of the French invasion in terms of accusations against the French of barbarism because “civilized peoples rejected violence and colonial control” made me wonder how this squares with Sabato’s discussion of the central role of the armed citizen in the development of American republican modernism (I see the distinction that one is about self-rule/policing against corruption while the other is about using violence in the name of colonialism, but I wonder if colonialism cannot be understood as corruption writ large).
(2) I thought the points about Western industrial modernity vs. American republican modernism were intruiging, but Sanders’s discussion of the development of thought that disorderly American republican modernism hindering the economic development necessary to enter a modern, industrial future was somewhat belied by the example of the U.S., especially the early U.S. where messy political modernity did predate Western industrial modernity.
Hola Sarah,
Deleteyour first objection is indeed very contradicting. I don't have an answer for how they made sense out of this. However, it does follow a long tradition of seeing one's violent actions as benevolent, just, etc. Just remember some of the inquisitorial records we've read. The things they used to do were barbaric, but they'd tell you that it was "in the name of God" and that God-bandaid "covers" it all. I see the same thing here, violence amongst Latin American's was viewed as fight for justice, etc. and violence from outsiders a barbaric act. It depends on who is legitimizing such acts.
When reading Sanders I could not help but think back to Sabato especially when going through the ideas about European intervention and almost this sense of competition for what modernity ought to be seen as. Early on in reading Sanders, I already had the feeling that there was going to be issues over how the different types of modernity, like social, political, or economic, would interact with each other and how they might be expected to progress differently. It's interesting especially to look at our own modern world and see what really did end up being considered the most modern form of government, and how that was considered to be a potential future so long ago, but then also be later abandoned for some time. For me, it was difficult to disconnect the idea of a more open and democratic society from industrialization, as it seemed like those two processes should go hand and hand but it now would seem, for at least Latin America, that this was not the case. Ultimately, it seems as though what doomed the economic modernity of Latin America despite its moves towards political modernity was likely the intervention of and even just presence of a more economically modern Europe. This now leaves me wondering what could have possibly happened if Latin America had been able to develop more so economically, alongside its political growth? However, it seems as though even trying to imagine this is only futile as it was likely the unbalanced speed of political and economic developments, as compared to Europe or even the US, that made the area less effective at competing with these other parts of the world.
ReplyDeleteFrom Kyle:
ReplyDeleteI found The New Republics interesting for its general information on Latin American political thought and practice at the time (despite its evidential weaknesses at points). I appreciate how Sanders’ “The Vanguard of the Atlantic World,” expands upon the themes of that book by placing the Latin American (Colombia and Mexico) experience on equal footing with the United States; whereas The New Republics views Latin American politics as being influenced by the happenings to the north, Sanders shows that those politically involved viewed themselves as an equal part of the revolution and transition from the past to modernity, and from monarchy to republic. Again, I would always love to see more evidence from the bottom-up, those people who are ultimately being governed (ruled) over. Sabato, to my knowledge, ignored or didn’t have these sources; Sanders makes it part of his argument that “subalterns” took hold of their political status of citizen, but I couldn’t quite see where he demonstrates this other than “a petition from a small frontier village in Colombia” (Sanders 119).
The role that race played in politics it's something we have been talking about for the past 2 weeks as well as in my other course Race of the Medieval era. In that course this week's discussion was on how the Umayyad caliphate use their whiteness to consolidate political power and used their whiteness to discriminate against both African slaves and African Muslims in their society. “The Invention of Latin America: A Transnational History of Anti-Imperialism, Democracy, and Race” by Michael Gobert i found interesting Due to the role that race played in Latin America politics. In class we have discussed about the fluidity of race. race in this reading seem to be almost arbitrary. when the Anglo-Saxon settlers arrived in Texas they used their Anglo-Saxon heritage to discriminate against the local Mexican population. It was humorous that they describe themselves as Anglo-Saxon when It had been almost 1,500 years since the Anglo-Saxon migration into the British Isles. since then different Scandinavian, French, German, in various other ethnicities had intermingled with the local population of those settlers. that does not even include the previous inhabitants of the Isles before this incursion. This “ pick and choose” style of race also apply to the local Elites of the Latin American nations. Elites originally show themselves off as white, but due to imperialist actions of the United States distance themselves from their theoretical whiteness and displayed themselves more so as Latin. Gobert points to Samuel Huntington as the reason for the modern conception that Latin America is anti-west and therefore not as civilized. Our readings have also denounced this notion for how Latin American nations drew inspiration from the French Revolution.
ReplyDeleteI was intrigued both by the evidence of race fluidity and by the fact that identification as Latin American rested on dual pillars of race and language/culture. That duality can be seen today in who identifies as Latin American in the US and how Latin Americans are perceived as both Spanish, or Portuguese, speaking but also commonly "brown". It seems to me that the cultural element may have ultimately provided dominant as testified by the resilience of the term over time and as the political power dynamics of the region are changing.
DeleteThese articles supported Sabato's point that politics and political change was at the heart of all change in 19th century Latin America. McGuinness, for example, mentions the growing political participation by referencing the voting records of Jose Manuel Luna (pg. 93), who was involved in the Watermelon Slice incident. Sanders also discusses how the idea of the "citizen" was a crucial part of the new American republican identity, which was reflected in increased political participation and understanding. As Sanders goes on to say, "American writers knew great material gains were being made in Europe and the United States but assumed that by creating politically modern societies, economic modernity would eventually arrive," which clearly echoes Sabato's idea of politics at the center (pg. 111). The United States' ideas of race's role in politics infiltrated even the meaning of Latin America as a region. Commitments to equality of races and the "raceless nation" in Cuba were in conflict with the U.S. ideas of white racial superiority. As U.S. political influence expanded, so did their definition of race.
ReplyDeleteThanks for bringing up the point about how the spread of the US's political influence also spread our ideologies. I think that is an important fact to note not only in the establishment of Latin America as a region, but it goes far beyond that in the sort of internatinal relations the US has today.
DeleteAll four of these articles show how identity and race were not forgone conclusions, but something that had to be consciously constructed. They also complicate the stories told about the history of Latin America and the United States. I think that these articles work nicely together, particularly the ones by Gobat and McGuiness. In addition these articles demonstrate how the United States didn’t just export democracy and capitalism , but racism as well. These articles demonstrate that Latin America was more committed to democracy and anti imperialism then I ever thought and that the United States was not just a benevolent neighbor, but a bad actor.
ReplyDeleteAda Ferrer’s article was really eye-opening to me in terms of thinking about Cuban independence. Her approach to the U.S. involvement in the Cuban independence movement in terms of race further complicates the landscape of imperialism. Ferrer presents a very nuanced picture of the forces at work in Cuba over the thirty year struggle for independence as well as under U.S. occupation. This article presents both Cubans and Americans as having agency and that there were “limits upon what American occupiers could reasonably do (Ferrer 32)”. Another really interesting part of Ferrer’s argument is when she talks about how the post 1959 regime in Cuba, like the United States mitigate what happened over the course of the 30 year struggle for independence in Cuba, albeit for different reasons.
I found the article the Vanguard of the Atlantic World enlightening because it showed the ways in which both Colombia and Mexico were being shaped politically. Giving us a more in depth view and providing more context to Sabato's book. A particularquote from the bok that I think summarizes the basis of some of the arguments being made is "Latin America represented the future because it had adopted republicanism and democracy, whereas Europe, under the bootof monarchs and the aristocracy, dwelled in the past" (Sanders, 111). People in Latin America saw themselves as the future and as vital factors in the success of their country, a feeling they believed people in Europe could not have.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading this week's readings, I walked away with the reinforced theories of America's agenda in Latin America during the 1800s and in Cuba's case up to the 1950s. Not only were African and indigenous decent people in the Latin Americas disenfranchised by colonialism in the diaspora, they were furthered disfranchised by the United States under the guise of democracy and liberalism. The United States tried to take control of Latin American socio-economic status.
ReplyDeleteAll the articles make hard case that the United States involved itself in the political and economic matters of many Latin American nations to the betterment of white Americans within those nations. With that many white Americans felt that their superior attitudes that was fully supported by the American government in the US gave them full right to continue in their racist ideals of superiority that they shared in the United States. All the readings give a great view of the peoples resistance to the American forced idea of a racial democracy. Unlike slavery, Jim Crow, and Civil rights were important events in American history. Any American resistance outside the US border into Latin America and the Latin Caribbean was muted due to the United States failed efforts for racial democracy and liberal rule.
Even though, many white Americans in the Latin Americas and in the Latin Caribbean were the clear minority, They felt that their whiteness would give them the same privileges across the globe. This came as a shock when confronted in countries that being white American does not give privilege over that countries citizens individual rights. The Conclusion in the Cuba article by Ada Ferrer give great insight into the American attempts to cause discourse among Cuban nationals the Latin American article by Aims McGuiness showed the resistance to the unsought of forced discrimination as the result of white American privilege to the people of Panama. Latin Nationalism and national pride won over racial decriminalization.
The articles that we had to read was about Latin America during the second-half of the 19th century. Some of these articles about how Americans, and later how the federal government got involve with the affairs of Latin America. The most infamous example was William Walker in Nicaragua in 1856/1857 where he took over the country and was recognized by US President Franklin Pierce causing outrage in both Latin America and the United States. It is an opening act to what would become an influence in the rest of Latin American history; American imperialism and intervention. This topic for me is shaping to become a potential essay question, possibly about William Walker for the final paper. Please let me know what you all think about that.
ReplyDeleteI was also incredibly interested about the story with Walker. As someone who had never heard anything about it I actually started wondering if I had somehow switched into an alternate dimension where the US had gone on to actually conquest all of the Americas. To me this seemed like incredibly crucial moment in the history of both the Northern and Southern hemispheres in the Americas for revealing insight into what kind of relationship the two regions would have. In addition to this, I think it was also a crucial moment for laying out the role that race would play in both societies, as we see it is this act that not only reveals how a state like the US believes they should act based on their perceptions of race, but it also reveals a story of how the idea of being Latin for the South Americans was considered as a response to this incident with Walker. I think this topic could work extremely well for a more in-depth exploration if that is also something you are interested in.
DeleteDespite what I consider some flawed or inaccurate uses of geographical terms I appreciated Gobat's article for giving me a context to understand the use of the term Latin America. Although it carries both the racial and cultural baggage of Iberian colonialism the rise of the term as method of combating US and European imperialism makes me more familiar with how it can be used, especially in the context of applying it to what I had only understood fuzzily as a broad collection of national identities rooted in a semi-shared colonial past. I now understand the term as founded on more than a linguistic heritage and I find that its origin as an anti-imperial statement of identity provides the kind of agency to the history of Latin America which I was hoping to uncover at the start of this class. I think that Gobat's thesis would have been significantly well stated and less contestable if he did not also link it with The Myth of Continents and apply the term continent to what is a trans-continental entity when Gobat elects to discuss South America separately from North America, and only a semi-continental group when America is considered as a single continental unity. There is no doubt that nations are historical inventions which exist mostly in the realm of political geography but continents are both geographic and geologic entities. That is not to deny that historical processes have played a part in defining the exact borders of continents (is the Sinai in Africa or Asia, Where in the Caucuses do you draw the border between what is a European and what is an Asian country) but the Rio Grande is not a border between continents and not all of Central or South America is necessarily Latin America, despite sharing the same continent. Gobat's argument did not need to invoke this term and is less clear for doing so. Not to mention the use of the term southern hemisphere when most of the nations in the supra-national identity he is discussing exist fully or partially in the northern hemisphere.
ReplyDelete