Latin America During the National Period (HIST 140)
“Poor people inhabit rich lands”
- E. Bradford Burns
| Spring 2020, Truman State University MC 211, TR 12:00-1:20 Office: MC 227 |
Marc Becker |
Description
This course surveys the history of Latin America from independence from European colonial powers at the beginning of the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. We will examine a variety of issues including inequality, leadership styles, democracy, religion, and gender. This course fulfills the history mode of inquiry in the Liberal Studies Program. In this mode, students will study a broad topic or major geographic area over an extended period of time and will demonstrate competence in one or more of the following areas, which characterize the work of historians:
- thinking in terms of causation, change over time, contingency, context, and chronological frameworks;
- the content and methodologies of humanistic and social-scientific disciplines to study and interpret the past;
- analyzing the interplay between choices individuals have made and developments societies have undergone; and
- understanding the social and aesthetic richness of different cultures.
See the syllabus addendum on Blackboard for additional class policies.
Readings
Meade, Teresa. A History of Modern Latin America, 2d ed. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. ISBN: 9781118772485. The author has a study guide for this textbook at http://minerva.union.edu/meadet/modernlatinamerica/.
Assignments and grades
Assignment Points
Daily identification terms (5 pts ea.) 100 pts
Weekly quizzes (10 pts ea.) 150
15 primary source analyses (30 pts ea.) 450
Midterm exam (April 14) 100
Final exam 200
Daily identification terms. We will begin each class period with identifying and giving the significance of one identification term drawn from a list posted to the Blackboard webpage for each of the weekly assigned readings from Meade’s A History of Modern Latin America. These will be graded on a scale of 1 to 5 points. One point means that you are present, 2 points indicate that something was fundamentally wrong with your response, 3 points indicate a rote response from the text, 4 points represent analytical thought, and 5 points are for responses that reveal critical thought that extends significantly beyond the text and places the term in a broad historical context.
Weekly quizzes. A weekly quiz is on the Blackboard webpage for each chapter from the Meade textbook. Complete the quiz by class time on Tuesday.
Primary source analyses. Write a one-page essay that compares the perspective of each primary source to the textbook chapter for that week.
In order to analyze the primary sources, think about what the documents reveal, what they conceal, and how the experiences and perspectives of the authors shaped their contents. In order to identify the main issues in the documents, consider:
- What type of source is this?
- What can you extrapolate about who created the source, when, and where?
- Who did the author consider the audience to be?
- Why was the document created?
- What views and perspectives does the document present? Are other views silenced or challenged?
- What does this source tell a reader about a historical event? What are its limits in explaining those events?
- How does this source fit into a larger historical narrative? Does it challenge or conform to a dominant narrative?
The essays should not be a response to these questions, but use these questions to analyze the perspectives in the sources and in the textbook. The essays must be typed and double-spaced, and are due at the beginning of class each Thursday.
Final Exam. The final exam is comprehensive.
Class Schedule
Week 1 (Jan 14-16) Intro & Geography
Read: Meade, ch. 1
Primary source: Martí, José. "Our America." In José Martí Reader: Writings on the Americas, edited by Deborah Shnookal and Mirta Muñiz, 111-20. Melbourne, Australia: Ocean Press, 1999.
Week 2 (Jan 21-23) Colonial background
Read: Meade, ch. 2
Primary source: Bastidas, Puyucahua, Micaela. "Micaela Bastidas Puyucahua." In Women in Latin American History, Their Lives and Views, ed. June Edith Hahner, 30-31. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications, University of California, 1976.
Week 3 (Jan 28-30) Slavery
Read: Meade, ch. 3
Primary source: Louverture, Toussaint. "Constitution of the French Colony of Saint-Domingue." In Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A brief history with documents, edited by Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus. Bedford Series in History and Culture, 167-70. Boston, MA ; New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2006.
Week 4 (Feb 4-6) Caudillos
Read: Meade, ch. 4
Primary source: Galeano, Eduardo. Memory of Fire: II. Faces and Masks. New York: Pantheon Books, 1987, 188-89.
Week 5 (Feb 11-13) Neocolonialism
Read: Meade, ch. 5
Primary source: Monroe, James. “1823: The Monroe Doctrine.” In Latin America and the United States: A documentary history, edited by Robert H. Holden and Eric Zolov, 11-14. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Week 6 (Feb 18-20) Caste Wars
Read: Meade, ch. 6
Primary source: Miguel Lerdo de Tejada, “Law of Disentailment of Church and Corporate Property,” in Mexican History: A primary source reader, ed. Nora E. Jaffary, Edward W. Osowski, and Susie S. Porter (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2010), 246-48.
Week 7 (Feb 25-27) Mexican Revolution
Read: Meade, ch. 7
Primary source: Lewis, Oscar. Pedro Martínez: A Mexican Peasant and His Family. New York: Vintage Books, 1964, 92-94.
Week 8 (March 3-5) Socialism
Read: Meade, ch. 8
Primary source: Mariátegui, José Carlos. "The New Peru." The Nation 128, no. 3315 (January 16, 1929): 78-79.
Week 9 (March 17-19) Populism
Read: Meade, ch. 9
Primary source: Perón, Eva. "My Mission in Life." In Documenting Latin America: Gender, Race, and Empire, ed. Erin O'Connor and Leo Garofalo, ed., vol. 2, 178-82. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson Education, 2011.
Week 10 (March 24-26) Dictators
Read: Meade, ch. 10
Primary source: Barrios de Chungara, Domitila. Let Me Speak! Testimony of Domitila, a woman of the Bolivian mines. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1978, 194-204.
Week 11 (March 31-April 2) Cuban Revolution
Read: Meade, ch. 11
Primary source: Guevara, Che. "Guerrilla Warfare: A Method." In The Awakening of Latin America: A classic anthology of Che Guevara's writings on Latin America, edited by María del Carmen Ariet, 412-14. Melbourne, Vic: Ocean Press, 2013.
Week 12 (April 7-9) Chilean Path to Socialism
Read: Meade, ch. 12
Primary source: Allende Gossens, Salvador. "Last Words Transmitted by Radio Magallanes, September 11, 1973." In Salvador Allende Reader: Chile's Voice of Democracy, edited by Salvador Allende Gossens, James D. Cockcroft and Jane Canning, 239-41. Melbourne, Vic., Australia, New York: Ocean Press, 2000.
Week 13 (April 14) Liberation Theology Midterm exam
Read: Meade, ch. 13
Primary source: FSLN. "The Historic Program of the FSLN." In Sandinistas Speak, edited by Bruce Marcus, 13-22. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1982.
Week 14 (April 21-23) Pink Tide Governments
Read: Meade, ch. 14
Primary source: Chávez, Hugo. "Capitalism is Savagery." Z Magazine 18, no. 4 (April 2005): 53-54.
Week 15 (April 28-30) Conservative Restoration
Read: Meade, ch. 15
Primary source: TBA
Final Exam: Fri, May 8, 9:30-11:20