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Week Five: Caudillos Versus the Nation State

The reading this week painted the picture of Latin America being left in complete disarray following the departure of the Spanish. The resultant “power vacuum” was filled by the controversial Caudillos and the region was heavily divided between the new Latin America and the old. It is still unclear to me whether the Caudillos did more harm than good. Although they did provide a structure when there was none and did truly work in the best interests of their followers the Caudillos were also quick to turn to violence and only provided the “appearance of functioning states”. This is evident in the case of Peru and Bolivia when they were defeated by the poorer Chile. However, although it is easy to condemn the Caudillos as incompetent and unsuccessful if they had not stepped up into such a position of leadership anarchy could have ensued throughout the region with graver consequences.   What I found particularly interesting was the difficulties in ruling a region with such diverse geograph
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Week Four: Independence Narratives, Past and Present

Having studied the French revolution and the Napoleonic empire for the last two years I was excited to find out what had happened in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies beyond my limited knowledge that they had sought independence shorty after Napoleon’s victory. However, I was sad to learn that in the case of Brazil this was done in an effort to avoid the abolition of slavery. Whilst it was not uncommon during the period for the elites to favour slavery as it benefitted them greatly, in all the revolutions I had previously studied the poor so greatly outnumbered the rich it was possible for them to overthrow the regime. Therefore, I was disheartened to learn how during a time of global revolution liberalism was crushed in Brazil in favour of the arguably dated idea of a constitutional monarchy. After reading José Martí’s “Our America” a concept that particularly stood out for me was governing specifically for the place being governed. It is the familiar idea that no one size fits all
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Week Three: The Colonial Experience

I really enjoyed the readings this week, in particular I found Catalina de Erauso’s diary particularly engaging and surprising with it reading like a soap opera at times!  What struck me most about Catalina’s story was that she received no punishment when her identity was revealed but instead was honoured by both the Pope and the King. I found this so surprising as even in Europe today queer people are not always accepted by the Catholic Church – in Italy gay marriage is not legal due to the Catholic Church’s controversial influence over the country’s politics. The fact that she was so readily accepted would perhaps suggest that the Church and the King were not aware of her sexuality but only saw her as a woman who had dressed as a man for the sole purpose of serving her country and not as a way of expressing her own gender identity.   Furthermore, I was surprised that the highest powers at the time, the State and the Church, both recognised that a woman was capable of doing a “man’s”
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Week Two: The Meeting of Two Worlds

Having grown up in Europe the image of Columbus presented to us at school was that of the accidental hero who stumbled across America whilst in search of India and returned home with mountains of gold much to the pride and delight of Spain. However, recent socio-political movements regarding the glorification of colonisation in Europe has put Columbus’ heroic status along with other key imperialist figures such as Napoleon and Rhodes into question. And so it is with these two conflicting outlooks that I began this week’s reading and lecture hoping to find a resolute answer to whether Columbus deserves the status of a hero or a villain.   As I began Columbus’ journal I was initially intrigued by his leading strategy, lying to the crew about how far they had sailed presumably in the hope of encouraging them to work harder the next day. He struck me as a respected, competent leader – however this may just be due to his own perception of himself as arguably he cannot have been that compete
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Student Videos

  Having watched a number of these student videos on topics ranging from the Cuban Revolution in the 1960s to the meeting of two worlds: the Spanish and the Aztecs I can say that I’ve learnt much from some and very little from others but more importantly I’ve learnt what makes one of these videos so engaging and informative.    The videos that impressed me the most out of the ones I watched were ‘The Legacy of US Interventionism in Latin America’ by Joe, Felipe and Olga as well as ‘The Meeting of Two Worlds: Aztec Edition’ by Sophie, Michelle, Elena and Christiana. The first of the two began with a clear introduction outlining the cases that would be examined in order to illustrate the legacy of US interventionism in the region as well as stating how they would use the historical context of the intervention, the rhetoric and tactics used by the US government to justify the intervention and the political, economic and social consequences on the region to explain their view. The graphics
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Hi everyone :))

Hi I'm Serena from London, England and I'm in my first year hoping to pursue a BA in Modern European Studies and Spanish. I was particularly drawn to this course partly due to my interest in Spanish but mainly due to my lack of knowledge about the region. Having spent my years at school only being exposed to European history, politics, culture etc. I am keen to broaden my knowledge of the region and in particular the development of political systems from colonial rule to modern day. I hope to one day travel to the area and not only learn the variations in Spanish throughout the region but to experience it's rich and diverse culture which sadly receives little coverage in European media.
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