Assignment 8

In 100 words minimum, describe what you learned in the course that most surprised you and that you are least likely to forget. Post your answer as a comment to “Assignment 8” in the blog.

Assingment 7

Please post your blog contribution as a comment to “Assignment 7” between 5 pm Friday, Feb. 18 and 5 pm Saturday, Feb. 18.

From any of the first 208 pages in HoS, pick an incident that exemplifies racial injustice. In 100 words, briefly describe it and analyze what is unjust about the incident.

Neruda

Look for two examples in the poems by Pablo Neruda (MLAH, pp. 170-173) that depict essential aspects of neocolonialism. Pick two quotes and analyze how each quote illustrates neocolonial outcomes. (Note: Neruda is a character named “the poet” in The House of the Spirits). Post your quotes and analysis on the blog as comments to “Neruda.”

Assignment 5

“Anyone who refused to submit to what God himself had commanded was thus by definition a ‘rebel’ or an ‘unlawful combatant.’”

(Last Days of the Incas, p. 33)

“Most serene Inca! You will know that there are in the world two princes more powerful than all the rest. One of them is the supreme pontiff who represents God. He administers and rules all those who keep his divine laws, and teaches his holy word. The other is the emperor of the Romans, Charles V. king of Spain. These two monarchs, aware of the blindness of the inhabitants of these realms who disrespect the true God, maker of heaven and earth, and [who] adore…the very demon who deceives them, have sent our Governor and Captain General Don Francisco Pizarro and his companions and some priests, who are ministers of God, to teach Your Highness and all his vassals this divine truth and His holy law, for which reason they have come to this country.”

(Last Days of the Incas, p. 62)

From the perspective of a citizen living in 2012 with all that is going on in the world today, what do the statements above make you think? They were pronounced 500 years ago. How do they strike you? 130 years after Pizarro, the Puritans fled England in search of religious freedom in the New World. Nevertheless, within two years of their arrival they began slaughtering Indians under the same justification. That is, the Indians were heathens, non-Christian, barbaric and deserving of death. That slaughter lasted for 200 years in North America. Of course, today throughout Central Asia, in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the same words used by the Spaniards are appropriated by radical Muslims in the name of Allah instead of the Christian God. Pizarro, the Puritans, and Muslims invoke these words at some level of sincere belief. But they also do it to justify conquest and control over other people and their land.

The point is to see constancy in human behavior, hypocritical as it has been and is. That which is constant is the use of ideology or theology (which is to say belief systems) to justify acquisition and/or control over other people’s labor and resources. It’s important to be on the look-out for this behavior in the past and the present. Therefore, for your blog contribution this week I want you to find an example of this behavior in the past or the present and to describe it in roughly 100 words.

Find an example (from the newspaper, history books or your own experience) in which an individual or group invoke an abstract belief (religious, patriotic, political or other) to legitimate the use of force to take over other peoples’ property or force them into involuntary labor, and describe it. All postings are due by Saturday, Feb. 4, at 5 pm.

Assignment 4, Caudillos

Blog. This week we will be paired with a partner for the blog assignment. After you have read the assigned reading in MLAH, contact your partner. Together pick two aspects or characteristics from the three primary source articles (“The Lions of Payara,” “Ribbons and Rituals,” and “Protagonist on a National Stage”) that seem to be central to the individuals described in the articles. Discuss these characteristics with your partner with relationship to how those characteristics either confirm or refute assumptions made by the authors in one or both of the first two articles (“Caudillo Scourge” and “Caudillos as Profit Maximizers”). In the blog, post a description of the two characteristics you have chosen and how they support or contradict the biases in the first two articles. Please post your answer on Saturday the 28th only and as close to 5 pm as you or your partner can make it. I want to avoid some students leading and others following.

Pairings:

[1+4] , [2+12] , [3+13], [5+14], [6+24], [7+23], [8+22], [9+21], [10+20],[11+ 19], [15+18], [16+17] .

Assignment 3

The blog contribution requires a small bit of additional reading in one of our texts, The House of the Spirits (HoS). This novel is essentially an historical autobiography. The character in the book named Alba is the author, Isabelle Allende, but Alba comes late in the book. The history covered in The House of the Sprits (HoS) runs from 1925 to 1975. Therefore, it begins at the tail end of the neocolonial period and runs into the heart of the Cold War.

I have an edition of the book published in 1993. You have an edition published more recently. Because of that, the page numbers in my edition may not correspond to those in yours. So, what I want you to do is find the last seven pages of chapter 4. In my edition those are pages 134-141. I want you to read those seven pages which begin with this sentence:

“Esteban Trueba entered a very prosperous period.”

That paragraph very quickly describes the way neocolonial wealth was made. The book is a history of Chile, one of the only countries in Latin America that traded in both temperate agricultural goods and minerals. Be sure to look back on the geography map to know where Chile lies. After you read that paragraph go back to MLAH, p. 129 and read the second paragraph. Note the following sentence:

“A sharp price rise on the international commodities markets triggered national euphoria; a sharp fall spelled national disaster.”

Then go on in HoS to read about the “exanthemic typhus” that struck Chile in the aftermath of a price drop in nitrates on the world market (1932). Keep reading about how the characters in the book cope with the disaster by consulting psychics. Clara and Blanca are the two main characters in this scene and they take to the streets to help the poor, sick and dying. Clara explains the following to Blanca,

“This is to assuage our conscience darling. But it doesn’t help the poor. They don’t need charity, they need justice.”

Read on from there to learn how the character Esteban Trueba reacts to the idea of justice. His argument corresponds to the notions of evolution and progress embraced by Latin American elites in this period as described by E. Bradford Burns in our Reading in MLAH pp. 134-140. These are the notions of Social Darwinism and Positivism that constituted the spine of white ideology in this time period. Keep the paragraph in HoS handy to better understand what Burns is talking about.

As you read the following five or so pages in HoS to the end of chapter 4, you will be introduced to the interplay of characters who favor justice and are called Socialists, Communists and Bolsheviks versus Esteban Trueba, the patron (Spanish for boss), who looks at justice from an elite perspective.

Go to the blog “Assignment 3” and post 100 words (or more) providing your interpretation of the story told at the end of chapter 4, HoS, about the fox and the chickens. The story is metaphorical. What is it about (not just chickens and a fox) and how do you feel about it? Post by 5 pm, Saturday January 21.