I’m revamping my Hispanic Civilization course, people, and I welcome reading suggestions (for me). Students are asking for a more in-depth coverage of Latin American conflicts from the 1970s onwards. And, honestly, my knowledge of this area is quite limited. So here are the conflicts I want to address in greater detail in my course:
1. Peru: Fujimori and El Sendero Luminoso. I’m ashamed to recognize (what with the Peruvian side of the family and everything) that I know very little on the subject. What should I read?
2. Argentina: The Dirty War. I’m good on this one, more or less but there is never too much knowledge that one can possess. If you are aware of any good recent readings, do share.
3. Chile: Pinochet and Neoliberalism in Latin America. I’m going to read The Condor Years. Anything else people can recommend?
4. El Salvador: The Civil War (1979-1992). OK, on this subject I’m completely useless. Suggestions?
5. Nicaragua: Sandinistas and the Contras. I could do with expanding my knowledge of this subject. Again, I will be grateful for good, recent reading suggestions.
6. Panama: Manuel Noriega and the CIA. Ditto.
7. Cuba: The Embargo and the Future of Cuban-US Relations. I’m very good on this one.
8. Colombia and Mexico: the drug wars. I think I’m mostly fine on this topic. Although reading up on Colombia wouldn’t hurt.
What am I forgetting? I have a feeling I’m forgetting something important.
Has anybody read Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism?
I don’t mind many reading suggestions. I never had a chance to take a course on anything connected to this subject, so now I will teach it to myself and then relay the knowledge to the students. This is the part I really dig about teaching. I get to learn new things all the time, and what can be better than that?
P.S. I really rock on the colonial era, the independence and everything up to 1970, so no suggestions needed there.
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What department are you teaching this in, in what language, and if in Spanish, how much Spanish do they know / how much reading can they handle? Also, is there a modern Lat Am history survey that people regularly take? (If so, you may want to complement it and not replicate it.) And, how are you doing this … are you foregrounding anything in particular (e.g. cultural production, historical documents, etc.)?
Off top of head, for Sendero there is the Lombardi film, La boca del lobo, and for Nicaragua there is Carlos Mejía Godoy. Pinochet, check the Battle of Chile and other films of Patricio Guzmán (including recent Memoria de la Luz).
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The course is taught entirely in English. This is a course we offer to students from other departments / schools. These are the kids who believe “Africa is a country in Latin America.”
“Also, is there a modern Lat Am history survey that people regularly take”
– Not these students. My course is normally their only chance to find out anything about Latin America. These are engineers, pre-med, pre-law, architects, programmers, mathematicians, etc.
“Off top of head, for Sendero there is the Lombardi film, La boca del lobo, and for Nicaragua there is Carlos Mejía Godoy. Pinochet, check the Battle of Chile and other films of Patricio Guzmán (including recent Memoria de la Luz).”
– Thank you! It did not occur to me that I could watch anything on the subject. 🙂
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Aha. This kind of student will get a whole lot out of film and there is a whole lot of it, including a lot of good documentary film. Also for Pinochet, Victor Jara and nueva canción in general. I haven’t read the Grandin book but want to, and am betting it would be a good choice.
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The Zapatista uprising?
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At least, I know about the Zapatistas and cover them at length. The students love Comandante Marcos. 🙂
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Because he fits the bohemian, Che Guevara image. However he was woefully ineffective in parlaying his immense popularity into a political movement. That was a pity because Mexico really needs a charismatic and competent politician that can gather the popular support for the much needed reforms and the ability to attain power and institute said reforms.
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Well, the EZLN never wanted to come into power like the Central American want
they said, or to enter electoral politics — it was not the point. They got a lot flak from some for not wanting to convert into a political party.
Some left critics say the movement was too much centered on the image of Marcos and not enough on the issues. Some of the parts of the image — he’s not comandante, but subcomandante — are key, though, to understanding the project. They are still posting at Enlace Zapatista, etc.
What would be interesting would be to look at them in conjunction with other late 20th and 21st century guerrilla movements in Mex. Lots of stuff happening in places like Oaxaca and Guerrero, plus PRI funded paramilitaries (apparently), a concentration camp my parents found accidentally while driving, etc.
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” plus PRI funded paramilitaries (apparently), a concentration camp my parents found accidentally while driving, etc.”
– Oh God! Really? I mean, both things. I heard rumors about PRI funding the paramilitares but I don;t want to believe it. Although I have no huge illusions about PRI.
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Well, the EZLN never wanted to come into power like the Central American want they said, or to enter electoral politics — it was not the point.
The fact that they did this intentionally does not make it any less of a mistake. Marcos mobilized Mexican civil society like few others, yet he has very little to show for it.
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What about Spain conflicts?
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I’m a Peninsularist, so my students get as much Spain as I can stick down their throats. 🙂 🙂
We start from the Roman Empire and proceed until today. That’s a LOT of material.
But the students find the course very enlightening.
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Cool!
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I didn’t know The Condor Years was a book. I saw the movie. Scary as fuck. I seem to recall you said your students won’t stand for in-class movie screenings that aren’t G-rated.
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Yes, this is why these have to be my lectures, not movies. But I think I should watch the movies to inform myself.
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There is a *movie* of this book?!
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You didn’t mention Guatemala Civil War, I’d say it’s specially interesting considering the involvement of the US since the 1954 coup. The RHEMI books have good information. For a more american approach perhaps Bitter fruit is a good begining.
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Right, Guatemala, exactly! I knew I was missing something!
Thank you!
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And one film for this that is G rated and well received is El silencio de Neto.
I don’t know how many topics you still need but there is: ecology, over which people get killed, indigenous movements other than Zapatistas, NAFTA and other trade agreements, immigration, and cocaleros of Bolivia not just Colombia… and of course the conflict now in Mexico over the elections and the PRI.
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I actually have a good course segment on the cocalero movement in Bolivia. As for the ecology, I need to know more. I’m vaguely aware but only very vaguely.
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Ecology, well there is the cutting down of the Amazon rain forest and the Chico Mendes killing. There is the Chevron case in Ecuador – http://www.legalnewsline.com/news/236872-ecuadorian-judge-increases-chevron-damages-to-19b – and the gas pipeline issue from this spring in Peru – http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2012/3/28/reutersworld/20120328074956&sec=reutersworld … and the Chiquita Banana scandal in Colombia – http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110530/WIRE/110539990 …
and more. The conflict related concept here is, it is a focal point. And there is the Pastoruri melt:
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/enviroment/news-climate-change-route-grim-look-earths-evolution-slopes-former-glacier
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Oh, this is SO helpful. Thank you, my dear friend. I’m reading Grandin’s book right now and already discovering things I didn’t know. I’m noticing how neatly these issues were avoided when I was a student.
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I obviously need to read Grandin. How were these issues avoided when you were a student and do you think thre was a reason?
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I’m a Peninsularist but I still took many courses on Latin America. I mean, MANY courses. Yet, we never really got to these conflicts. I remember Pinochet mentioned in the context of Alberto Fuguet’s novel. La Guerra Sucia was discussed. But the involvement of the US in any of these conflicts was never brought up that I can remember. I had a prof who escaped from El Salvador because of the civil war, yet even he never told us anything about the war.
I have an intense suspicion that professors were uncomfortable with these issues and wanted to avoid them. I’ve been following their example somewhat mechanically: teaching the way I was taught. Until students brought to my attention that this was something that was lacking in the course.
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My comment re ecology is in moderation due to excessive links.
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So, duz anyone know anything about this “charter cities” thing they’re trying to perpetrate in Honduras?
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I had no idea, but Googled it. Very good question and would generate a lot of discussion in the course. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/2012711121224166933.html
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“Yet, we never really got to these conflicts. I remember Pinochet mentioned in the context of Alberto Fuguet’s novel. La Guerra Sucia was discussed. But the involvement of the US in any of these conflicts was never brought up that I can remember. I had a prof who escaped from El Salvador because of the civil war, yet even he never told us anything about the war.
“I have an intense suspicion that professors were uncomfortable with these issues and wanted to avoid them. I’ve been following their example somewhat mechanically: teaching the way I was taught. Until students brought to my attention that this was something that was lacking in the course.”
This is interesting. Maybe in straight-up literature courses it doesn’t happen or doesn’t have to. I am not sure these things were *taught* (on syllabi, etc.) when I was in school but they were happening and would come up. And/but I did not have a lot of coursework on Latin America at all. I do not remember these matters being course material in lit. very much, but I also don’t remember faculty being afraid to address these things. But I suppose it takes a certain amount of confidence.
The Pinochet coup was when I was in high school and was a major news event. Chilean exchange students could not go home, and the Letelier case was all over the papers. Argentine guerra sucia, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and contra wars, and Sendero, were during college and graduate school and were news, plus there were all these refugees around one had to pick up from airport, translate for, fundraise for, transport and so on.
Salvadorans are really traumatized by that war and tend not to discuss unless they really know who they are talking to, I have noticed. CA is a lovely place and also a total wreck and it is so the US’ fault. It is amazing to imagine what the whole place could have been if not constantly invaded by us and drained by its own neocolonial elites. Frondoso, jugoso y vibrante.
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P.S. re drug war, something I finally understood by reading a book review on the website of blogger Hattie a few months ago is that it is not a war on drugs but OVER drugs. Once you grock this, the whole thing makes a lot more sense.
Mexican revista Proceso, which is on line, has been having a series on it that is quite good. Also there is this writer Yuri Herrera, currently Mellon fellow at Tulane, whose academic project is about this. According to him the organization of Mex. in drug war, which is quite medieval, run by these orders like Zetas, Templarios, etc., is the shape of the future world in formation (just as vulgar Latin was the space in which Romance languages were formed).
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Re PRI (from above), comb the La Jornada archives about incidents in Oaxaca a couple of years ago, around San Juan Copala and related villages, and you’ll find references for sure.
But more generally, they have had hombres armados for a long time. Check out La sombra del caudillo, the novel or the film, and Tlatelolco. There, of course, shooters could all be state security forces for all one knows but nowadays deniability is a good thing and you know how police can be: serve one master on the clock, another off the clock, and nowadays in Mex. those two masters may be one and the same (albeit with two faces).
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Re Sendero, you should read the biography of Maria Elena Moyano. There is also a book called Shining and Other Paths that is pretty good. And one just called Sendero by Gustavo Ellenbogen (??). I think they all have English translations.
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Thank you! These are great suggestions.
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