HIST/LATI 181: Introduction to Latin America and the Caribbean

HIST/LATI 181: Introduction to Latin America and the Caribbean

Fall 2013

M,W,F: 12 noon- 1 p.m. Office: Old Main, 302

Old Main 009 [email protected]

Office hours: W 1-2:30 &

appt.

Course Description:

What is Latin America and how was it constructed? We will answer this question by surveying
Latin American history from the time of its "discovery" (15th century) through current times,

focusing on large-scale events as well as small-scale actions which created Latin American

society. We will learn the history of Latin America by questioning geographic, social, and

political borders through looking at transnational modes of control, cultural production, and

dualities such as modernity and tradition. Students will gain competency in essential Latin

American history and geography. Furthermore, we will discuss countries, looking critically at

nation-states through thematic categories of analysis, challenging their boundary primacy, and

conceiving of borders in other Latin American contexts.

Popular culture and traditional primary sources will be used in our discussion. Readings will be
inclusive of several disciplines but concerned with the construction and interpretation of borders

and of history. Each week will have background and content-specific-readings totaling

approximately 120 pages. A textbook will be required so that all students have the same
baseline understanding of Latin American history.

Assignments include: written reading responses, a midterm essay, and a final research paper

(8-10 pages) with a required annotated bibliography, progress meeting, and revision.
Assignments are detailed in subsequent document(s).

This is a writing-intensive course, so we will discuss and practice academic writing. However,
active and prepared discussion is essential for the success of this course, therefore participation
is heavily weighted. Please complete all of the readings and come prepared to talk about them.
You must be present in this class to receive credit, to do otherwise may result in a failing grade.

This syllabus is a working document and subject to change. If you have any questions about
this document, the class, or any other matter, I sincerely encourage you to talk with me.
Furthermore and as our class is largely discussion-based, I require a considerate classroom.
There may be lively disagreement, but we all treat one another and our mutual endeavor
respectfully.

Grading:
As will be given for outstanding work, Bs for strong, above average work, Cs for adequate work,
Ds for marginal work, and Fs for failing or incomplete work. Final grades will be calculated
according to the following weights:

Participation 30%

Written reading responses 10%

Midterm essay 20%

Research paper (incl. proposal, bibliography, mtg.) 20%

Rewritten final research paper (incl. final meeting) 20%

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Required Materials:
• Mary Lynn Rampolla, Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 7th Ed. New York: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2012.
• Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo: Or Civilization and Barbarism.
• John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire, 3rd edition.
• Anacrisitina Rossi, La Loca de Gandoca (The Madwoman of Gandoca), on reserve and
on order

Further Resources:
I am committed to working with all students. Students with documented disabilities may need
reasonable accommodations to participate in course activities or fulfill class requirements.
Please come and talk with me, and/or visit Disability Services,
www.macalester.edu/studentaffairs/disabilityservices/

The Macalester Academic Excellence Center, located in Kagin Commons, has peer tutors
available for assisting students in all stages of their writing. Please utilize this resource,
www.macalester.edu/max/

CLASS SCHEUDULE:

Unit 1: Course Introduction, Doing History, and Borders

9/4: Introduction
Homework: John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of
Latin America. 3nd ed. New York: Norton, 2009, "Introduction”; Mary Lynn
Rampolla, Pocket Guide to Writing in History, 7th ed. (New York: Bedford/St.
Martin's, 2012), chapter 1, 2, and 3.

9/6: History and writing
Homework: John Charles Chasteen, "Introduction," Beyond Imagined
Communities (Washington D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2003).

9/9: Theories of borders and nation-states
Homework: Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past, chapter 1, "The Power in
the Story," (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995).

9/11: Latin America and our viewpoint
Homework: Chasteen, "Encounter"

Unit 2: Conquest
Theme: Accommodation

9/13: Indigenous, pre-contact centers and peripheries; overview of indigenous cultures,
economies, and social divisions.
Homework: Spanish swineherd article

9/16: Iberia at time of exploration and complicated identity of explorers and crew;
“conquest” and settlement—focus on Caribbean, Mexico, Brazil and Peru.

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Homework: Miriam Haddu, Contemporary Mexican Cinema 1989-1999
(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007), pgs. 62-79.

9/18: "La Otra Conquista"
Homework: excerpt of Rosenstone, Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History;

9/20 finish "La Otra Conquista"; discussion
Homework: Chasteen, "The Colonial Crucible"

Unit 3: Early Colonial Era
Theme: Transculturation

9/23: Viceroyalties and societies, including indigenous, slave and non-urban
communities.
Homework: Las Casas, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies; Brazilian
slave documents from Stuart Schwartz, "Resistance and Accomodation in 18th
Century Brazil," Hispanic American Historical Review, 57:1 (1977); and Guaman
Poma, Nueva Coronica.

9/25: Slavery
Homework: Mary Lynn Rampolla, Pocket Guide to Writing in History, chapters 4,

5, 6, 7

9/27 Writing discussion.
Homework: Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn, "Hybridity and Its Discontents:
Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America," Colonial Latin
American Review, vol. 12, no. 1 (2003).

Unit 4: Late Colonial
Theme: Race

9/30: Racial stratification, mixing and Caste paintings

Homework: "Vanishing Indians: The Social Construction of Race in Colonial São
Paulo," Muriel Nazzari, The Americas 57, no. 4 (2001).

10/2: Brazil

10/4: research proposal due
Chasteen, "Independence;"

Unit 5: Independence
Theme: Variation

10/7 18th century developments and independence movements—long development
and complex character; creole patriotism vs. indigenous movements; gendered
roles during independence; Brazil: cultural production and images of royal court
presence.
Homework: George Reid Andrews,” Spanish American Independence: A
Structural Analysis,” Latin American Perspectives 12, no. 1 (1985).

10/9 Independence wars and movements

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Homework: Chasteen, "Postcolonial Blues"

10/11 TBD

Unit 6: Early Nation Building
Theme: Caudillos

10/14: Regional struggles; alternatives to the nation-state; independence and ties to
“Western” world.
Homework: Domingo F. Sarmiento, Facundo: Or Civilization and Barbarism

10/16: No class; read all of Facundo

Unit 7: Mature Nation Building
Theme: Liberalism

10/18: Midterm essay exam
Homework: Sarah Chambers, “Republican Friendship: Manuela Saenz Writes
Women into the Nation” Hispanic American Historical Review 81:2 (May, 2001);
and "Manuela Saenz: Americana or Quiteña?" by Sarah Chambers in The
Ecuador Reader, Durham: Duke UP, 2008.

10/21 Understandings of racial, class and gender, and relationship to notions of the
nation; slavery and immigration.

10/23 Conservative-Liberal divide, caudillos and populism, geographic divisions;
capitalism and modernization.
Homework: Chasteen, "Progress"

10/25 Fall Break: no class
Homework: “Searching for ‘Latin America’: Race and Sovereignty in the
Americas in the 1850s” by Aims McGuinness in Race and Nation in Modern Latin
America, Nancy P. Applebaum, Anne Macpherson, Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt,
eds. Chapel Hill: U NC P, 2003, 87-107.

10/28 Racial democracy versus dictatorship; race within economic and social
modernization.

. Homework: Chasteen, "Neocolonialism,"

Unit 8: Modernization
Theme: Nationalism

10/30 U.S. hemispheric economic and political involvement—revisit Monroe Doctrine
and expanding capitalism, South & Central America divisions; Spanish-American
War
Homework: Chapter 6, "Work, Sex, and Power in a Central American Export
Economy at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" by Lara Putnam in Gender,
Sexuality, and Power in Latin America since Independence; Primary source
excerpt from Euclides da Cunha, Rebellion in the Backland/Os Sertões.

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11/1 Modernization, rural-urban migration and division, Revolution (regional

challenges to nation.
Homework: Homework: Chasteen, "Nationalism"

11/4: Mexican Revolution;
Homework: Alan Knight,“Racism, Revolution, and Indigenismo: Mexico, 1910-
1940” The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940, Richard Graham, ed.,
Austin: U Texas P, 1990, 71-113

11/6 Mestizaje as national ideology, emigration

11/8 annotated bibliography due
WWII

Homework: Chasteen, "Revolution"

Unit 9: Cold War
Theme: Urbanization

11/11 Ecological history especially mono-crop plantations, green revolution, nascent
indigenous rights ideologies (as challenge to mestizo/ladino nation and tied to
ecology).
Homework: Louis A. Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and
Culture. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina Press, 1999, excerpt (pgs. 432-444,
445-468).

11/13 Populism and Marxism
Homework: Chasteen, "Reaction"

11/15 Bureaucratic Authoritarianism
Homework: Alicia Portnoy, The Little School: Tales of Disappearance and
Survival, 2nd ed, San Francisco: Midnight Editions, 1998, excerpt.

11/18 Reactions to repression
Homework: Chasteen, "Neoliberalism"

Unit 10: Neoliberalism
Theme: Financialization

11/20 Global capitalism
Homework: “Latin America in the New Global Capitalism,” William I Robinson,

North American Congress on Latin America, 45:2 (summer 2012)

11/22 Reactions to neoliberalism
Homework: "Introduction: Twenty-first-Century Consumers, Eighteenth-Century
Citizens," in Consumers and Citizens by Nestor Garcia-Canclini, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2001.

11/25 Consumption

Homework: Erika Lee, "The 'Yellow Peril' and Asian Exclusion in the Americas,"
Pacific Historical Review, vol. 76, no. 4 (2007).

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Unit 11: Migration and Gender
Theme: Diversity

11/27 Migration patterns and racial identity; immigration and responses to capital.

12/2 Research paper due
Recent migration
Homework: Anacrisitina Rossi, La Loca de Gandoca (The Madwoman of
Gandoca) Lewisten, N.Y., E. Mellen Press, 2006.

12/4 Discussion of Anacrisitina Rossi, La Loca de Gandoca (The Madwoman of
Gandoca)
Homework: Gary B. Nash, “The Hidden History of Mestizo America,” Journal of
American History Vol. 82, no. 3 (Dec. 1995), 941-964;

12/6 Drafts returned; writing discussion
Homework: “Los papeles no trabajan: the papers don’t do the work,” Donald

Hones and Pérsida Cifuentes, Multicultural Education, fall 2012.

12/9 Guest Presenter Pérsida Cifuentes;

12/13 Final Rewritten Research Papers due

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