Latin American Revolutions

          This time in class following our studies of revolutions around the world, we learned about revolutions in Latin America. Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico were the three that we focused on. We split up into three groups each was assigned a certain revolution; my group was in charge of Mexico. We read an article about our revolution, then we broke into groups again so that at least one person from each revolution was together. Next, each revolution was summarized and we worked together to answer the essential question. The essential question for this assignment was, why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race? How are the events in the Latin American Revolutions evidence of this social imperative? We thought about this essential question because during that time race was a big factor in what social class you were in. It was also the main reasons for revolutions like the Haitian revolution to gain independence from France. We talked about race in class by going over the causes of these certain revolutions and we had a lesson on the Haitian revolution.

            This is the timeline of the Mexican revolution,

• Early 1800's Napoleon's occupation of Spain led to the outbreak of revolts across Spanish America
• Miguel higaldo y costilla launched the Mexican rebellion with the "cry of Delores"
• January 1811: was defeated at Calderon and fled north but was captured and executed
• In 1820 liberals took power in Spain  and new government promised reforms to appease the Mexican society
• Early 1821 agustín de Iturbide the leader of the royalist forces negotiated the plan of iguala; Mexico would be an independent constitutional monarchy
• August 24, 1821 Spanish viceroy Juan de   O'Donjoú signed the Treaty of córdoba to make Mexico an independent constitutional monarchy
• 1822 iturbide named emperor of Mexico
• 1823 Santa Anna and Guadalupe Victoria deposed iturbide and set up republic; Guadalupe Victoria as it's first president

There were similarities and differences between all three revolutions even thought they all had very different paths to independence. Some things that were similar were that they all happened in the colonies on the New World. Also they all occurred around the same time in history. Another thing was that they were all related to Napoleon's conquests in Europe. With Napoleon occupying the countries of these colonies the natives that lived in those colonies started to question their governments and wanted to have their own government. One of the differences was that Brazil wanted a constitutional monarchy. Next, and some obvious ones were that they happened in different colonies and each revolution had a different leader. But how did race have any relation to these three revolutions. In Mexico, Miguel Hidalgo, one of the two people who led the initial rebellion "Cry of Do

http://pixgood.com/miguel-hidalgo-cry-of-dolores.html

lores", was fighting for two things; he fought for independence and racial equality. Hearing this thousands of Indians and Mestizos joined the fight for their equality. For Brazil, Pedro, who was the leader of Brazil before the revolution, was a Peninsulares. A Peninsulares is person who is white and was born in the home country, so Pedro only allowed other Peninsulares into the government. Finally, Colombia was related to racism because before the revolution the social structure was based on race. The Colombian revolutionaries used this as a way to get Colombian natives to join the fight and promised a equal and strong social structure. These revolutions were not the only ones happening; across the New World colonies were starting to fight for independence. 

            Is racial inequality still a problem today? Lately there has been a lot of controversy in the United States with racial inequality especially with justice. One of the latest stories is in Ferguson, Missouri. Michael Brown, who was an unarmed black teenager who was shot and killed by a white police officer. Mr. Brown supposedly stole cigarillos from a liquor store before walking into the lone police officer's path. Mr.Brown was said to approach the officer and get into an altercation with the officer; the officer responded with shooting Mr, Brown several times and fatally wounding him. In court the officer was not indicted. Nine of the twelve jurymen were needed to be able to indict the officer; the jury was made up nine white humans and three black. After the decision not to indict the officer protests broke out throughout the city. There were fires and lootings everywhere in Ferguson. Fires were being lit very close to the store that Mr. Brown stole from. Police had to use tear gas to suppress protests. The protests were against the legal system because they thought that since the officer was white and Mr. Brown was a black teenager the jury was in favor of the officer. They believed that the jury thought that Mr. Brown must have done something bad just because he's a black teenager, and in society today black teenagers are portrayed as trouble causers, gang members, and drug dealers. In reality some white teenagers are just as bad and in some cases even worse than the very small population of black teenagers that give the whole race a bad reputation. For this reason race still needs to be addressed because if there is still a group of people that believe there is inequality than the problem is still around. Not just in the United States, everywhere in the world deals with the problem of racism. 

Article about the Ferguson case

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police-shooting.html?_r=0

Transcendentalism Reform During the 19th Century

          In class we learned about the social reforms of the United States during the 19th century. One of the reforms was a new look at Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is a belief based off of American Christianity and spirituality, and it emphasized internal and spiritual beliefs. Also it emphasized not having physical confrontation to solve disputes. Throughout history there have been Transcendentalism activists; one very notable activist was Mahatma Gandhi. If you look at some of his letters that he wrote you can see his Transcendentalist ideas. The one that I chose was a letter he wrote to Hitler in 1939. In it Gandhi writes about how he has been urged to write this letter by friends, but he believed that Hitler would just read it with rudeness. Also in the letter he talks about how Hitler is only man who can start world war two and that he should recognize that Gandhi was able to use peaceful protests to have great success in what he was trying to achieve. He's trying to tell Hitler that war is not the best option for his country if they are trying to accomplish something. Another thing that is repeated twice is humanity. During the year of 1939 in the summer Hitler and his forces were just starting to take control of other countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland. The harassment of Jews has already begun and Britain was on the brink of declaring war. A couple months after this letter was written Britain and France declared war on Germany and world war two began.  It is possible to see how this letter can relate to Transcendentalism. The obvious one is the praise Gandhi gives peaceful protesting instead of violence. The other one is the emphasis of humanity. In all of the countries that were under control of Hitler there was no freedom about what you could be. Hitler got rid of the rights given to humanity; one of the rights he took away was individuality. Gandhi said that his friends wanted him to write to Hitler for the sake of humanity and all the rights given to humans. This was not the only letter written by Gandhi that shows Transcendentalism.

Gandhi, Mahatma. Letter to Adolf Hitler. Wardha, C. P., India. July 23, 1939.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/letters/hitler_ltr.htm