World war II changed the world in many ways. The world was in a strange place especially after the United State dropped an atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in order to pay the Japanese back for their attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. To be honest the idea that a country has the power to destroy a city with the blink of an eye and cause long lasting damaged scared many other countries of the world. The United states was at the top of everyone’s list as a country not to mess with and as I just said the United states was feared for the power they held. So, as history goes when someone has a new powerful weapon and they are feared what do other people do? They get try to obtain that weapon for themselves. One country that was at the top of the list was the USSR or Russia and I believe they soon had their own atomic weapon. However, the atomic bomb was not the only thing developing in Russia. The other thing that was developing was this idea from this man Karl Marx and that idea was communism and even though the United States was feared for their use of the atomic bomb, the United States feared the idea of communism. Which sort of leads us to the Cold War and as most people should know it wasn’t a war at all but, more or less Russia and the United States playing spy games to see who was going to set off the next nuclear attack. Along with the United States government going on a proverbially “witch hunt” for people in the United States that could be communist and in that same aspect potential spies for the USSR. This so called “war” affected the world greatly but, one of the most influenced parts influenced by the Cold War was Latin America. It changed the government, the police, the military, factory workers, farmers, and surprisingly grandmothers and mothers. So, I am going to talk about that a little bit.

            As stated before Latin America and her countries were greatly effected by the Cold War. Just like in the United states many government officials in Latin America were afraid of communism and people who could be communists because it could throw the whole system out of whack. What also lead to this paranoia was the revolutionary guerilla fighters that were believed to be influenced by communist Russia. Along with one country that definitely got on board with communism was Cuba and they seemed to do well for a poor country and farmers who were poor because of the industrialization era during World War II started to like how things were going in Cuba and the government saw this as a big problem for everyone. So, to fight these guerilla fighters, sniff out communist acts, and keep farmers and really everyone in line the government took the action of making committees called juntas. These juntas were compromised of only generals and admirals of the military. While the Juntas were in partial control of the country it was no hold bars. People were killed, raped, kidnapped, and tortured for having communist ideas or for even being associated with a person who was a communist or being a suspected communist. Gangs even started to form not to combat these acts of inter-country terrorism but to join in and the government was essentially saying if it keeps communism away, we don’t care. What these acts of terrorism to their own citizens did was it kept outside terrorism out because, nobody would want to go there and even attempt an act of terror the thought process is if the government does these kind of things to their own people what would they do to an terrorist from another country. Also, what it did is it made the country be controlled by fear of being murdered, raped, kidnapped, or tortured instead of constitutional law and many people were too scared to do anything. That was until a group of mothers and some grandmothers took a stand against these crimes against the people. There main problem was all the kidnappings and it was a lot of these women’s children and if they no one else was going to do anything to save their children then the thought they should so these women every week on the same time on the same day would go and stand and march around a plaza that was central to many big movements and government affairs and this movement was the Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo. This movement was eventually disbanded from the plaza and into churches, but they still had a huge effect because it brought to light issues in these Latin American countries and soon this movement gained support from people in the United States. However, this was the only real movement because everyone else was too afraid.

             The Cold War era of the world was a strange time new weapons, new radical ideas, and conspiracies. It was a time of fear and uneasiness and picking sides and hoping no one would pull the trigger. As you can tell Latin America was a place of little hope and was possibly one region of the world that was the most effected by the Cold War because it was so close and influenced greatly by one of the main powers in the struggle.

References

Chasteen J.C. (2016). Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America 4^th edition. New York, NY. W. W. Norton & Company.

Navarro M. The Personal is Political. Article.

             War is never a good thing and was probably at its highest and maybe the worst in the 1930’s when World War II well controlled the world. Also, soon before this the great depression began and ravaged parts of the world including the United States. Then with the attack on pearl harbor were many American lives were lost along with Japanese kamikaze pilots and that added not only to the terrible deaths of the war but also the added to the United States reasons to join in on the war. Also, with the acts done by Hitler’s and the Nazi’s actions towards the Jewish population in Europe with the mistreatment in concentration camps. The climate of the world was not the easiest to be in and the current United States president FDR knew this especially as he pushed the United States into the second world war. He knew America would need allies in the war, so he looked to Latin America for help. He announced the “Good Neighbor Policy” as an attempt to make the relationship between the United States and Latin America. In this policy the United States swore off military intervention in Latin America and Cuba and Panama could no longer be places were American marines could go in and out of the countries as they pleased. This made the relations between the two nations very good so much so that many countries in Latin America like Brazil joined in the fight against Germany and gave the Allied side a good advantage with some Latin American countries coast being so close to the fight. Also during the time when relations between the United States and Latin America were strong there was a lot of influence from the Afro-Brazilian samba not only in Latin America but in America as well because of a woman wearing a fruit headdress whose name was Carmen Miranda who was a singer, actress, and samba dancer. To show the great relationship between the two nations many American films began to feature her. Also, there were many things like this and one that I can remember from my childhood which is the work by Walt Disney. The Three Caballeros was a Disney cartoon I watched may times over and it was the tale of how Donald Duck teamed up with a parrot from Brazil and a rooster from Mexico. I do not remember exactly why they teamed up and when I watched the show it was in color and animated unlike in the 1930’s but, there was one thing I remembered and that was the song they sang as they went on a travel or at the end of the show and they sang it a bunch and when I was a kid it was one of my favorite things to watch little did I know then what the true meaning behind that cartoon was. Besides the point things were good between Latin America and the United States after the war and for the most part now. For most of Latin America (meaning the places with the higher population and urban lifestyle) life after the war was great the industrial parts of Latin America profited greatly and was able to make a boom with the other world powers. However, for the rest of Latin America it was not as much rainbows and butterfly kisses. Some of the more rural countries suffered and were often very poor and still almost still going through a depression they even had shantytowns in the countryside and some of those shanty towns still stand today with people living in them. Speaking on the state of other countries I wanted to talk about the government aspect of the nations. Most of the Latin American countries were in this nationalist government and whatever that would benefit the country was good by the people especially in Brazil and after the war that remained until the Revolutionary party came to Mexico in 1934-1940. The revolutionary party had a presidential candidate by the name of Lázaro Cádenas and he was different than other politicians in that for one he wasn’t too big on the whole nationalism business. Second he did something that was very different in that even as the front runner to win his election he still went to every small village throughout Mexico and got to know those people and that is when I believe Latin America began to populism because this man was popular everywhere in Mexico and even though he was a shoe in to win the election but doing that made his political career probably that much easier. So, war in the 1930’s and life in the 1930’s sucked and that is putting it lightly, but many good things came out of it for both America and Latin America.

References

Chasteen J. C. (2016). Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America Fourth Edition. New York, NY. W. W. Norton & Company.

  At the start of the 19^th century in Brazil there were both black and white and mixed races. This was so incredible to some people but, not in the way as it is great that there is a mix of races but that in a scientific fact or almost like someone is going to see an off the wall piece of art at a museum. Many white men from foreign countries would come to study and observe the diversity of the Latin countries as almost as if the black people and mixed-race people were test subjects in an experiment. So not only was the idea of these race sort of co-existing with one another mind blowing but also many viewed it as not good in the slightest and thought that the country needed to whiten. Some even said that the only way a country would get better was by whitening it. I took this as a few ways these people want to populate that land with more white people, these people wanted to reduce the amount of black or mixed people in these countries, or they want to whiten the black and mixed of the country. What I mean by “to whiten the black and mixed population” is that these white foreigners wanted to make it were the people of color behaved more like a white person. Doing this by having these people dress, act, talk, or work like a rich white person. Now, that was from the outside looking in many people withing these Latin American countries did not care and some even felt like everyone in the country was connected in some way. Then near the end of the 19^th century there were many different theories about the racial diversity in Brazil and they were often argued with the theories of European imperialism. From what I gathered the racial theory talks that racial diversity is good for the culture and government of a country while the European imperialism theory is essentially arguing that notion and that a country is better with a more white or European influence. The racial theory would have some gumption to it and would be easily backed up one would think. However, the theory would not be accepted by many researchers because they do not have a lot of credibility. Then into the early 20^th century the topic would be discussed and has different argumentative thoughts. Even today in America not only in Brazil and other Latin American countries there are still talks about race today granted since many civil rights movements and activists have occurred or spoken upon race issues the inequality has ceased but there are still talks of some problems minority races have. Many things early on have influenced the racial divide and one of them was science but that was also skewed by the Europeans because they were scared by the numbers that showed that mestizos and black population was growing. However, this same regard was embraced by the educated in Brazil. Another thing was the church because back then church and the government weren’t separate and not many slaves who were mostly black or mestizo did not have much prestige withing the church were the was much influence by the government. That creates the divide even bigger because of the impact the church and religion had on peoples lives back then because it was a huge impact and the mind set was essentially that if the church says its true it has to be true. As time has shown the issue of race granted has gotten better but is still not completely dealt with. I think the main contributor of this is the history as the events explained above and the lack of education for one another.   

The idea of dependence in Latin America was essentially the idea that the people who were born from the indigenous people of Latin America could run the country much better and without the help of the European countries that controlled the land. The reason they believed this was that the indigenous people were smarter than the whites even though they were technically less educated. The indigenous people new the land and the culture and some of the true problems of the country while the more educated whites did not. Also, there was the argument that even though these whites who ran the country went to college and got these great educations there was nothing taught within these colleges on how to properly run a country. Thus, the indigenous people thought that well we understand our countries better than those whites so we could do a much better job of running the countries they reside in. Many whites in Latin America suffered from Eurocentrism which is basically focusing so much on the progress of Europe and that culture and completely ignoring the wider view of world or for the whites of Latin America the countries they were running and controlling. And that was Marti’s main argument that these white men from European countries and where so well educated focused too much on the developments of Europe instead of the environment they were trying to control. So, he stated that many of the indigenous believed they were more focused on the issues in the country around them. One of the most influential mediums was acting and foreign actors by playing roles in films that show how dependent Latin America was and having some of those roles be keys in the revolution of Latin America. These were just a few things that were part of Latin America’s dependency.

                   Changes in technology and the environment in Mexico and Brazil made many strides forward into industrialization with the industrialization of both America and Europe it was bound to happen. Some of the major advances in technology that were really popular were advances in transportation such as the locomotive train and the steamboat. Trains were much faster than the widely used mules and the same for boats but, the steamboat was considered far superior due to it’s hard metal exterior that but wooden sail boats to shame. Another big advancement was the telegraph and telegraph lines which lead to one of the biggest things in European rule which was the Transatlantic telegraph line that connect Brazil to Europe in 1974. One of the main reasons why the telegraph was so like was not only because of its ability to send messages faster but, the telegraph lines were able to be put up quicker and had less need to demolish the environment. Which the advance in technology led to many environment changes because for trains to get to point A to point B they would sometimes need to blow holes into mountains using explosives causing the formation of caves. Also, the political environment changed as well with these advances in technology because many people wanted the current government to become a republic and for there to be constitutions and for there to be elections that weren’t rigged to have particular people control the country. This is very different then what pre-Columbian people thought about the environment or environmental phenomenon. Before Columbus the indigenous people thought as the land, trees, water, and rain as things connected to the gods they worshipped and often seen things like rain as blessings or signs that the gods were angry. So many things changed when technology advanced into the 19^th and 20^th century.