Latin American Revoultions

During the time we were studying the Latin American revolutions the essential questions were,  "Why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race?  How are the events of the Latin American Revolutions evidence of this social imperative?"  It is important to have the essential question because it helps us to have a deeper understanding of what we are learning as we learn it and so we don’t veer too far from the main idea and main focus. it is important to think about this particular essential question because even today we still have people that make judgments, decisions, and opinions based on race. Even though we have come so far from where they were during the Latin American revolutions it is still a current problem. In class we made a pie chart showing the percentages of the population of each race in Latin America. We found that there was 50% Indian people, 23% Creoles, which are white Europeans born in the New World, 11% black slaves, 8% Mulattoes, and free blacks which are half white European and half black, 7% Mestizos which is people who descend from a white parent with Indian decent, and lastly only 1% of the whole population were white Europeans, also know as Peninsulares during the time. Even though there was only 1% Peninsulares they were still the most important and highest up on the social scale. anyone else was thought of as below them or little. The only reason why anyone was where they were on the social scale was by the color of their skin. The only reason why someone was thought of as more was because they had light skin.

Gran Colombia Timeline-

• April 19, 1810- a junta expels Spanish governor of the province of Venezuela and takes control
• July, 1811- National Assembly in Caracas formally declares Venezuela's independence
• July, 1812- Spanish authorities rally and recover a military initiative, regaining control of the entire province
• 1813- Simón Bolívar returned to Venezuela and won 6 successive engagements against Spanish forces
• August 6, 1813- entered Caracas and took dictatorial control and power
• July, 1814- Bolívar lost Caracas again, then headed to Bogotá and recaptures it from Spain temporarily
• 1817- back in Venezuela, built an army on Orinoco River, deciding there that he will strike the capital city of New Granada
• 1819- Bolívar's small force of 2500 men crossed a succession of flooded tributaries of the Orinoco, followed by a mountain crossing where a significant number of his men died
• August 7, 1819- the Spanish army surrenders in an engagement at Boyocá
• December 17, 1819- the republic of Colombia is proclaimed, covering the region of modern Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela
• June 24, 1821- "The Liberator" wins a battle at Carabobo in Venezuela, giving him Caracas.  
• May 24, 1822- Bolívar's favorite general, Antonio José de Sucre, wins a battle at Pinchicha, Ecuador, bringing the patriots into Quito.  
• May, 1830- Bolívar resigns and later dies of tuberculosis
• September, 1830- Ecuador and Venezuela formally secede from Gran Colombia

The group I was a part of was assigned to create a timeline for all the events that took place during the revolution in Gran Colombia. After we did the jigsaw, which was unscrambling the events and putting them in a chronological order, we were to figure two commonalities/ similarities and one difference between the revolution in Gran Colombia and any of the other revolutions. Our difference was that every battle was fought in a different country. Our two similarities with Brazil and Mexico were that there were wars and battles fought during all of the revolutions. We also found out that and that all of revolution were being fought against European powers at the time.  Even though all three revolutions were taking different routes, race was still an issue in all of them. In Gran Colombia it was an issue because the Spanish governor of Venezuela that was overthrown because he was bringing Spanish ideas about racial inequality to Venezuela along with him. Because of the control Spain had people were being treated differently so they wanted to be free of that and be independent so they tried to break free of the unjust form and treatment by the government. Race was a problem in Brazil because of the mine-workers. All the people of color were working exhausting jobs without rest that none of them wanted to do. This made them extremely aggravated because they had these jobs only because of the shade of their skin. In Mexico Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla fought against the racist royals who were taking land from the Indians and Mestizos because they were dark.

Race is still a problem in modern day. Recently a Ferguson, Missouri police man, Darren Wilson, shot a black man, Michael Brown who was supposedly unarmed. When I was watching the news the television anchor asked the officer “Mr. Wilson, if Brown was a white man coming at you, would the situation have gone down differently? Or, would you still you have shot him?” This question caught me quite off guard because that is a very racist thing to ask. this shows that even though the anchor probably didn’t mean it to be racist, it shows that they are not thought of as equals because they are being contrasted not compared. Most music and rap people listen to these days is quite racist if you listen to the lyrics or watch the music videos. in the the song Hello Kitty by Avril Lavigne, she uses all Asian back up dancers in her music video and that is thought of a racist because that is saying that all Asians love hello kitty and that only Asians can like it. So, I believe that race is still a very relevent thing to consider.

Revolutions of 1840-1848

During class this week we learned about the Revolutions of 1840-1848. The activity we did to help us learn in a fun and effective way was that the class was split up five groups and each group was assigned a revolt. Each group made a Survey Monkey about their assigned revolution. A Survey Monkey is a way to make an online 10-12 question test. Once all the surveys were done the class took all of each others survey after reading about the revolts. after all the people had submitted their answers we looked over the correct answers and saw the percentages of the answers that people chose. We mostly focused on the last question of each survey, “Would you rate this revolution on a scale from a success, minor success, neutral, minor failure, to complete failure?" the question at the end was there to help us answer the essential question which was, “Would you rate this revolution as a success, minor success, neutral, minor failure, or complete failure?"

My group was assigned to the Hungarian Revolution. The Hungarian Revolution was in 1848, in Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic. The revolution began in Austria. Metternich fled right when the revolution started. Louis Kossuth led the Hungarian Nationalist Movement. This movement was about them wanting an independent government, end to serfdom, and a they wanted a written constitution. It wasn't just the Austrians that felt this way. The Czech people  wanted similar things that the Hungarian nationalists in Prague did. The Austrians were in over their heads so they agreed to the reforms. But then the Austrians and the Russians teamed up and put the rebels that were in Budapest in jail, exiled them, and even executed them. Kossuth fled. We used a lot of these facts and others from the other information provided to create our survey monkey. This is a link to our survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TDY99M2

We said that our revolution was neutral. It didn’t really make anything better or worse it just happened and nothing came from it. Some of the other groups had slightly more successful revolutions, but there were no real successes. For example, The French revolution was a partial success. First of all the biggest reason why it was not a great success was because their President Louis Napoleon I was an awful leader. The people of France made a great decision by letting all adult men vote and that they elected Louis Phillipe to be the new leader. “It created a strong president and a one-house legislature.” (French Revolution of 1848 document) There were even some revolutions that were more of a failure, like the Decembrist Revolt. This was a complete and utter failure, many people were killed in very harsh and cruel ways. The people that were killed were mostly the leaders and instigators of the conspiracy. All this revolution did was cause a commotion and all of Russia was taught a lesson because of it. Even though most of the revolutions weren’t complete successes there was more revolutions that ended in a neutral or positive way than there was negative outcomes. So all in all the revolutions of 1840-1848 were more neutral and successful than they were failures.

Rise of Democracy

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   In class we learned about democracy. What is democracy? Democracy is a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives

   . We talked about what it took to have a good nation. How democratic was the U.S in the early 1800's? We looked at charts, quotes and painting that depicted democracies over time, well functioning democracies as well as a corrupt democracy. In the painting of the corrupt democracy the men were drunk so obviously they were not all there or taking any of it seriously. All people did not have a fair opportunity to vote so a man by the name of Dorr tried to fix that we discussed this and put his in out final project as well as the other documents. After we talked and took notes we made posters showing what we learned.