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.