Blog Post #13: Week 13

Latin America is very angry. In Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, there are a plethora of protests for lack the of democracy; in Chile, Ecuador, and Haiti, there are protests due to the lack of opportunities and greater equality. Meanwhile, Argentina returns to the Peronist-Kirchnerist left, and Mexico does not see the exit to the growing spiral of narco-violence.

Latin America's rich and not-so-rich are very separated from its many poor and not-so-poor. The sad lesson is that democracy is necessary but not sufficient. From the Colonies to the present day, Latin American economies have been organized for the benefit of a few. After decades of dictatorships and authoritarian governments, many countries — in addition to electing their leaders with votes — expected a time of economic well-being for all. But this majority welfare has still not arrived. The future of Latin America is uncertain. It will always be like this until this changes.

Nevertheless, I am hopeful. I believe the new era of social organization will change the traditional attitude many civilians have towards the social contract. These protests that we are watching unfold are actually the product of the new spaces created by democracy; in the dictatorships of Pinochet, of Videla in Argentina or in Mexico of 1968, citizens were massacred for protesting. Today citizens are no longer afraid. These new spaces are the new forms of social organization that take place thanks to new technologies - from the internet and social networks to the use of cell phones - these tools will hopefully circumvent any attempt at control and censorship. Official press releases have to compete on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook with the fluidity of millions of videos, photos, and texts that contradict them. You can no longer govern if legitimacy and credibility are lost in networks. In my opinion, there is hope for our uncertain future due to an increase in certainty in the networks.

Short Research and Writing Assignment

First Source: Pereira, A. W. (2018), The US Role in the 1964 Coup in Brazil: A Reassessment. Bull Lat Am Res, 37: 5-17.  https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.12518 

This article talks about the 1964 coup in Brazil against the elected President João Goulart. As the article stipulates, the role of the US in the coup is well known. There are important books about this, for example, by Parker (2011), and Dreifuss (2006). However, the difference between these books and the article I chose is that Pereira sees the US role in the coup as stemming from the interest of the US capitalist class in inhibiting autonomous, nationalist industrialization in Brazil. In this reading, the clash between the US and the Goulart government was inevitable and driven by the increasing lack of complementarity between the two national economies, once Brazil began to industrialize in the mid‐twentieth century. For Pereira, the Kennedy administration joined the opposition and showed a predisposition to depose, Goulart well before 1963. Thus, the economic interests of imperialistic US corporations made the US government's opposition to Goulart inevitable.

Specifically, Pereira mentions two main factors drove a wedge between these two nations. Firstly, the US was engaged in the process of preventive counter‐revolution on a world scale that made a clash with Goulart inevitable. This is because Goulart's ideologies were primarily influenced by communist ideas. For example, the US objected to his left-wing tendencies, and his willingness to seek closer relations with Communist countries. Secondly, Pereira states that Goulart's nationalist policies such as the agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil caused the US support for the coup as stemming inevitably from US capitalists' desire to stifle autonomous economic development in Brazil.

Second Source: Smith, R. (1980). Intervention, Revolution, and Politics in Cuba, 1913-1921. doi:10.2307/981068 

This book analyzes eight years of international relations between the US and Cuba. Smith proposes a study on the various economic, political, and diplomatic methods used by the United States government to exert hegemony over Cuba from 1913-1921. In this book, I was particularly moved by Smith's chapter eight, in which he talks about the economic conditions of US-Cuban relations during this time. Specifically, Smith states that the World War curtailed sugar production in Europe, resulting in a boom in sugar production in Cuba and a boom in Cuba's economy. Many Caribbean islands were put into sugar production, and numerous new sugar mills were built, some of them funded by US investors. Smith stipulates very clearly how Cuba's economic well-being and the conditions of these sugar mills were increasingly important for US businesses. So much so, that whenever Cuban politics curtailed the production of sugar, the US did not doubt to intervene in the Cuban political landscape to assure the production of this valuable resource. Thus came the "Sugar Intervention."

The Sugar Intervention refers to the events in Cuba between 1917 and 1922 when the United States Marine Corps was situated on the island. As Smith details, an increase in banditry and illegal sacking of the sugar mills prompted the US to intervene. In August 1917, the US Marines sent the first contingent, consisting of under 1000 American Marines. During the first year of arrival, the US Marines assumed responsibility for the objects of infrastructure related to sugar plantations. This presence of American troops caused anti-American protests, and so, in December 1917, another thousand Marines arrived. The primary focus of these troops was to perform patrols of the Cuban sugar mills to ensure their safety and make sure that these sugar production sites are safe to operate. As Smith argues, these measures imposed by the Marines worked since, in 1918, partially as a result of the actions undertaken, Cuba produced a record sugar harvest. Although disturbances continued in the cities throughout 1918, the US's answer to these protests was to simply send more marine troops to the island. By the end of the 1920s, there were around 8,000 naval troops in Cuba.

Blog Post #12: Week 12

For this week's blog post, I wanted to learn more about Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, which was one of the videos assigned for the week. In this blog, I provide a brief overview of what they have done and how they arose as one of the most important movements in Latin America.

The motivations for the movement started on March 24, 1976. On this day, Armed Forces seized power in Argentina through a coup d'etat. The military regime, which called itself the "National Reorganization Process," disappeared 30,000 people of all ages and social conditions. Hundreds of babies were kidnapped with their parents or born during the care of their pregnant mothers.

In many detention centers of the dictatorship, there were real clandestine maternity homes, even with lists of marriages waiting for a birth, and the 500 missing children were affected as "spoils of war ”by the forces of repression. Some children were delivered directly to military families, others abandoned in institutes such as NN, others sold. In all cases, they were annulled of their identity and deprived of living with their legitimate families.

Among their many achievements, one of their main contributions was in the type of DNA research. Until 1983 to know the identity of a child one had to analyze the blood of his parents. Thanks to the Grandmothers, science discovered that the blood of grandparents was enough; It was the so-called "grandfather index" and its 99.9% certainty is legal proof of affiliation.

Nothing and no one stopped the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo to look for their children's children. Detective tasks alternated with days visits to orphanages, or public offices while investigating adoptions of the time. The Grandmothers are still looking for their grandchildren, now adults, but also their great-grandchildren. The movement transcended political ideologies and it showed the devastating effects of political turmoil in a country.

Blog Post #11: Week 11

For this week's blog post, I want to discuss one of the movements of terror that Dawson elucidates in his book. Namely, Abimael Guzman and his movement of El Sendero Luminoso. In this blog post, I want to explain their principal beliefs, alongside a brief historical overview of the movement.

The objective of the Shining Path, in principle, was to carry out the revolution through armed struggle and to position the countryside as the most important aspect of the country (the city as complimentary). Also, another of his goals was to replace the selected bourgeois institutions or entities with other organizations representing the countryside revolution, something very similar to what Mao did in China. However, the political guidelines of the Shining Path are based on the political positions proposed by Marx, Lenin, and Mao, which expose the various guidelines that characterize communism and socialism as the best political, philosophical, economic and moral tendency to put into practice.

I was able to pinpoint what Guzman tried to adopt from each ideology below:

1. From Marxism, the Shining Path adopts the position that the peasants and all those who live in rural areas and the proletariat are those who must fight against those who consider themselves capitalists, or exploiters.
2. From the Leninist position, as a model of Russian communism, the members of the organization took the idea to impose, through force and arms, their power over all people and in all possible spaces that were under their control.
3. From the Maoist thought, the organization adopted the idea that the main actors of the revolution and changes that they wanted to impose in Peru, must be effected by the peasant population and the proletariat through violent acts.

However, as a consequence of these violent ideological positions of El Sendero Luminoso its members have planned and committed criminal acts, in which thousands of people have died, for which reason, they are considered in many countries as a terrorist organization. Notwithstanding the imprisonment of Guzman, El Sendero Luminoso is a political organization that is still active although it no longer has the support of previous years, precisely because the peasant and proletariat do not approve of violence as a means to carry out the proposed ideas.

Blog Post #10: Week 10

In today's blog post I wanted to learn more about the origin and main characteristics of Peronism to better understand Evita's reading. Here is what I found:

Peronism firstly began as a movement in the 1940s, when Juan Domingo Perón, being a colonel, began his participation in Argentine public life. He began being in charge of the secretary of labor and forecasting, where he did a job with the workers that quickly increased his popularity, climbing positions in the government. The Argentine government started to worry about Peron's relationship with the unions so he was imprisoned by the Farrell dictatorship on October 13, 1945.

The birth of Peronism dates back to October 17, 1945, when a popular demonstration in Buenos Aires demanded his release from prison, after which he became the most relevant political figure of the moment. Thanks to several actions he took during this period: such as social insurance that benefited 2 million workers, creation of labor courts that tended to support workers, salary improvements, recognition of professional and union associations and the establishment of the minimum wage.

So we can see that the main characteristics of Peronism tend to favor the working class. Namely, we can list out the main characteristics like so:

1. Opposition to imperialist policies: Promoting local solutions to the problems without international support of large economies.
2. Labor rights claim - Concern for job creation and adequate conditions for workers. Since its inception, the payment of bonuses, workers' compensation for accidents at work, labor rights for women, among others, was promulgated.
3. Defense of national interests: Increasing the sense of sovereignty and care of national identity.
4. Protective state: Generate social benefits, especially for the neediest lower classes.
5. Nationalization of public services: such as electricity, gas, water, transport and rail networks, with a tendency to subsidies to reduce the impact of the actual costs of setting up and maintaining these services.
6. Promote national industry, stimulation of domestic consumption and self-supply

Blog Post #9: Week 9

This week we had to read about Augusto Sandino, a figure I did not know much about. Thus, I went ahead and investigated a bit about his life and craft a biography of sorts. Here is what I found:

Sandino was a Nicaraguan guerrilla leader who tenaciously fought against the US occupation and intervention until he forced the United States to withdraw his troops from Nicaragua. After his murder at the hands of the then head of the National Guard, Anastasio Somoza, Sandino became the ideological reference of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) and the revolution promoted by this movement that, years later, would end the dictatorship somocista. Thus, we're talking about one of the most central figures of the country of Nicaragua.

Of very humble origin, Augusto Sandino worked as a miner in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Mexico. In 1926 he returned to his country, occupied since 1916 by US troops defending the interests of fruit companies in the United States. He opted to defend national autonomy, affected by the Bryan-Chamorro agreement and the signing of the Stimpson-Moncada treaty, so he assembled a group of guerrillas and raised arms.

For six years Sandino fought against the troops of different governments supported by the United States, at the end of which he had managed to gather around three thousand men around him and had won popular admiration. Organized under his command, the rebel guerrilla took refuge in the jungles of Nueva Segovia, where he became practically invincible.

However, his political prestige continued to be a threat to the country's leaders, so, after accepting an invitation to go to the presidential palace, he was ambushed and killed by Anastasio Somoza, head of the National Guard and nephew of former President José María Moncada.

However, as per usual, ideas don't die when the one that starts them dies. The death of the leader did not mean the disappearance of his movement, and his name went on to embody the liberation struggle of Nicaragua. The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a political alignment created in 1962, established itself as a continuation of Sandino's ideology and focused its sights on the overthrow of the Somoza through armed struggle, an objective that he would achieve many years later (in 1979) force the fall of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, son of Anastasio Somoza.

Blog Post #8: Week 8

Throughout history, there are several works of literature that can guide us and help us to understand in a very exhaustive way a certain era of the unique history of our world. Sometimes and in various contexts it may be that the pen and the inkwell, when accompanied by a current mind and a surface on which the owner of that clever and perceptive mind can write, are the most useful tools for painting a historical moment. Surely, the outstanding poem A Roosevelt by Nicaraguan Rubén Darío written in 1904 is a good example of this phenomenon, as it allows the reader to perceive the acute feelings of Latin Americans more than a century ago during the summit of the era of US imperialism in American continent.

Written in the early twentieth century during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, this poem can be seen primarily as a social order text and in addition to a strong denunciation against the continued interference of the United States government in national matters concerning Latin American countries , particularly from the Caribbean. The United States, which is described by the poem as a powerful but unjust entity that continues to carry out its interventionist and selfish policies, is represented by the unpopular and imposing figure of Theodore Roosevelt - its imperialist president at that time that had already harmed and considerably dismissed the Latin American people and lands during his presidency.

Undoubtedly, this work forms an essential and valuable part of the historical complex not only of Latin America but of the whole world, and that is why it is worth reading and analyzing it. In addition, despite the fact that it is often despised by many people, this poem continues with the tradition of literature that has a truly significant impact on history and even today to better understand the events of our past

Blog Post #7: Week 7

In this week's reading, I extremely enjoyed Creelman's account of Porfirio Diaz. It was a refreshing outlook on a man I have studied in many other classes in my time here at UBC. In this blog post, I want to shine a light on the correlation between this week's title (The Export Boom) and the week's reading. Thus, I took a deep dive into Porfirio Diaz's foreign policy and diplomacy during his tenure.

At first, I thought we studied Porfirio Diaz in this week because from what I have read, anti-porfirista historiography has argued that in Diaz's drive to obtain international recognition and, above all, to secure the foreign investment which its economic policy required to fuel economic development, his regime betrayed the interests of the nation, throwing its arms open to rapacious foreign entrepreneurs who exploited the country's resources. Mexico's political and economic sovereignty was, it is argued, seriously abused in the process. Thus, I thought the correlation lied somewhere around this interpretation.

But then I started investigating why Porfirio developed the international relations agenda he had, and I found that Mexico had a difficult beginning to its development as a nation. Namely, during the first 50 years of its life as an independent nation, there had been a number of serious external threats to Mexican sovereignty. Post-colonial retribution - from Spain in 1829 - and neo-colonial ambition - from the USA in 1847-48 and France between 1862 and 1867 - these had all threatened Mexico's survival as an independent nation and had made nineteenth-century governments acutely aware of the external threats to national self-determination. This explains partially why liberal policy in Mexico after 1855 linked diplomatic recognition with the development of economic links to outside nations.

Thus, I now understand why late-nineteenth-century liberals of the Reforma and Porfiriato were therefore faced with the difficult task of protecting national sovereignty. Furthermore, I comprehend why they concurrently opened up national frontiers to foreign capital, investment, and colonization. This is due to one main reason: they saw these goals as complementary rather than contradictory.

Blog Post #6: Week 6

In this week's blog post I was particularly interested in the concept of constitutionalism in Latin America. In my perspective, constitutions are the backbone of citizenship and studying the way laws and first principles have been forged in Latin America will give us a comprehensive understanding of the rule of law in this region.

To study this, I read Mirrow's Latin American Constitutions. This book provided me with a comprehensive historical study of the concept of constitutionalism in Latin America. It ventures out from the independence period (similar to the ones we studied in Week 4) to the current day. One of the most important focus areas of the book is the Constitution of Cadiz. After coming across this topic, I shifted my focus to this document.

The Constitution of Cádiz or the Spanish Constitution of 1812 has an important place in the development of liberal constitutionalism in Europe and Latin America. It also played a very big role in the independence of many Latin American republics. This is because in Cádiz. “The American
question” involved issues of the representation of American populations and the citizenship of indigenous populations. Whether various populations counted for purposes of representation was debated with concern and passion in this document. Just as the United States Constitution was forced to consider issues of slaves, slavery, and the slave trade, so too we find these issues at the forefront of the American question in Cádiz, Spain.

I would like to argue that these constitutional ideas and experiences were brought back to Latin America countries, many of which were already well on the path to complete independence.

Blog Post #5: Week 5

My blog post is an examination of the term caudillo. Admittedly, I had little knowledge of the term, so here is my investigation.

While there is no universal definition that fits every caudillo under all circumstances, scholars generally agree on a cluster of attributes that most caudillos shared and that together provide a viable working definition of the caudillo phenomenon. In general, a caudillo was a political-military strongman who wielded political authority and exercised political and military power by virtue of personal charisma, control of resources such as land and property, the personal loyalty of his followers and clients, reliance on extensive clientage networks, the capacity to dispense patronage and resources to clients, and personal control of the means of organized violence. The keyword is personal: a caudillo was a type of leader, marked by his style of leadership, and most defined by the personal nature of his rule. Constitutions, state bureaucracies, representative assemblies, periodic elections—these and other institutional constraints on individual and personal power, commonly associated with modern state forms, all were antithetical to the caudillo style of rule, while also often coexisting in tension with it. Ideology mattered little.

A good example of a caudillo is Rosas. Scion of an elite porteño (Buenos Aires) Creole family, Rosas left the port city as a young man to become a cattle rancher. Rosas was opposed to the liberal, unitarian, modernizing regime of Bernardino Rivadavia, whose policies were designed to make Buenos Aire's equal with the other provinces of the Río de la Plata. His opposition to Rivadavia was not rooted in ideology but in the belief that Buenos Aires should retain its superior power. With his base of support secure, Rosas allied with the federalists who overthrew Rivadavia. Soon after, he became the governor of Buenos Aires and then absolute dictator. His style of leadership was profoundly personal: All power and authority flowed directly from him.

There is no scholarly consensus on when the caudillo phenomenon ended, or even if it has ended. Some point to the first half of the 19th century as the heyday of caudillos and caudillismo; others argue that the phenomenon continued into the 20th century and after, transmuting into various forms of populism and dictatorship, and manifest in the likes of Juan Perón of Argentina, Fidel Castro of Cuba, and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. Despite vigorous debates over definitions, origins, periodization, and other aspects, however, few disagree that understanding the phenomenon of the caudillo and caudillismo is essential to understanding the political evolution of post-independence Latin America.

Blog Post #4: Week 4

For this week's blog post, I want to discuss Marti's narrative. In Puerto Rico, Marti is revered as one of the most influential intellectuals of the Caribbean in the last two centuries. Thus, I desired to historically investigate his contribution. Namely, this post will attempt to explain and contextualize Marti's "Nuestra America."

The article was written in 1891 in New York. It's written as a direct response to the first Pan-American Conference that took place in 1890. The conference tried to establish a diplomatic relationship between North and Latin America. Thus, the utmost objective of the meeting was the establishment of Pan-Americanism as a new way of interaction between the two hemispheres. But, José Martí did not agree with this conceptualization of uniting these two hemispheres. He tried to oppose this concept by emphasizing the differences between the United States and “Our America.“

To understand Martí‘s essay, it's also crucial to analyze what was happening in Cuba. Under Spanish occupation, Cuba was struggling hard to become independent from Europe, while also fighting the potential threat of its neighbor North America. After the U.S. had successfully taken over California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Utah as well as parts of Colorado, Wyoming, and Kansas from its neighbor Mexico, it seemed to be more and more interested in Cuba as another addition to its territory. In addition to this threat from Cuba‘s North American neighbor, it was still trying to liberate itself from its colonizer in Europe. After the Grito de Yara in 1868, the first declaration of independence, Cuba was at war with Spain for ten years, which very much helped it to form a distinctive Cuban identity, but also had profound impacts on its economy. In the Paz de Zanjón (Peace of Zanjón) Spain tried to make some minor concessions that were rejected by the rebels. José Martí then founded the Revolutionary Party of Cuba in 1892 and mobilized Cuba to rise again against Spain in 1895.

This is the situation in which José Martí wrote his famous essay “Nuestra América.“ He tries to create a Latin American identity and to liberate Latin America from the oppression of the powerful neighbor North America and the former colonizer Europe. The article is addressed to his own people, especially Cuban intellectuals living in exile, as a call for unity and shared identity, but also to Europe and the United States for them to understand the differences between North America and Latin America.

Blog Post #3: Week 3

A common denominator with different casta paintings is how they treat race as a central aspect of the piece of art. This is due to the definition of casta: a term that describes mixed-race individuals in Spanish America, resulting from unions of Spaniards, Indigenous, and Africans. In many casta paintings, we can see depictions of the ethnic and racial combinations resulting from mestizaje, such as mulatos. Casta paintings offer rich insights on the quotidian practices of colonial individuals, including dress, diet, and household practices; this is information that archaeologists desire. Thus, they're not only beautiful pieces of art but more than that, they represent historical data. 

However, (as we see with Lieutenant Nun) there are many stories and experiences that these paintings lack. There are without a doubt some stories that these paintings fail to capture, which can only be captured with words on a piece of paper. These paintings represent a static image of a supposedly highly structured and regulated colonial world that was imposed on colonial peoples through their bodies. I'm interested in the moments where visual and archaeological pieces of evidence provide different stories. These paintings are used to explore how the imagined, ordered world depicted in casta paintings meshed with daily life in colonial communities. But,  what happens when historical documents, and material culture trump the reality that is portrayed in the painting? 

When we use paintings as historical data, there are many positives. For example, (1) it shows a visual record of a particular moment in time, (2) it conveys a variety of details about people, places, objects, and events, and (3) it portrays information about everyday life and behaviour that is best communicated in visual terms (hair and clothing styles, interior design). On the other hand, paintings or images, in general, can also portray a tainted illustration of the event since the relationship of the painter to his or her subject is not always clear. One example could be that the emotions and thoughts of those involved are not evident. So, what does this mean?

This means that when we study casta paintings, it's important to study them in conjunction with other historical data. This is due to the fact that information from paintings is often suggestive rather than definitive; we must pair paintings with other evidence such as documents and oral histories, to determine if the information is unusual or part of a larger pattern. 

So, that ends my investigation for this week, and here I propose my question for the class:

What are the limitations of using a painting as a historical source?

Blog Post #2: Week 2

Question for the week:
Do you think the colonization movement was empathetic? Is it reasonable to demand empathy from them?

In this week's readings and videos, I revisit a topic I have studied all my life: Cristopher Columbus and his discovery of America. In the Puerto Rican educational system, we all go through a weird relationship with Columbus. When one is in middle school, I remember reading idealistic portrayals of Columbus, portrayed as a man with a cause. Someone who inspired to inspire. As the years went by, and the history courses started using more primary resources, my conceptualization of Columbus began to morph. It suddenly became odd to label Columbus as the "man who freed us," which is how I remember reading about him in middle school.

Why so? Because of people like Guaman Poma. Poma was an Andean native, a member of the Yarovilca dynasty, born around 1535. After collaborating with the Spanish against his fellow Indians, he eventually became active on behalf of Andean causes. He spent roughly three decades composing his impassioned letter to the King, which he titled "Nueva Coronica I Buen Gobierno," or "New Chronicle and Good Government." He wanted autonomy. And he felt that the incredible suffering at the hands of the colonizers was uncalled for.

Who were the Spaniards to consider themselves as "better rulers" just because of their advanced technologies and different beliefs? Who were they to IMPOSE their way of life into the traditional lifestyle that the Indigenous people of the "Old World" carried?

These questions illuminate the most disappointing fact about the colonization era: the lack of empathy. The colonizers thought they had a mission. But their purpose was utterly unilateral. They didn't care to communicate with these people. They didn't mind learning about their customs. They didn't think they were capable enough to have worthy ideas or conceptions of the world.

It wasn't until someone like Poma spoke to them in their own language that they took a decision. Poma had to depict scenes of unspeakable violence and outrage against natives. For example, a wide-eyed priest kicking a pregnant woman who kneels at his feet, or a magistrate and lieutenant pulling the sheet that covers a nude Indian woman, or the decapitation of an Incan. Guaman Poma spoke in their language, using imagery that argued for the dignity of his people and the logic of self-rule.

You may be wondering, what decision did the colonizers take after examining Poma's manuscript? The colonial authorities deemed him a subversive and exiled from Haumanga, the city where he lived.

Blog Post #1: Week 1

*Because of my love of economics and math, I like to name things arbitrarily to maximize clarity. In this blog post, I will label the video on Marti as A and the video on the uncertain future of Latin America as B*

In this week's videos, I was particularly moved by two subject matters. Namely, I enjoyed the videos labeled as "Marti and Cuba" (A) and "Towards an Uncertain Future" (B). I think these two videos work perfectly with each other because of my belief that Latin America needs influential leaders such as Marti to cause a change in these uncertain times.

Let's analyze the first video, A. In A, I was moved by the allusions to my geographical Caribbean partner, Cuba and its patriotic icon, Jose Marti. Jose Marti, venerated as the father of Cuban independence, is one of Latin America's most famous leaders. He lived in exile in New York, earning his living as a foreign correspondent. Throughout the 1880s and early 1890s, it was through Marti's gaze that Latin Americans were able to see and understand the United States. In essence, he was one of the gatekeepers between the New World (the economic powerhouse of the US) and Old World (the economically developing Cuba). 

Then, in the second video, B, I enjoyed the economic data they provided about the history of Latin America. Particularly, the way the footage analyzed the critical question of "How in fact do you reform institutions with long histories of corruption and mismanagement?" was awe-inspiring. It reminded me of the striking finding in a World Bank study called Understanding the Income and Efficiency Gap in Latin America and the Caribbean. Here, economists try to pin numbers into the fact that Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean could have been twice as productive, had they enjoyed the same level of efficiency in the capital and labor use as in the US. In this study, they conclude that a possible answer to the regions efficiency gap is that the region’s workers produce on average just a fifth of the output of a US worker. 

So, how do these videos/studies relate to each other? I think that they meet in the intersection of economics and culture: we need more capable leaders in Latin America. Learning from Marti, and having a comprehensive view on the uncertainty in Latin America, is essential to cause a change in this troubled region. The members of the diaspora are imperative to cause economic well-being.  

Introduction: Who is Felipe Grosso?

Hi everyone,

My name is Felipe Grosso, and I’m currently going into my third year at UBC pursuing a major in Honors Economics with a minor in Philosophy. I’m very excited to start this endeavor with all of you. I think the best way of getting to know me is to understand what I want to dedicate my life to. My dream is to become a researcher in the economics of education subdiscipline. I have always been fascinated by the interrelationship between education and the discipline of economics. I believe that the fact that I’m studying at a university such as UBC entails a commitment to my country of Puerto Rico. Specifically, I feel the need to give back to those that don’t have the opportunity to study and learn at world-class institutions. My dream is to explore new ways of thinking about educational systems to decrease educational inequality in Puerto Rico. 

Now, why am I taking this class? Because I want to grasp a solid understanding of the cultural, historical, and societal context of Puerto Rico. And what better way of doing so, than to have a class on Latin American Studies. Because of this reason, the opportunity of participating in this experience is one that I cannot pass on. I’m excited for the chance to flourish with people who are committed to learning about our society and motivated to grow as fellow students. 

Thanks for reading!