Latin America History: Revolution, Democracy, and Economic Growth

This article explores the history of Latin America through revolution, democracy, and economic growth. It covers the various democracies and dictatorships, Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI), the oil crisis, and the role of art and music in nationalism. The article also discusses the phases of the Mexican Revolution and the political, social, and cultural aspects of the revolution, including the role of key individuals like Madero, Zapata, Villa, Carranza, Obregon, and President Wilson.

Running head: LATIN AMERICA HISTORY
LATIN AMERICA HISTORY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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HIST 115 Cuddy
Eakin Review Questions: Ch 18
1. How does Eakin’s metaphor of rivers and streams relate to Latin America?
The author establishes the metaphor of rivers and streams in order to relate the Latin
America. The metaphorical comparison is made on three cultural streams that converges into
one river which belongs to the region of Latin America. The metaphor relates the significance
of the collision of cultures, pointing out the period of post-colonial when the immigrants from
Middle East and Asia brings a new cultural streams into the region. The powerful streams
that emerges out the diverse rich cultural mix, expose the dazzling variety of combination.
The cultural construct out of variant combination were new and unique in the world history.
Eakin’s metaphor reflects on the importance of the construct of diverse culture through the
mix of three streams producing a turbulent river that gradually over the centuries gets
diverged into many different streams. These streams are the streams that further accelerated
independently, along with the fact that these streams are evolved from the origin of initial
clash of culture that includes the culture of Native America, Europeans and Africans.
Through the pluralistic culture, the Americans took shape within the cultural and political
construct, recognized as the Latin America. The Latin America is therefore is recognized as a
region of multiple stories, right from the time of Columbus’s encounter with the New World.
Following it, the collisions of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries gave birth to a series of
patterns with variations, but it is observed that the narrative of colonization, conquest and the
emergence of new societies has a coherence that lacks at the regions over the last century.
The period of colonialism has a power unity that is established primarily by the European
conquest and colonialism and the pluralistic reactions to these drastic transformations. By the

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end of eighteenth century, the mighty river of Latin America had already diverged into
multiple distinct streams and gradually initiated the trend of wars for independence.
2. Briefly describe some of the various democracies and dictatorships in 20th century
Latin America.
Through the course of trending wars for independence, the building of nation and
influence of international economy emerged that further provided the historian a set new
patterns towards that leads towards the increase in the divergence of new paths. The
divergence of these paths magnified even more in the twentieth century though politics,
society, economics and culture. The political structure of Latin America in the twenty-first
century represents the construct of democracy. But the people in the course of being a
participatory and representatives of political construct of democracy, faced very uneven and
halting of the process across the region and Latin America predominantly has experienced the
cycles of repression and democratization throughout the century. The shattering effects
reverberated throughout several countries. The pattern emerged out of the diverged paths
followed in the regions like Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Uruguay. At the onset of the
third wave of democracy in the year 1978, Costa Rica, Venezuela and Colombia were
recognized as the only regimes. The increase of the political construct, that is, Democracy
and the semi-democracy were witnessed between 1978 and 1995. In 1990, the authoritarian
governments were those of Cuba and Haiti. But by 1995, Cuba was the sole government to
shift away from authoritarianism dramatically. The breadth, endurance and the speed of
transition in Latin America is experienced through the significant break. However, the era of
post-third wave begins in the year 1995, and further continues to be the region that
experience the diverse process of democratic stagnation, deepening and decay.

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6. Despite an annual average growth of four percent, many Latin Americans’ lives did
not improve. Why?
Despite an annual average growth of four percent and impressive changes, Latin
America continues to remain the rich land of poor people. In the twentieth century, the
government of Latin America has been the most significant factor in terms of the economic
lives of the Latin Americans. In the paradigm of politics, the governments offers a wide
spectrum of cases as the region faces an influx of the greater as well as lesser intervention.
This led the countries involve in the exposure of export-oriented growth. The countries
gradually began to turn inward behind the protectionist policies starting from 1930s to 1980s.
Most of the countries in the process sought to improve diversified and industrialized
economies. They approached to move away from the excess dependency on the concept of
monoculture and dominance over the export of mineral and crop. Monoculture is the factor
that made the nations extremely vulnerable in the drastic rise and fall of the commodity
prices in Europe and the United States. Latin America did suffer immensely in The Great
Depression as the economy in the early twentieth century took a dramatic turn, that is, the
shifting of demand for their products in the North Atlantic world. The high demand of their
exports was the major reasons of being insecure as well as the economic growth that was
experienced in the late twentieth century. Most Latin American nations relied on single crops
or minerals such as sugar in Cuba; bananas in Ecuador and Honduras; coffee in Central
America, Brazil and Colombia. Thereby, the pressure received from being dependent on the
single crop and mineral for export has resulted in The Great Depression.
7. What was ISI?

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Economy through tariffs and duties on imports, state-control enterprises was the
principle means to improve the financial aspects. The introduction of the policy of ISI had
activated the growth of industry significantly in the larger nations such as Brazil, Argentina,
and Mexico and even in many other countries in Latin America by 1960s. The policy of
Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) means the replacement of imported manufactured
goods with the domestically produced ones. The ISI, however, by the late 1960s had
extensively run its course that further created a domestic industrial base. ISI is recognized by
three main strategies that includes the domestic production, the expansion of domestic
production to ta broader extent of consumer durables and complex manufactured products
and lastly the process of exportation of the manufactured products and further it continues as
the diversification of the industry. Though the policy of ISI produced growth in larger
countries like Brazil and Mexico, yet the smaller countries like Ecuador and Honduras were
less successful.
8. In what ways did the oil crisis in the Middle East affect Latin America, and how does
this relate to the “lost decade?”
The economy of Latin America went through drastic difficulties and tension. The
major event of economic crisis due to the escalating price of oil that crippled the economy in
an extensive measure. To get through such crises, the traders and the dwellers of Latin
America were sent away in search of loans from the international banks. The oil shock phase
was severe in the series of decades. At the beginning of the 1980s, the major recession of the
economy was swept across the capitalist world. Following to the major event, the second oil
shock was received when the rate of interest started to rise high dramatically that forced
almost all of Latin America into near- default on hundreds of billions dollars of foreign loans.
And furthermore, the total foreign debt of Latin America had risen from $2 billion in 1900 to
more than $500 billion by 1985. The event affected Mexico and Venezuela the most and they

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continued to suffer the consequences of too much oil and rapid economic expansion that built
on immense amount of loans which they could not repay in the period of early 1980s. The
international banks and the agencies associated with lending money were shut down almost
for a decade and even due to these reason, the capital pipeline were shut down as well. Latin
America went through a series of recessions, instability, and economic contractions. The
adverse effect remained for more than a decade. Most of the countries struggled massively
and mightily tried to renegotiate the foreign debt and even took initiatives to reopen the flow
of the sources of international finance. According to the financial records, the strapped
governments cut short their budgets drastically and as a result, the era turned to be identified
as “the lost decade” for most of the Latin Americans. Furthermore, the government that used
to spend on the basic social programs now dried up, affected adversely in the standard of
living and declined the level of Latin American lives. Therefore, the Latin America is known
to be the region that lost ground after decades of economic growth in the account of world
history.
12. How do art and music contribute to nationalism in Latin America?
Latin America in the world history is recognized for its diverse and rich races,
cultures and ethnicities. The culture of art and music contributes majorly across the last half-
century. Latin America is recognized for a diverse cultural ethnicity. The vibrant variations of
cultural creation primarily established due to the collision of culture. Through such turbulent
mix of variant cultures, many new cultural traits are evolved out of pluralistic blend which
later was explored to be rich and extraordinarily influential in terms of art, music and
literature. Through the blend of Brazilian bossa nova, Argentine tango and Cuban dance
music, the rhythms of Latin America was explored and further the cultural mix is recognized
throughout the world as one of the most influential and rich traits in the culture of art and
music.

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HIST 115 Cuddy
Eakin Review Questions: Ch 19
1.How does Eakin define “revolution,” and which countries have had “truly”
revolutionary changes?
The term “revolution” is recognized in the popular sense, that is, the change of
government. Such revolution has been experienced by Latin Americans several times. Eakin
defines revolution as the rapid and fundamental transformation of the basic structures of
society, economics and politics usually accompanied by violence. Throughout the course of
Latin America’s history, the term ‘violence’, ‘rapid’, ‘fundamental’ and ‘transformation’ is
predominant. The true meaning of revolutionary qualifies when there is more rapid change
and violence. The change has to be profound, sweeping and fundamental. In the modern
period, the classic revolutions have been very few. The events of true revolutions have been
experienced by several countries, for instance, the United States in 1776, France in 1789,
Haiti in 1791, Russia in 1917, China in 1949- are identified as the most notable revolutions.
Several revolutionary movements have been emerged in Latin America during the phase of
twentieth century but there were few regions that have succeeded in seizing the authoritative
power and transform the nation. Revolution has been recognized as the initiation of profound
transformation that includes the freeing of thousands of slaves, introducing and
acknowledging the blacks and the mulattoes to their basic rights and power, and establishing
the second independent nation in the America. The most successful revolutionary
transformation was witnessed in Mexico and Cuba. They managed to hold the power for a
brief period. Mexico and Cuba even stole the title from a well recognized documentary,
named as Frozen revolutions. The Cuban revolution did face tremendous pressures along

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with the military intervention from the United States of America. Other regions like in
Nicaragua and Guatemala, the initial revolutionary victory was blunted by the powerful
intervention of the United States as it approached to thwart what appeared to be the
emergence of Soviet- backed regimes in Central America. Furthermore, in 1954, Guatemala
experiences the revolutionary change by the U.S intervention and produced brutal and bloody
civil war. Even in Nicaragua, the U.S intervention halted their revolutionary transformation
and produced deadly wars and even it extended across El Salvador and Honduras. The
conflict in the course of initiating revolutionary changes and retaining the powers for better or
for worse have fundamentally changed or altered the lives of almost everyone in the society.
All the revolutions effectively have transformed the nation through the assault on significant
economic institution in the region of Latin America.
3. Briefly describe the various phases of the Mexican Revolution.
Mexico received the most bloodiest and sweeping modern revolutions that exploded
in 1910. Following it, Russian Revolution took place in the year 1917 and after three decades
in the year 1949, Chinese Revolution took place. Throughout the entire decade (1910-20),
civil war and rebellion destroyed the entire nation. To be precise, almost two million Mexican
died in the war and conflict, in the population of around fifteen million, revealing that around
10% of the Mexican population died. When the civil violence came to an end in the 1920,
Mexico held the first socialist constitution of the twentieth century. The socialist constitution
is the constitution that prohibited the guaranteed rights to workers, foreign control of national
resources and practically banned the Catholic Church from the historic public role. The
Revolution had retained its 35 year of dictatorship under Porfirio Diaz and put the
authoritarian construct in the political party, that would govern or rule the nation Mexico for
the rest of the century. After 1920, the Mexican regime would lift up the status of India to a
national icon and declare the Spanish to be the greatest villain I the history of Mexico. The

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Mexican Revolution moved forward through the series of revolutionary phases. In the first
phase that is identified between 1910 to 1913, the Porfiriato collapsed and the reformers who
were led by Francisco Madero took power, with an aim to institute a truly representative,
democratic society. But following it further, the enemies who were led by General Victoriano
Huerta, overthrew and killed Madero and initiated the phase of Counter revolution that took
place between 1914 to 1917. Carrance for a temporary period of time triumphed and initiated
a new constitution and became president. The efforts that were put forward by him did not
bring him immense success. He was eventually overthrown and executed by Obregon. The
final phase was identified in the year between 1917 to 1920 that marked the end of the major
upheavals and the beginning of revolutionary consolidation led by the president, Obregon, in
the 1920s.
5. Describe and analyze the political, social and cultural aspects of the Mexican
Revolution itself, including the role of key individuals like Madero, Zapata, Villa,
Carranza, Obregon and President Wilson.
Madero, after the triumphant return to Mexico City, held a national election in order
to envision his mandate to rule. Though Madero was considered a weak figure yet he and the
reformists at least achieved little success in his short span of sixteen months rule. Other
individual like Zapata in the south, and the Villa and others in the north, captured larger
territories, and powerful stalwarts of the Porfiriato into action against the increasingly in
effective Madero. In later events, with close assistance of the U.S ambassador to Mexico,
Henry Lane Wilson, General Victoriano Huerto deposed Madero in 1913 and had him
murdered in a supposed escape attempt. Following it, Carranza, the son of the landed class in
the north, turned his forces against Huerto after the murder of Madero. The three main
revolutionary leaders- Villa, Zapata and Carranza- established their new loosed alliance
against Huerto after the flight Villa and Zapata separated off with their essential radical

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program of land redistribution, in which Carranza did not participate Through astute political
alliances and military success of Obregon, Carranza wilfully isolated and neutralized Villa
and Zapata. Zapata directed himself in taking control of Morelos and contented themselves
along with carrying out their desired land reform. Whereas, Villa was defeated by Obregon
repeatedly in the series of battles. Following the event, in October, the United States
identified Carranza as de facto president of Mexico. Later by the Constitutional convention,
produced by the constitution in 1917 followed national elections, in which Carranzo was
sworn in as the president in the month of May 1917. Through the key roles of individuals like
like Madero, Zapata, Villa, Carranza, Obregon and President Wilson in the paradigm of
political, social and cultural aspects, the dynamics of Mexican Revolution is recognized.
7. In your opinion, what is the legacy of the PRI in Mexico?
PRI was introduced by the pivotal stature of Mexico, the presidency of Cardenas, in
the twentieth-century. The PRI was made into a weapon as the revolutionary family, that
effectively turned out to be the battlefield for political influence and power. After the 1930s,
there were certain categories in Mexico such as the peasants, industrialists, military and
workers that learned that power was the sole thing that can bring everything in accordance in
association with the international discussions and debates within the PRI. Though there were
opposition parties and contested elections, yet these were ineffective as the conclusion was
already decided that the PRI candidates are the ones who would always win the
governorships, presidency and the control of the Congress. Thereby, the legacy of PRI has
always been witnessed as the massive political machine in association with an organization
that extended is dynamics into every municipality in the nation. By the 1990s, the PRI
declines to the struggling phase as the PRI candidates could not hold on to their power
against all the levels of government and experienced further fragmentation of their own

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community along with series of economic crises and strong, massive challenges from the
political parties of the oppositional ground.
10. Identify and explain the significance of UFCO.
The inequities in Guatemala were increased by the presence United Fruit Company
(UFCO) that was formed in 1899 with the merging of newly emerging companies like
Banana exporting company, in the Caribbean and Central America. UFCO eventually became
one of the most powerful transnational corporation under the leadership of Samuel Zemurray
in the 1930s. UFCO, in Guatemala, constructed and regulated the only railway in the country,
stretching from the Atlantic coast to Guatemala City and then on to the Pacific coast and El
Salvador. It recognized to be the largest landholder having the majority of the holdings on
Atlantic coast. During the phase of Depression, UFCO negotiated an agreement with Dictator
Jorge Ubico that exempted the company from all taxation and the duties of export. The
depression hit the moment when the value of coffee and banana exports decreased by two-
thirds. With the immense extent of landholdings, power plants, railway, trucking company
and shipping fleets and other firms, the company was at time referred to by Central
Americans as el pulpo- the octopus. However, UFCO lobbied successfully in Washington for
action in the U.S government.