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This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students. HY is designed to provide students with an introduction to the history of Latin America from the late nineteenth century to the present day. Its focus is predominantly on Latin Americans and what happened within the region. In addressing these themes and topics, we will be paying particular attention to histories of race, class and gender with students encouraged to consider how different Latin Americans experienced and influenced the course of history in the region.
There will be a reading week in the Michaelmas and the Lent Terms and a revision lecture in the Summer Term. Nor is all this great expanse of territory a tangled jungle steaming under a tropical sun. Most of the countries have some tropical or semitropical areas, but there are many temperate regions. Latin Americans are sensitive on this point, and tourists who wear tropical helmets in temperate cities like Lima, Peru, will be met with reserve.
Americans who used to hoot at Englishmen looking for Indians on Broadway will understand this feeling. The social and cultural achievements of the twenty nations are likewise varied. In some countries illiteracy runs as high as 75 per cent, while in others the majority of people are literate. The tiny Central American republic of Costa Rica has long prided itself upon having more teachers than soldiers.
In every country there are at least a few extremely well-educated individuals who speak several languages fluently and who are at home in the world of European culture.
Living standards are relatively low on the whole, at least compared to ours. A few countries have made important advances in improving the social and economic conditions of their people. They have an eight-hour day, and accident insurance for industrial workers; child labor is not allowed; and old people receive pensions.
Elections are decided by secret ballot, and women are allowed to vote. Uruguay has over 1, free primary schools, good secondary schools, and a university.
In addition, the government supports a School of the Air to reach by radio programs those among the rural population who can neither read nor write. Uruguay is somewhat ahead of the rest, but in most Latin-American countries the standard of living of the people is improving. The standard of living of any country depends upon the nature of its resources and the vigor and intelligence with which they are developed. In this field, too, there are great contrasts, although economically all the Latin-American nations have some bonds in common.
They have all been producers of raw materials for the world, such as coffee, wheat, bananas, tin, silver, and oil, and have all had to borrow capital from abroad. They have all lacked capital, manpower, and technical knowledge to develop fully their great natural resources. Certain other characteristics of Latin America may be noted.
It has the smallest population and lowest number of inhabitants per square mile of any continent save Australia. This holds true despite the fact that Haiti, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic are among the most densely populated countries in the world. Most of the nations are primarily dependent on agriculture and mining, and are comparatively young in the scale of economic development.
The total import trade of South America in was less than that of France; its total export trade was less than that of Germany. Between half and two-thirds of the people of Latin America are only very indirectly connected with systems of commerce. Most of them produce what they need from the land, living in isolation and relative poverty. Another common characteristic is the difficulty of transportation. High mountain ranges and great areas of jungle are serious obstacles to the construction of highways and railroads. As a result, transportation by land is inadequate and fragmentary in the extreme.
Only three areas—those centering on Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Santiago—possess rail networks even remotely comparable to those of Europe or the United States.
Surface passenger travel between countries is largely confined to steamships. Highway mileage passable for automobiles has increased substantially in recent years but is still remarkably low. A large part of Latin America depends upon cart roads and mule trails, while the Amazon River and its tributaries is the principal transportation systemfor an area two-thirds the size of the United States. The airplane has brought about a revolution in transportation. Since there has been a tremendous development of air lines throughout the area.
Today in only seven of the twenty republics does railroad mileage exceed air-line mileage, and many Latin-American countries have more air-line mileage per thousand square miles than the United States.
Before the war American and European air lines did much to bring about this tremendous development of air transportation. The United States government as a part of our wartime assistance has also provided technical assistance and trained many pilots. All the principal countries now have growing national air services. Its factory products almost equaled in value the wheat and beef which had previously been the only foundations of its export economy.
Flour, sugar, wines, canned goods, and vegetable oils are among the foodstuffs processed. Shoes, cigarettes, soap, paper, glass, furniture, paints, cements, electrical appliances, chemicals, tires, and the assembling of automobiles are among the manufactures.
Brazil also has important industries and during the next decade may well become the principal manufacturing nation of Latin America. Its citizens face the future with as much energy, optimism, and vision as can be found anywhere north or south of the Rio Grande. Its pace is the pace of Chicago and of New York.
Francisca de Figueroa, an African-Iberian woman seeking entrance into the Americas, petitioned the Spanish Crown in in order to gain a license to sail to Cartagena. New York: Harper, Although in a few cases, social measures resulted, such as the abolition of slavery in Mexico, correspondingly, the social results of these independence movements were very limited. Approximately 40 percent of all Argentines have Italian ancestry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press True, they all speak Spanish except Haiti, which uses French, and Brazil, whose 44 million inhabitants one-third of all Latin Americans speak Portuguese. Most nationalist leaders in Latin America hoped for fairly big states on the U.
Mexico, Uruguay, and Chile also have considerable industrial development. Latin America is not favored, however, with easily available resources of coal or water power, so that its industry will always have to overcome great obstacles in order to gain maximum growth. Much of the industrial development of Latin America was made possible by the billions of dollars of capital poured into Latin America by Europe and the United States.
British investments are estimated at 3. All other European investments are relatively small and scattered.
There was very little inter-American trade, partly because of transportation difficulties. The explanation is, of course, that the United States is a good customer for tropical agricultural products, but a poor customer—or no customer at all—for a number of important temperate zone farm products which compete with our own. But we took only 8 per cent of its wool, 5 per cent of its meats, no wheat or corn, and only 4 per cent of its other cereals. If we are to understand our neighbors and develop an intelligent policy toward them, we must realize that, above all, the people of Latin America are greatly diversified.
Because Americans know Mexico best, they often assume that all Latin America is full of native tribes holding ceremonial dances in quaint costumes. There are other racial differences too. Haiti is a Negro republic; Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Costa Rica are largely white; while Brazil has probably a more thoroughly mixed population than any other country in the world.
In every country, too, more recent European immigration has added to the complexity of the racial composition of Latin America.