I am happy to announce that this morning's class marked the beginning of my last week of Ibero-American History! I've never loved history classes. I enjoy certain aspects of history, but I often find the texts to be dry and boring, and the classes generally just a difficult time of lots of studying and memorizing dates. And so I was especially not looking forward to a full college history course crammed into four weeks, and was very excited to realize that this is my last week of said class! Ok, fine. It hasn't been that bad... And probably better that I took it here rather than a similar class at Greenville.
In my studies of the history of Spain and Latin America these past three weeks, I've come across several striking similarities amongst the various countries histories (more in Latin America than Spain). Those similarities being, the hand the US has played (good and bad, but really a lot of bad...) in the political turmoil in this part of the world, and the continual cycle of dictators and military coups.
In nearly every country I've looked at in Central and South America there has been, since the days of their independence from Spain, a history and vicious cycle of dictators overthrowing the ideas of democracy, and the struggles democratic leaders have faced in their various countries. I'm not saying the US model of democracy has got it completely correct, nor are we absolved from our crimes in these nations' histories. But we have sustained a democratic government and the same constitution for 200+ years, and that's pretty impressive. The countries in this area of the world haven't even been independent nations for that long, let alone democratic nations with a sustained functioning constitution.
Like I said though, I've come across a lot of issues that came from the hands of my government. Stable governments being overthrown by the CIA, dictators put in power and supported by our presidents and legislature, economies thrown into near crisis states because of actions our government took against them, support of military coups and brutal regimes...the list goes on. Most of this was done in the name of "stopping communism from spreading" and while this was probably true in some cases, we were also protecting our monopolies on land and companies that were held in these countries. Guatemala was thrust into a 36 year war because the CIA was sent in to remove a president who was, in all reality, a good leader of this country. Our (being the US government, but being a citizen of that country I can't remove myself from their actions. The color of my skin, and the accent I retain will always align me with that same government.) reasoning was that we were overthrowing a communistic leader, but the underlying issue is that the United Fruit Company, an American owned fruit monopoly, was worried that the land reform the president was working towards would potentially cause the collapse of their company. (PS. That president wasn't a communist.) Don't worry, the new president of Guatemala seems to be doing good things for the country and they've moved on past their civil war days. They also, in the grand scheme of things, don't harbor ill-will towards the US for our involvement in their country. But the fact of the matter is, in our quest to create countries just like our own, we've done some pretty terrible things (I would say check out the histories, closely, of the Dominican Republic, Chile, and Bolivia if you want more on this.).
Our past foreign policies are not something I'm necessarily proud of, as has been made more apparent by this class. That being said the more I learn about these countries, I can see how living in the States is a blessing. I have never lived under anything but a democratic leader. I have never had my rights taken away, nor has my family been taken away from me because of our beliefs. I can live in the security of knowing that our constitution will not allow for my civil liberties or basic human rights to be stripped from me. I am able to practice my religion openly. The media in my country is not censured (though perhaps a bit more censuring there would be a good thing! haha), and I am able to write my opinions about my country in this blog without having to worry about who might be reading it. Yes, there are aspects of our history that I cannot take pride in, and it hurts my heart to see some of the things my government has caused. But I am blessed. Hopelessly blessed by all the freedoms I have been given and enjoy without even thinking twice. Blessed indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment