Regional Focus (Latin America)

From the lectures from Monday and Wednesday, Latin American countries shared a common theme of colonialism and transculturation. It was mentioned that legacies of colonialism included economic, political and social aspects that set the stage for the entrenched structural inequalities.  There was a political image shown on Wednesday that showed like four or five little kids, portrayed as various Latin American countries, crying and climbing on their father, portrayed as the US. This showed that these structural inequalities led other countries, specifically the United States to see Latin American countries as infants and inferior to them. This also caused high income inequalities in Latin America where most of the leaders and people part of the ruling government were way better off than the rest of their citizens, who lived in poverty and unequal conditions. It was also mentioned that transculturation was the dialectic exchange of culture, mutually influencing encounters even within a highly unequal power structure to create something new and uniquely Latin American. Mutually influencing encounters like the Mexican revolution preceded and lead to other revolutions around Latin America. These revolutions were caused by the American support for dictatorships, which caused many of the problems Latin Americans faced because of their unfair rulers. The US looked down upon Latin American countries and supported dictatorship, which were negative effects and views of colonialism and caused transculturation.

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