What Exactly is Latin America?

Joel Wolfe

After a lecture I gave to my Modern Latin America survey, a student asked me how Haiti could be considered Latin America given it had been a French colony. This is a great question, but it was also a little annoying, because one of the themes I use to organize the survey is whether or not it makes sense to consider the region a region.

One point I make on the first day of class is that there is no right or wrong answer to that question. There are very strong arguments both for and against seeing Latin America as a unified whole.

Looking at the region as everything in the Western Hemisphere south of the United States can be very useful. The vast majority of the nations in this area share a common Iberian heritage. Most of them are predominantly Catholic, have large mixed race populations, and have had complex and often contested relations with the U.S.—the hemisphere’s dominant power—for more than a century. And, on many significant levels, these nations tend to see themselves as having a shared history. Sure, Haiti’s French roots complicate things (along with Jamaica’s and Belize’s ties to Great Britain), but even those countries tend to have more in common historically with the other nations of the region than not.

We can also find a great deal that differentiates one country from another, however. In the colonial era (ca. 1500-1820), Mexico City loomed as one of the world’s great cities, but the villages that became some of the great cities of the present (Buenos Aires and São Paulo, for example) were tiny backwaters. Today, life in Buenos Aires or São Paulo is more consonant with that in Barcelona or even Chicago than with that in the villages of highlands Guatemala or Bolivia or any number of other places in Latin America. It isn’t just a matter of the physical geography of these cities versus rural spaces. Many of the region’s largest cities exude a modern ethos and Western orientation. Such identities are often absent or at least contested in other, particularly rural, Latin American spaces.

This tension about Latin America’s coherence as a concept or even region has fueled more than just the ways I organize some of my classes; it has also shaped my scholarship. My first book is a study of the rise of Brazil’s industrial working class in the city of São Paulo. After writing my doctoral thesis and then revising it for publication, I realized that one of my study’s limits was São Paulo’s uniqueness. It is simultaneously the largest metropolitan area in the entire southern hemisphere and Latin America’s largest industrial complex, and yet in many ways it is atypical of Brazil. Within its own country, São Paulo (the city and the state), with its modernist ethos, large immigrant populations, devotion to both advanced agricultural and industrial production, is both unique and dominant. In other words, you can’t rationally analyze Brazil without reference to São Paulo, but you would be wrong to see Brazil through Paulista (a resident of the state) eyes.

I tried to address this issue in my new book on automobility in Brazil. Autos and Progress is a study of Brazil’s struggle to integrate the massive, often disconnected, and regionally diverse nation through the use of technology (cars, trucks, and buses). In many ways, the embrace of the technological fix by Brazilians was a Paulista idea, although autos and automobility had and have broad appeal throughout the country. The tensions among Brazilian regional identities and the very real (you can’t say “concrete” when you write about cars and road building!) struggles to physically, socially, and economically unify the nation became a central theme for the book and have become part of how I organize my History of Brazil class.

In other words, there is a great deal of utility in asking whether or not it makes sense to think of Latin America (or Brazil or Mexico, for example) as a unified whole. Thinking about what we gain and what we lose when we either split or lump regions and sub-regions in our teaching and scholarship can not only help our students make sense of a lot of complex history, it can also clarify key aspects of our research agendas.

Documentary - Battle For Haiti

Caught this interesting documentary from PBS Frontline which looks at Haiti a year after the Earthquake. View here. Corruption is so endemic that I am not sure if elections will have much of an impact. Time will tell. But I have always questioned the aid strategy there. The focus should be on empowering Haitians to build their own economy, to work for themselves, etc...as opposed to relying so heavily on NGO's and the UN.

Also amazed (suppose I shouldn't be surprised) at how fast the World lost interest.

The Haiti Earthquake One Year Later: A Survey of Religious Disaster Relief -- Sightings

It has now been a year since the Haiti Earthquake.  From most reports the situation remains dire, complicated by political turmoil and cholera outbreaks.  If there is any silverlining it is the input of faith-based organizations.  Although faith-based work cannot solve all the problems nor can it replace government aid, it does play an important role in disaster relief.  This is especially true of groups like Church World Service that connect with and employ persons from the country in question.  Jonathan Bergman, a historian of disaster relief efforts has offered an interesting take on what has transpired.

*************************

Sightings 2/3/2011

The Haiti Earthquake One Year Later:

A Survey of Religious Disaster Relief

-- Jonathan C. Bergman

On January 12, 2010, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti just sixteen miles outside the capital city, Port-au-Prince. The quake left approximately 200,000 dead, more than a million displaced, and an infrastructure in tatters. The relief campaign started with a torrent of public, private and non-profit aid and personnel flooding into the country. American and N.A.T.O. troops, United Nations relief workers and Doctors without Borders appeared prominently on the scene. But an important part of the relief program includes the ongoing efforts of church groups, diocesan offices of social concerns and individuals moved to action through faith. These efforts provide a unique opportunity to discern the modern face of religious disaster relief.

Religious relief has long been a feature of the post-disaster environment. Matthew Mulcahy’s Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 considers the impact of disaster on colonial society and the diversity of extant relief regimes. A component of that relief included faith-based solutions to rebuild stricken parishes, extend aid to the displaced and minister to hard-hit communities. My own work demonstrates a landscape filled with religious aid and assistance after the "Hurricane of 1938" hit the northeastern United States. Parishes formulated relief strategies to rebuild damaged churches, provide aid to the Native American community, and impanel ad hoc committees for outreach and fundraising.

The past year in Haiti has seen religious groups providing a wide array of disaster aid and assistance. The techniques utilized demonstrate both the practicality and potency of faith-based initiatives. Through a preexisting network of churches in the United States, the United Methodist Committee on Relief (U.M.C.O.R.) provides volunteer services for reconstruction and ministry development. U.M.C.O.R. effectively leverages local intelligence and personnel supported by a modern infrastructure. The Church World Service, whose presence in Haiti began in the aftermath of Hurricane Hazel in 1954, coordinates development aid, food security programs, training and technical assistance. They also provide cutting edge agricultural programs and sustainability measures thus enabling Haiti to provide for the needs of its own citizens.

Neither has the disaster relief effort been confined to Christian organizations. Islamic Relief USA and the International Red Crescent constitute a major part of the response campaign. Volunteers from these groups shored up damaged structures with parent organizations providing seed money for local rehabilitation strategies. The Jewish Distribution Committee has a long history in Haiti going back to World War II when the island nation provided a safe harbor to Jews fleeing the Holocaust. It currently offers medical and counseling services for the injured and amputees in a brand new rehabilitation center.

A common feature of all religions has been donation campaigns and fundraising drives. Some have even tried inventive strategies. For example, the Grace Christian Reformed Church of Welland, Canada, which sponsored the “Gotta Get a Goat” campaign providing goats to Third World families, followed up with the “Bundle of Bricks” drive. With a donation of $30 per brick, the church aims to put a deserving Haitian family into a newly constructed home.

Religious groups have a record of adopting modern solutions to secular and religious concerns. Paul Boyer notes in an article for Church History that a prominent feature of American religious groups has been their “embrace of the latest in technology and management techniques.” He observes the organization, efficiency and advertising campaigns utilized by churches from the nineteenth century to the present. The practice appears to be alive and well on the front lines of Haitian relief.

But religious relief amounts to more than a tally of personnel mustered, aid delivered and homes rebuilt. It also encompasses the spiritual health of the Haitian people. With an estimated three out of every five religious practitioners in Haiti identifying themselves as Catholic, the Catholic Church and the United States Conference of Bishops formulated the Program for the Reconstruction of the Church in Haiti. The program seeks to rebuild the Catholic Church system and perform needed outreach to restore Haitians’ sense of purpose and religiosity. Far away from Haiti, in a modest corner of Queens, New York, the Church of SS. Joachim and Anne tends to the needs of the Haitian immigrant and expatriate community. The practice of charismatic Catholicism, which includes boisterous sermonizing and vigorous prayer, gives individuals touched by the earthquake a renewed sense of faith.

Faith-based relief appears valuable on at least another front. A common criticism of disaster relief is the displacement of indigenous personnel and solutions in favor of outside sources leaving victims of disaster unable to provide for themselves once relief workers depart—the so-called “aid trap.” Faith-based solutions actively utilize homegrown resources and participate alongside the Haitian community offering the potential of a more complete and long-term solution to the island’s problems.

As this brief survey demonstrates, religious disaster relief embodies the old and new, traditional and modern, practical and spiritual. If the Haitian example is any indication, and I think it is, faith-based aid and assistance will continue to be a vital part of modern disaster relief.

References

Jonathan C. Bergman, “Church, Community, and Religious Disaster Relief: Three Case Studies from the Hurricane of 1938, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York,” Long Island History Journal 21 (Spring 2010) 2.

Paul Boyer, “Two Centuries of Christianity in America: An Overview,” Church History, 70 (Sep., 2001) 3: 544-556.

“Islamic Relief to Send Aid to Colombia’s Victims,” PRNewswire, December 21, 2010.

Burton Joseph, “Church World Service Special: Religion’s Response to Disaster,” Church World Service, November 23, 2010.

Matthew Mulcahy, Hurricanes and Society in the British Greater Caribbean, 1624-1783 (Baltimore, M.D.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).

Maura R. O’Connor, “Does International Aid Keep Haiti Poor – The Most Dependent Independent Nation in the World,” Slate, January 4, 2011.

Jonathan C. Bergman is Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M University – Commerce. He holds a J.D. from Touro Law School and a Ph.D. in twentieth-century American Political History from the University at Buffalo. His research interests include disaster and the relief process and the meeting ground between culture and calamity.

----------

In this month's Religion and Culture Web Forum, Jessica DeCou offers a comic interpretation of the theology of Karl Barth, bringing his work into a surprising and fruitful dialogue with the comedy of Craig Ferguson. Both men, she contends, “employ similar forms of humor in their efforts to unmask the absurdity and irrationality of our submission to arbitrary human powers.” The humor of Barth and Ferguson alike stresses human limitation against illusory deification. DeCou argues for understanding both the humor and the famous combativeness of Barth's theology as part of this single project, carried out against modern Neo-Protestant theology. The Religion and Culture Web Forum is at:

http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/

----------


Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Wyclef Jean survives criticism, works to uplift Haiti

During election seasons, Republicans love to blast liberal, Hollywood actors for spouting off their political beliefs. In reality, it’s quite hypocritical, but that’s another story. Yet, Wyclef Jean and Sean Penn continue to make mincemeat of conservative critics that claim that Hollywood entertainers are dim-witted glamour hounds. Our collective thanks should to these two, who continue to toil away even when there are no cameras around.

Read the rest at The Loop.

The Haitian Mess

One week ago today on Tuesday, January 12th at 4:53pm local time, an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale rumbled from 6 miles under the Caribbean island of Hispaniola not far from the capital city of Port-au-Prince in the nation of Haiti.

Widespread damage and massive death resulted almost immediately, and as the ensuing week has passed the death toll estimates have risen into the hundreds of thousands. It was the worst quake to strike at Haiti in over two centuries, and is going to prove to be one of the largest natural disasters in human history.

There is a story here that is being mostly buried under the literal rubble that is now the nation of Haiti. It is a story that most humanitarians would say is secondary at this stage to the human loss and suffering. They are correct on one level. Help is needed, massive amounts of help, and it is needed quickly.

But that story needs to be told as well, because it tells the story of a nation that was a complete mess even before the earthquake struck. It is a story of a nation run by criminal gangs and thugs with little or no national authority. It is a cautionary tale about allowing anarchy to take hold and destroy lives.

For those who are not aware of the basic facts, Haiti makes up the western end of the island of Hispaniola which it shares with it's neighbor on the east side, the Dominican Republic. The island is approximately 700 miles southeast of Florida.

It was on December 5th, 1492 that Christopher Columbus landed in the 'New World' at Hispaniola and claimed the island for Spain. The island was already inhabited at that time by a native tribe known as the Taino. Over the next couple of hundred years the Spanish continued to develop the island, and also began importing African slaves.

In the late 17th century, French buccaneers began to settle the west side of the island which would later become Haiti, and pirates used Hispaniola regularly thereafter due to it's strategic location in the Caribbean. Famed French pirate Jean Lafitte, who frequently operated off the southern United States, was born here in 1782. John Audubon, the famed French-American ornithologist for whom today's nature society is named, was born in what is now Haiti in 1785.

The Spanish and French fought for control of the island, and in 1697 signed a treaty that gave the French control of the western end which they named Saint-Domingue. They brought in thousands of African slaves who made possible the French settlers wealth in the coffee, sugar and indigo industries.

In 1791 a revolution of sorts began to break out among the slaves, which was inspired itself by the French Revolution. The French tried to maintain control by abolishing slavery, and a former slave took over the reigns of governmental power for the first time.

Napoleon Bonaparte attempted to retake control and reinstitute slavery a few years later. These efforts proved not only fruitless but disastrous, as more than 50,000 French troops were lost in the efforts. On January 1st, 1804, the slaves formally declared independence and renamed their nation as Haiti, thus becoming the only nation ever born directly of a slave revolt.

In July of 1825, France again tried to reconquer the island. This time the Haitian government did not fare so well, and was forced to negotiate a peace that allowed it to retain its independence and name, but at the cost of financially reimbursing France for what it deemed were lost slave wage profits.

In the aftermath of this deal with France the Haitian government lost support and in 1843 was removed in a coup. This began a string of dozens of such governmental coups over the ensuing century and a half, leading right up to today. In 2004, the latest coup removed President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and the United Nations has been trying to restore order ever since.

Haiti is a nation with a supposed political structure, but which in actuality was being run on a day-to-day practical level by gangs, some organized and some not, but all violent in nature. These gangs divert or hijack any material aid sent to the country by well-meaning humanitarian groups, with only the Brazilian-led U.N. mission keeping any semblance of order.

It was the mess of a nation called Haiti, a nation that really didn't need any more trouble heaped upon it, that was devastated last week. But the real fact is that Haiti's 10 million people were already living under intolerable, unmanageable circumstances long before the earthquake.

In the aftermath of the quake, the United States has been requested to come to the rescue and provide security for the massive undertaking that will be the rescue, relief, stabilization, and recovery operation that will be going on in the country over the coming months and years.

With a little luck and a lot of sustained American intervention, it is possible that what is reborn of Haiti can actually be better than what came before, and can provide the Haitian people with stability and an opportunity at having a real society that is free and safe for all it's citizens, not just the elite few or the street-wise strongmen that were contributing to its ruin long before the earthquake.