Social Revolution in Latin America
History 440 / 540
Fall 2004
T, Th 11-12:15
Admin 336
Dale Graden
Office: Admin 305 A
Office Hour: Monday 8-9 a.m. or by appointment
Office Telephone: 885-8956
Email: Graden@uidaho.edu
web: http://www/class.uidaho.edu/Graden
The purpose of this course is to offer an overview of the history of social revolution in Modern Latin America, with emphasis on the 20th and 21st centuries. Through readings, discussion and films, we shall analyze some of the important individuals, groups and historical forces which led to revolution. You need no background in Latin American history, nor Spanish or Portuguese language skills, to take this course.
It is important that you attend the classes and participate in the discussions. At every class meeting there will be opportunities for an exchange of ideas. A course of this nature can only be successful through your active involvement and participation. I encourage debate and questions. Feel free to question my interpretations. I want our class to be an environment where each of you is challenged to think critically. I am hopeful that this course is as stimulating for you as it is for me. Or even better, I would like for this course to be one of the peak experiences of your life.
I reserve the right to determine a grade based on attendance and participation. If you miss more than five class meetings during the semester without an excuse, you fail the course. If you cannot attend a class for health or other legitimate reasons, please inform me by email (address noted above). I want to emphasize that we all benefit by your commitment to this class from beginning to end.
You are requested to write three book critiques. Everyone is required to write critique number one (due Tuesday September 7) on Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries. Please keep an eye out for the film debut of The Motorcycle Diaries, scheduled for the end of August. Critiques number two and three are chosen from the other suggested readings in the course. Critiques number two and three that you select are due on the dates noted below on the syllabus. At each meeting when an assigned reading is due, we will discuss the book or essay. Each critique is worth thirty (30) points and your participation in class is worth ten (10) points.
Please note that you are welcome to choose another book upon which to write a critique if you are not moved by the required reading list posted below.
The 3-4 page critiques of a single book are assigned to all students to ensure that you read the book thoroughly and come to the class meetings prepared to share your insights. Your paper should address a theme(s) that you consider relevant and worthy of analysis. I would prefer not to receive a superficial overview of the book or article in these short essays. Rather, point out what you consider to key arguments of the author and comment on them. Don’t hesitate to make comparisons to other sources or to express your own opinions or interpretations. Good examples of book critiques can be found in The New York Review of Books and other magazines and journals that provide in-depth analyses of recent publications.
critique one
If you are taking this class for graduate credit, I request that you write an extra paper of five to ten (5-10) pages on a topic of your choice. This paper will be worth thirty (30) points, and the final grade of graduate students will be based on 130 points. Please meet with me to discuss your paper topic within the first three weeks of the course. I would also like an outline or a draft of the essay by week eight. Be sure that you cite correctly your sources with endnotes or footnotes (a good example can be found in articles published in the American Historical Review), and that you include a bibliography. For a short essay of this nature, it is always wisest to start with a specific topic and expand if necessary. There is great danger of trying to take on a broad topic that would necessitate extra research and your writing many more pages than the maximum number of ten pages.
Unfortunately I have to mention plagiarism. Plagiarism is theft. It is liking walking into a store and stealing an article. This means that it is imperative that you write the three book critiques and no one else. It is quickly obvious when an individual has submitted an essay penned by another person. More than four words taken directly from another source, for example an essay at a web site, is plagiarism. If you have any concerns about the way you have organized and written an essay, or chosen words or phrases, be sure to cite your source. Please do not plagiarize. If you plagiarize, you fail the course.
Readings
Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey,
Ocean Press, ISBN 1876175702
Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New
Left, Verso, ISBN 0860916901
John Brentlinger, The Best of What We Are: Reflections on the Nicaraguan
Revolution, University of Massachusetts Press, ISBN 0870239856
Margaret Randall, Risking a Somersault in the Air: Conversations with Nicaraguan
Writers Curbstone ISBN 0915306921
Claribel Alegria and Darwin Flakoll, Ashes of Izalco, Curbstone Press, ISBN
0915306840
Lynn Stephen, editor and translator, Hear My Testimony: Maria Teresa Tula, Human
Rights Activist of El Salvador, South End Press, ISBN 0896084841
Subcomandante Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings, Seven Stories
Press, ISBN 1583224726
Recommended: Historical lessons about counterinsurgency
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/01/04/counterpunch/
Week One History Lessons
Reading : begin, Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries
Tuesday August 24 Introduction and some comments on colonial Latin America
Thursday Aug 26 19th Century: The Poverty of Progress
Week Two Guatemala and Cuba
Reading: conclude Che, The Motorcycle Diaries
T Aug 31 Guatemala in 1954
Th Sept 2 National Security State in Guatemala and the
Rigoberta Menchu controversy
Interview with Jennifer Harbury
recommended is Lesley Gill, "Soldiering the Empire," nacla: Report on the
Americas 38:2 (Sept.-Oct. 2004) at http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2473
Week Three Che
Reading: begin Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are
T Sept 7 discussion of Che, The Motorcycle Diaries and required essay number one is due
Th Sept 9 "Contesting Castro" in the 1950s : Fidel in the mountains, urban guerrillas in Habana
Week Four Where the Boys Are : Cuba
recommended : "Radical Literacy: The Extraordinary Story of Cuba's 1961
Literacy Campaign" http://www.oceanbooks.com.au/literacy/lit-main.html
T Sept 14 Post-revolutionary Cuba
Th Sept 16 Habana, Miami, Washington, and Caracas !! :
Legacies of the Revolution
segment from sixty minutes on the US blockade of Cuba
Week Five Nicaragua
Reading : begin Brentlinger, The Best of What We Are
T Sept 21 discussion of Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are and optional essay two is
due
Th Sept 23 Sandino
Week Six Nicaragua
T Sept 28 Fires in the Mountains, and Managua in 1979
Th Sept 30 Election of 1989 and its aftermath
Week Seven Nicaragua
T Oct 5 discussion of Brentlinger, The Best of What we Are and optional essay
number three is due
Th Oct 7
Week Eight Writers and Revolution
Reading : Randall, Risking a Somersault in the Air
T Oct 12 Revolutionary poets
Th Oct 14 Revolutionary art
Week Nine Intellectual
Underpinnings
Reading: Alegria and Flakoll, Ashes of Izalco
T Oct 19 discussion of Randall, Risking a Somersault in the Air and optional
essay number four is due
Th Oct 21 view film "1932: Cicatriz de la Memoria"
Week Ten El Salvador : 1932
Reading : begin Stephen, Hear My Testimony
T Oct 26 see the film "Romero"
Th Oct 28 conclude "Romero" and discussion
Week Eleven El Salvador: Guerrilla warfare
Reading: continue with Stephen, Hear My Testimony
T Nov 2 discussion of Ashes of Izalco and optional essay number five is due
Th Nov 4 view segment from the Americas on the FMLN and discussion
Week Twelve El Salvador:
Testimonial Literature
Reading: conclude Stephen, Hear My Testimony
T Nov 9 Personal Testimony as history. What does it mean to be a prisoner of
conscience? Reflections on prison
Th Nov 11
Guest visit and discussion with Rich Wekerle. Rich
resides in Moscow, Idaho. He recently returned home after spending six months at
the Federal Prison at Sheridan, Oregon.
From Mr. Wekerle's web site: "On
November 23, 2003, Rich chose to become a Prisoner of Conscience, thereby
standing in solidarity with thousands of people who have died as a result of the
actions of some Latin American army personnel who were trained at the School of
the Americas located in Ft. Benning, Georgia.
Along with 26 other people Rich stepped onto the army base where all of them
were arrested for trespass.
On January 26, 2004, these 27 individuals were sentenced to probation or 3-6
months in federal prison."
I encourage you to read Rich's website at http://www.rweker.com
Also recommended is Leslie Gill, "Soldiering the Empire," on line
at NACLA: Report on the Americas 38:2 (September / October 2004) : http://www.nacla.org/art_display.php?art=2473
Week Thirteen Mexico and the Zapatistas
Reading : begin Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon
T Nov 16 discussion of Stephen, Hear My Testimony and optional essay number six is due
Th Nov 18 Zapata and the Mexican Revolution; segment of Saul Landau documentary
Thanksgiving (week 14)
Week Fifteen Subcommandante Marcos
T Nov 30 presentation by Luis Heriberto Cargua Rios
Th Dec 2 segment of documentary "Zapatista"
Week Sixteen Conclusions
T Dec 7 discussion of Marcos, Our Word is Our Weapon and optional essay number
seven is due
Th Dec 9
Some recommended books
US and Latin America
Van Gosse, Where the Boys are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left
Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism
Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America
Susan Martin, ed., Decade of Protest: Political Posters from the United States, Vietnam and Cuba, 1965-1975
E. Bradford Burns, Latin America: A Concise Interpretive History
E. Bradford Burns, The Povery of Progress: Latin America in the Nineteenth
Century
Eduardo Galeano, trans. Mark Fried, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World
Alma Guillermoprieto, The Heart that Bleeds: Latin American Now
Cuba
Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution
Carlos Franqui, Family Portrait with Fidel
Julie Marie Bunck, Fidel Castro and the Quest for a Revolutionary Culture in Cuba
Lois M. Smith and Alfred Padula, Sex and Revolution: Women in Socialist Cuba
Jorge Castañeda, Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara
Jon Lee Anderson, Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life
Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the
Cuban Revolution
Nicaragua
Omar Cabezas, Fire from the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista
Robert Edgar Conrad, editor and translator, Sandino: The Testimony of a Nicaraguan Patriot, 1921-1934
Margaret Randall, Risking a Somersault in the Air: Conversations with Nicaraguan
Writers
Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan Versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua
E. Bradford Burns, At War in Nicaragua: The Reagan Doctrine and the Politics of Nostalgia
John Brentlinger, The Best of What We Are: Reflections on the Nicaraguan Revolution
Ernesto Cardenal, Cosmic Canticle
Stephen Kinzer, Blood of Brothers: Life and War in Nicaragua
Claribel Alegria and Darwin Flakoll, Death of Somoza: The First Person Story of the Guerrillas Who Assassinated the Nicaraguan Dictator
Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua without Illusions: Regime Transition and Structural Adjustment in the
1990s
David Kunzle, The Murals of Revolutionary Nicaragua, 1979-1992
Guatemala
Jean-Marie Simon, Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny
Eduardo Galeano, Guatemala: Occupied Country, translated by Cedric Belfrage
Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala
Richard H. Immerman, The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemala Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954
Rigoberta Menchu, I, Rigoberta Menchu, edited and introduced by Elisabeth
Burgos-DeBray, translated by Ann Wright
Hal Cohen, "The Unmaking of Rigoberta Menchu," in David E. Lorey and
William E. Beezley, eds., Genocide, Collective Violence and Popular Memory: The
Politics of Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, 53-64
Arturo Arias, ed., The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy
El Salvador
Thomas P. Anderson, Matanza
José Ignacio López Vigil, Rebel Radio: The Story of El Salvador’s Radio Venceremos
Mario Lungo Uclés, El Salvador in the Eighties: Counterinsurgency and Revolution
Roque Dalton, Miguel Marmol
James R. Brockman, Romero: A Life
Mark Danner, The Massacre at El Mazote: A Parable of Cold War
Maria Teresa Tula, Hear My Testimony: Human Rights Activist of El Salvador,
edited and translated by Lynn Stephen
E. Bradford Burns, "The Modernization of Underdevelopment: El Salvador,
1858-1931," The Journal of Developing Areas 18 (April 1984), 293-316
Central America
Philip Berryman, Stubborn Hope: Religion, Politics and Revolution
John H. Coatsworth, Central America and the United States
Thomas W. Walker and Ariel Armony, Repression, Resistance and Democratic Transition in Central America
Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Tom Barry, Roots of Rebellion: Land and Hunger in Central America
Zapatistas, 1994 to present
Tom Hayden, ed., The Zapatista Reader
George A. Collier and Elizabeth Lowerty Quaratiello, Basta! Land and the
Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas
John Womack, Jr., Rebellion in Chiapas: An Historical Reader
Neil Harvey, The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and Democracy
Subcommandante Marcos et.al., Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings
Ziga Vodovnik, ed., !Ya Basta! : Ten Years of the Zapatista Uprising