Author: j.delacruz2

Posted on by j.delacruz2 Final Timeline Project

Mining and Agricultural Commodities

Works Cited:

Akiyama, Takamasa, and Panayotis N. Varangis. “The Impact of the International Coffee Agreement on Producing Countries.” The World Bank Economic Review, vol. 4, no. 2, 1990, pp. 157–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3989927.

Ford, Gerald. “Presidential Statement: Ford on International Coffee Agreement.” CQ Almanac Online Edition, 16 Apr. 1975, https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal75-865-26297-1210643.

Vox, The global coffee crisis is coming, YouTube, 10 Aug. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IN4ZcZAUbA.

Laird, Robbin. “Potosí and Its Silver: The Beginnings of Globalization.” SLDinfo, 20 Dec. 2020, https://sldinfo.com/2020/12/potosi-and-its-silver-the-beginnings-of-globalization/.

José Antonio Ocampo, “Commodity-Led Development in Latin America”, International Development Policy | Revue internationale de politique de développement [Online], 9 | 2017, Online since 11 October 2017, connection on 16 December 2022. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/poldev/2354; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/poldev.2354

Ennes, Juliana. “Illegal Logging Reaches Amazon’s Untouched Core, ‘Terrifying’ Research Shows.” Mongabay Environmental News, 15 Sept. 2021, https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/illegal-logging-reaches-amazons-untouched-core-terrifying-research-shows/.

Arnold, Peri E. “William Taft: Foreign Affairs.” Miller Center, 25 July 2017, https://millercenter.org/president/taft/foreign-affairs.

Taft, William. “December 3, 1912: Fourth Annual Message.” Miller Center, 23 Feb. 2017, https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/december-3-1912-fourth-annual-message.

Bauer, Sophie. “China’s Belt and Road Advances in Latin America’s Andean Region.” Dialogo Chino, 6 Mar. 2020, https://dialogochino.net/en/infrastructure/27815-chinas-belt-and-road-advances-in-latin-americas-andean-region/.

Posted on by j.delacruz2 Module 4 assignment: Latin America in the media

Dollar Dependency in US LA relations

After independence, much of Latin American foreign policy had been molded by its relationship with the United States. So I would like to discuss two important dynamics in the relationship, currency/ dollar dependence. The first represents the defining dynamic in the modern relationship between the United States and Latin America.

Many Latin American countries have had economies struggling with inflation in past decades. Some have been able to overcome that inflation, while others have failed to implement successful policies eliminating excessive inflation. Two examples are Argentina and el Salvador. The poor stability of the local currencies forces the citizens of these countries to seek dollars as a haven from inflation. In El Salvador, this has created an uncomfortable situation for the government, where their society is built on the dependence on the dollar and the fiscal policies of the United States. It puts el Salvador in a vulnerable position when the federal reserve bank lowers interest rates and effectively lowers the purchasing power of all the citizens of el Salvador. Effectively the United States has the power to export its inflation. Argentina, on the other hand, has a slightly different method of dealing with inflation. Agenrtiians have developed a culture where they spend their paychecks immediately since grocery prices can change in a  week, and what’s left of the pay, they save in the form of dollars and cryptocurrency. Both countries are developing crypto as a tool to exit dollar dependency. 

There has been a lot of media coverage concerning el Salvador’s adoption of Bitcoin as a legal tender. There has been a lot of criticism and concern expressed for a country giving bitcoin legal status as a legal tender since that makes it more difficult to ban another nation’s currency. CNBC says that “The country faces plummeting economic growth and a high deficit.”. The media coverage influences bond prices and the ability of el Salvador to borrow. IMF has also spoken out in concern for el Salvador’s use of Bitcoin. The president argues against the US Media coverage critical of his adoption. He thinks it’s a good economic maneuver. In a way, media coverage can influence economies, so whatever the US media covers will have an impact. In this case, this CNBC article, which is very critical of Bitcoin adoption, describes the issues of bitcoin use. But we also have to understand this is in the context of other domestic attitudes critical towards crypto. That can be motivation coverage like this.

Works Cited:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/el-salvadors-bitcoin-holdings-down-60percent-to-60-million-one-year-later.html https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-11-04/el-salvador-s-bitcoin-revolution-is-failing-badly?leadSource=uverify%20wall

Posted on by j.delacruz2 Timeline pilot project

Mining and Agricultural Commodities

Link to Timeline

Works Cited:

Akiyama, Takamasa, and Panayotis N. Varangis. “The Impact of the International Coffee Agreement on Producing Countries.” The World Bank Economic Review, vol. 4, no. 2, 1990, pp. 157–73. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3989927.

Ford, Gerald. “Presidential Statement: Ford on International Coffee Agreement.” CQ Almanac Online Edition, 16 Apr. 1975, https://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/document.php?id=cqal75-865-26297-1210643.

Vox, The global coffee crisis is coming, YouTube, 10 Aug. 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IN4ZcZAUbA.

Laird, Robbin. “Potosí and Its Silver: The Beginnings of Globalization.” SLDinfo, 20 Dec. 2020, https://sldinfo.com/2020/12/potosi-and-its-silver-the-beginnings-of-globalization/.

Posted on by j.delacruz2 Module 3 assignment - Latin America in the Cold War

Marvin L Gray Jr. Memo to David Belin in Response to the Rockefeller Commission

The document is short and straightforward. It is a letter written by Marvin L Gray Jr. to a commissioner named David Belin, who is an attorney working in the Rockefeller Commission. In this letter, Marvin protests against the use of a draft memo as evidence to be used in the commission. Attesting that his reporting in the memo is true to the best of his knowledge but that it wasn’t reviewed by other staff and, therefore, shouldn’t be held responsible and that since the document wasn’t officially used and only made as a draft, he wants to argue against its use as evidence for the commission and is writing this letter to submit his protest in writing so that it can accompany the memo in the commission. 

Now while the document itself doesn’t say much, it was a start to a lot of questions that led to me finding stunning examples of how the CIA, as an arm of the federal government, interacted with other areas of Latin America during the cold war. The Rockefeller Commission was set to look for any wrongdoing of the CIA and to look for evidence if any agency took steps to assassinate foreign leaders. Specifically, what this document relates to is section C of the 86-page Rockefeller Commission summary report. There we see how the United States describes the political situation in the Dominican Republic. At this point in time, it is well known that Rafael Trujillo has ruled the Dominican Republic with casual use of arrest and torture. As president, he has led the Dominican Republic to grow politically isolated, as many OAS member countries sever political ties with the country after Trujillo sponsored an assassination attempt on the President of Venezuela. The United States sees this tense situation that is bubbling after the 30-year rule, and they have to wonder how they should respond. They see that there are attempts to assassinate Rafael Trujillo by the Cubans sponsored by Venezuela, and in their mind doing nothing would be bad and eventually lead to a bad outcome. It is the hope of US operatives that some limited involvement will allow the US to influence the outcome of the aftermath of an assassination, collapse, or fleeing of the regime. There were some rules against agencies supplying weapons to groups in foreign countries, but they found ways to break those rules with justifications. For instance, the CIA didn’t plan the assassination, but they had regular contact with the group planning the assassination and also advised them on mistakes in the planers the plotters came up with on their own. It was a tug of war for the CIA operatives to deliver arms to these plotters. There were internal rules they danced around, and they decided not to inform the state department or ask for permission. Eventually, they sent pistols, three M1 carbine rifles, and ammunition. They did this concluding it didn’t break any arms embargo since the arms came from the US consulate and not the US directly. This not only demonstrates the complexity that goes into how the US interacts with Latin America, where you have multiple government groups acting basically independently from each other. But it also demonstrates how badly these operatives wanted to influence the regime to come after. The CIA’s main goal in all this was to prepare and organize a Pro US group that could lead the government afterward. In fact, in their own words, when they were having trouble not breaking the rules to deliver arms to these groups out of fear of discouraging the group, wanting to assure them of US support. In the end, other parts of the US government do become aware of the CIA’s involvement in this assassination plot only after the CIA tries to ask for automatic weapons. President Ford didn’t want the United States to have a bad reputation in the world and argued assassination of the world wasn’t a legitimate action for the US and that the assassination of a democratic leader goes against its values. So a letter is sent to the consulate and CIA to destroy all evidence of involvement with the plotters. That’s what the original document we were discussing has to do with. The Rockefeller Commission was looking for evidence of the CIA breaking rules, and the letter sent to the consulate alludes to the acknowledgment that they know they broke the rules doing this operation and they want the CIA to stop. Interesting to see the conflicting aims of the actors on the ground and their reaction to the current political circumstances. It’s also interesting to see how the US can get involved and how ultimately how, it can take so little to have an outsized impact. 

Sources:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/21505-document-12

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/21512-document-19

Posted on by j.delacruz2 Module 2 assignment - Visual sources of late 19th-century or early 20th-century Latin America

State Government Building

State Government Building. 

Tulane Univeirsty Digital Library/ Box 17, Disk 4, Collenberg & Miller, Collection 50, CM5-17-166

The visual above depicts the state government building in the urban setting of Morelia, Mexico. The neo-classical architecture style for this governor’s palace is indicative of how the Mexican government aligns itself with European values and societies. The electrical grid system, and electric-powered lighting sticking outward from the building’s facade, are indicative of the efforts made by the Mexican government. Especially the effort of the government of Porfirio Diaz in modernizing Mexico. President Diaz personally put a heavy emphasis on grand modernizing projects across urban centers, and we see that displayed in the photo. “ A new opera house was under construction in Mexico City, government office buildings were going up throughout the downtown core, and electric lights and automobiles were everywhere on the city’s streets. Mexicans could also celebrate the success of massive engineering projects, including a drainage tunnel that emptied the waters of the Valley of Mexico, ending the threat of malaria in the capital city. Though it had slowed in recent years, Mexico’s economy had been growing spectacularly since the 1880s, bringing new agricultural wealth, new mines, and even an emerging industrial sector. Díaz covered the city in lights to mark these achievements.” (98 Dawson) Even if the rural areas weren’t exactly experiencing the same increase in the standard of living the urban centers were, Mexico wasn’t alone. Several other Latin countries had their urban centers at the forefront of modernization efforts to achieve material progress using positivism as a framework. Some leaders, such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, President of Argentina, even went as far as to hold rural living people as backward. Domingo would go as far as to describe his contempt for people he felt were opposite to the modern urban centers embracing liberal free markets and European-style progress. In Facundo: Civilization and Barbarism, Domingo makes his stance clear, “As for the city man of Argentina, he wears a European suit and lives a civilized life. In the cities there are laws, ideas of progress, means of instruction, municipal organization, and regular government. Outside the cities, the look of everything changes.” (139 Wood) Domingo has an underlying belief that his nation needs to overcome its backwardness through a government immigration project. This thinking isn’t dissimilar from Profiorio Diaz’s wanting to progress his country through government modernization projects. In the case of both men, they prized the urban modern centers they were working on modeling from European societies.

Problems in Modern Latin American History : Sources and Interpretations, edited by James A. Wood, and Anna Rose Alexander, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2019.

Dawson, Alexander S. Latin America since Independence: A History with Primary Sources. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2022.

https://digitallibrary.tulane.edu/islandora/object/tulane%3A10296
Posted on by j.delacruz2 Module 1 assignment - Late Colonial and early Independence Latin American sources

Mexican Gentlemen

Mexican Gentlemen 

JCB Archive of Early American Images/ Accession number: 05425/ Image: Mexican Gentlemen

The visual shows two men riding on horseback. Both men are dressed in ornate garb in the Spanish style. There are lots of patterns and patchwork to make intricate shapes. Both have hats that blend with the general European style, with added colored edged brims and band cloths. The horses look well groomed with their hair, having a side strudel. The horses have leather saddles, one with what looks like fur, and the other having what appears to be an ornate caparison with complex patterns, having woven tassels on the caparison’s edges to illustrate decoration further. Notably, both horse saddles are equipped with a pair of stirrups. Both men are fair-skinned, most likely members of the creole caste. Both men have their hair with large sideburns. We can notice the different styles in which the men’s jackets are fashionable, and also particularly, the different styled shirt collars, with the man in green having a high collar. In colors, we see green and red as the main themes, appearing again and again over multiple pieces of clothing. Notably, one man carries a calvary saber, potentially noting a military role, or status, though neither is in military uniform.  

Now what we can infer from this illustration about these men in particular, and maybe the society we live in, is very clear these are both men who are high-status gentlemen. This illustration was drawn in 1824, that is three years after Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821. This means it was the early years of a newly independent Mexico trying to establish itself, free to make decisions.  Especially considering this is after the First Empire of Mexico was dissolved and a republic with a constitution was adopted. So we know these men were experiencing lots of change in terms of what leadership in the country looked like. We can tell these men depicted are of high status and wealth due to the ornate nature of their clothing. It is very detailed, and can maybe consider the colors they are using have a political motivation. Since it uses red and green, we can consider that these are colors Mexico uses on its flag, as opposed to Bourbon white. So by wearing these colors, they could be indicating support for the republic. We can also add to the context that these men in particular are probably benefiting a lot from the independence movement, as they will work towards generating more wealth from more trade-focused policies.  

I also think of Ildefonso Coronel from the Camilla Townsend article. These men illustrated appear to be of a similar disposition to what class Ildefonso was a part of, and we may consider that they would be in similar situations in terms of business and navigating the social intricacies of their region. These men are probably considered “leading citizens”. Mexico did not end slavery until 1829, so at the time of this illustration, slavery was still legal, and these men are experiencing that time in this illustration. So the activities Ildefonso was participating in could very well be similar to what they did in their life and what could have been expected of them, such as, for example, in Ildefonso’s “Where young people’s clubs met to read works of men such as Thomas Jefferson and Abbe Raynal” and also business deadline such as “He would soon form a relationship with Gibbs, Crawley & Co.” These are the types of activities these men as members of the creole class could have been participating in during and after the independence movements. 

Works Cited 

Townsend, Camilla. “Angela Batallas: A Fight for Freedom in Guayaquil.” The Human Tradition in Colonial Latin America 

“Mexican Gentlemen.” Mexican Gentlemen – JCB Archive of Early American Images, https://jcb.lunaimaging.com/luna/servlet/detail/JCB~1~1~105~230252:Mexican-Gentlemen?sort=image_date%2Csubject_groups&qvq=w4s%3A%2Fwhen%2F1801-1850%3Bq%3Amexico%3Bsort%3Aimage_date%2Csubject_groups%3Blc%3AJCB~1~1&mi=24&trs=86.