Author: Matthew Baigorria

Posted on by Matthew Baigorria Final Timeline Project

Problems of Peruvian Presidents

Works Cited

Posted on by Matthew Baigorria Timeline pilot project

Peru’s Recent Presidency Problems

Works Cited

Posted on by Matthew Baigorria Module 4 assignment: Latin America in the media

Peruvian President’s One After the Other

Peru has recently had a bad history with presidents. In 2020, Manuel Merino was impeached and removed by congress claiming that Merino suffered a permanent moral incapacity and then three candidates were chosen in less than a week until finally Present Sagasti was elected by congress to lead the country as interim president until the election year arrived and then in 2021, Pedro Castillo was elected president to the surprise of many as this was seen as a sign of resurgence for left leaning politicians as Castillo prided himself as being a man that believes in labor rights. There was much turmoil in the election of Castillo as the vote between himself and his competitor was very close. Throughout his reign as president ist was filled with the media accusing him of corruption and congress fighting against him, similar to how Merino’s presidency was until he was impeached. Castillo on December 5th used his powers as president to propose the removal of congress to the surprise of many and to raise his own powers permanently changing the government and was using his power in an attempt to brute force his new policies into fruition. Congress immediately disavowed him and attempted to impeach him and succeeded. Castillo was then arrested by Lima police forces for corruption and his attempt to damage the Peruvian government.”In a stunning turn of events, Castillo was detained by police in the capital city Lima after lawmakers impeached him in Congress.“(CNN 2022) Now Castillo’s vice president, Dina Boluarte, is immediately voted in as president by congress. As you can infer Peru’s government is filled with corruption. What the article doesn’t explain is that the people know that congress, politicians and the presidents are corrupted and that there is a massive loss of faith from the Peruvian people and that this is becoming the standard in Peru. When I asked my father what he thought of this as he lived in Peru for all of his young life, he said that he wasn’t surprised and that when he went back to Peru in November that nothing had changed at all from since he was a kid there and that its been the same and will most likely remain the same until corruption in the upper echelons of the Peruvian government is gone. My father lives in New York City and the comparison between NYC and Peru is night and day as the big apple is suspect to tons of changes every year. He believes that since he was a kid in the 1970s to now, Peru hasn’t changed. To someone like me who’s lived in New York all his life the thought is crazy to me. Latin America is rife with corruption with either the government itself not upholding its ideals or the military attempting to make a grab for power. An example of a military regime making a grab for power was in Brazil in the 1960s when the military overthrew President Goulart. For example, “limiting freedom, removing elected officials, purging the civil service and judiciary. Martial law in turn became an opportunity to target unions, dissident intellectuals, anyone on the left.”(Dawson 235). I could overhear this news on the television tomorrow about any Latin American country and I would sadly not be surprised. The people of Peru or countries similar to Peru are hardy people who have grown used to news like this and find comfort in our rich culture, work, and the best food in the world, this is fact.

Work’s Cited

Posted on by Matthew Baigorria Module 3 assignment - Latin America in the Cold War

The Real Relationship Between Castro and the Soviet Union

The United States became a defined superpower after World War II and the main opponent they faced during this tumultuous time was the Soviet Union. These two powers fought one another because of the way their societies functioned and how it threatened each other’s failures. Capitalism and communism were at each other’s heads and the US feared communism would spell their doom so they did whatever they could to prevent the spread of communism and tried their best to contain it. With the US having the position of being a superpower they focused on making sure that the USSR had no ability to influence a nation close to its American borders so the USA dwelled into Latin American nations to ensure that and with the US having the power that it does, it steamrolled any resistance that the Latin American nations could have put up. Until the figure that was Castro came into power in Cuba and was successful in turning any attempt by the USA to manipulate Cuba, into failure.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the superpowers ever were to coming into war but the fear of war devolving into nuclear destruction was too much and peace and negotiations eventually won out. But the Cuban Missile Crisis was a time of great turmoil as Cuba became a stronghold for Castro and the USSR to spread the influence of communism in Latin America and be ready to attack the borders of the United States. At this moment in time everyone in America feared the Soviet Union and what it could do with its armament of nuclear weapons, but this document proved that things weren’t going so smoothly for America’s opposition as what Castro and the Soviet Union would have liked the United States government and its people believe.

This document is a conversation between Castro and A.I. Mikoyan that describes the real relationship between Cuba and the USSR or rather how little the actual relationship really was. In it you can infer that Mikoyan sees Castro and Cuba as a means to an end to weaken the position of the United States with their superiority and the threat that Cuba could have nuclear warheads in Cuba when in reality the USSR doesn’t trust Cuba with missiles at all. Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was a Soviet politician with a high position in the Communist party and crucial to the USSR so the conversation between Castro and Mikoyan was important. This document reveals that Castro was frustrated with the USSR when they began pulling Soviet troops out of Cuba and the fact that the USSR never intended to hand over nuclear missiles over to Cuba as it revealed that the Soviet Union would never trust a smaller nation with such power. This reveal of the state of their relationship comes at a shock to me because I would have expected the two countries to have a better relationship over the fact that they share a common enemy in the United States and capitalism in general, but it shows that like the Soviet Union’s policies in their own country, they don’t trust anyone, and are a paranoid country. As stated in James A. Wood, “better to stay with loyal friends than experiment with change” (Problems, pg. 247). The actions of the Soviet Union here more than likely preserved the relative peace of the Cold War as Castro would abuse his power as a government that has nuclear bombs than any other dictator at the time.

Documents

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/20666-national-security-archive-doc-11-record

Work Cited

Wood, James A. and Anna Rose Alexander, editors. Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations. 5th ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.

Posted on by Matthew Baigorria Module 2 assignment - Visual sources of late 19th-century or early 20th-century Latin America

Cathedral façade

Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Throughout time and history there have always been constants that repeat. One of these constants is the church. The Catholic Church is a very powerful entity in South America. I can confidently assume that almost every child living in South America has grown up in a catholic household with catholic values as I am an example of this. The catholic church holds a lot of power because it was thought of to be a proper citizen you must be a devout catholic and if you weren’t then you were seen as lesser or uncivilized so everyone in Latin America is devout. 

In this image it depicts a cathedral, specifically the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico. A grand cathedral built to signify faith and to honor the Lady of Guadalupe who remains a powerful symbol of Mexican faith and she is associated with everything from motherhood to feminism to social justice. The cathedral is grander than anything else around it as poor people placed more significance in the church than their own well beings and homes in the late nineteenth century. 

What I wanted to connect with this is how the church reacted to The Cholera Epidemic of 186-87 in Argentina. The church used this epidemic to further its already strong influence. Poor people listen to the church as faith and trust go side by side so they trust the church to know what to do when an epidemic is killing people left and right. So when the church tells people that the only way to be cured of Cholera is to give tithes and offerings to the church and that this was punishment for being unfaithful, they believed it. This was partly because Argentinians had no trust for the government or doctors. For example, “Doctors, acting on medical grounds, pressed people to report their sick and deceased. But this plea overlooked the long-standing social practices that dictated proper burial practices among the province’s popular classes, whom cholera affected the most. But medical officials and society disagreed over more than just burial rites.” (Dimas, pg. 184). Traditionalists had their own way of doing things and modernization just wasn’t something they intended on practicing and believed that something that they had been taught and passed down on in their culture through history would be more successful and worth doing. “As a result, Tucumán’s medical-political actors focused on the local factors they thought encouraged the spread of the disease: the province’s environment, its marginalized communities, and the practice of popular medicine. Thus, the central question of this chapter is why the epidemic generated more discord than cooperation among medical practitioners.” (Dimas, pg. 166). The spread of modern practices in the late nineteenth century was a struggle to implement in Argentina. A traditional country filled with stubborn hard working people who were going through an epidemic of drastic capabilities. There was struggle and a unfortunate great loss of life before things could change and trust was finally made before good change could happen. 

Work Cited

Dimas, Carlos S. “Chapter 6, The Cholera Epidemic of 1886–87 in Tucumán.” Essay. In Poisoned Eden: Cholera Epidemics, State-Building, and the Problem of Public Health in Tucumán, Argentina, 1865-1908. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022.

Posted on by Matthew Baigorria Module 1 assignment - Late Colonial and early Independence Latin American sources

Man of Peru

JCB Archive of Early American Images, Accession number: 06860, Man of Peru.

The illustration here depicts a drawing of a native of Peru with a simple title, “Man of Peru”. The painting is of interest because it shows us an early depiction of what the natives of Peru were like and how “civilized folk” would have viewed these natives of Peru. This painting was found in a popular book in Venice at the time by author Vecellio in 1598. This book was about costumes, how the native Venetian dress, and clothing from ancient times. Looking at this illustration from the perspective of a city dweller of Venice in 1598 you would infer that the people in Peru are uncivilized and place themselves on a higher pedestal than someone living in Peru. This can help us today understand the social dilemmas of the past. 

The man in the photo is wearing a headband and a tunic that’s decorated with flowers and birds and a checker design. He has on his person a flask and either a spear or a farming tool. This painting is actually great because it shows how hard working a native of Peru is as seen by the mans large arms and muscular legs. But it also shows that the people of Peru have a sense of style and taste with the floral and checker design. As stated in the “Tupac Amaru Rebellion”, “Many Spaniards and Creoles scoffed at the notion of a “noble Indian” and despite business dealings and even friendship with him, wanted nothing to do with his political project.” Native Peruvians were looked down on during the time of Latin American colonialism.

The painting shows a great depiction of a native man of Peru that gives both a good image and a bad one. A great image because it shows that style, artistry, and strength of a native Peruvian. It is a bad image because it could give the inference to more advanced civilizations that Peruvians aren’t as developed because hard labor was seen as something that nobles did not do. If your only reference to a whole civilization is one image then your going to be biased based on that image as it ‘s your sole reference. As a Peruvian myself I am proud of this illustration because I believe it is accurate and flattering of a Peruvian. People in Latin America work hard to build their way of life and while not rich in material things they are rich in culture.

Works Cited

  • Walker, Charles F. The Tupac Amaru Rebellion. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016.