Latin American History: 19th and 20th Century

Monday and Wednesday 11:30 AM – 1:00 PM Room 405

Office Hours: Mondays 1-2 PM

Instruction: Dr. Samuel Finesurrey

Email: [email protected]

Course Description

This course explores crucial issues in the history of Latin America, from the Independence period through the present. This course will expose the class to a range of people, movements, ideologies, and events, which will allow students to critically examine the causes and outcomes of revolution and counterrevolution in Latin America, 1800-Present. Intimately tied to this history, the class will critically examine the role of the United States in Latin America, both as imperial actor and a destination for refugees fleeing instability catalyzed by both foreign and domestic factors.

By the end of the semester, students should be able to articulate motivations of various actors in major events studied in the course. They should be able to trace historic patterns across the region, while also identifying seminal moments that altered the trajectory of peoples, nations, regions, and/or the global community. By the end of this course undergraduates should grasp the ways geopolitical strategies, nationalist movements, and transnational struggles have radically altered both past and present realities for the people of Latin America. Finally, students should be able to evaluate the various lenses of Latin American history and demonstrate their own ability to analyze the region over the past two-hundred years.

Prerequisites/CoRequisites

No prerequisites for this course

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Identify and apply the key historical concepts of change-over-time, cause-and-effect, agency, historical empathy, and continuity and discontinuity, and recognize how these concepts are employed in the historical method.
• Analyze and interpret primary sources with attention to audience, authorship and context.
• Recognize some of the ways in which historians have conflicting interpretations of the past.
• Recognize how and why Latin American revolutions and counterrevolutions have been taught differently to different generations and communities.
• Identify and discuss the importance of struggles for economic, political, and social justice in Latin America.
• Analyze the relationship between U.S. Empire and immigration from Latin America.
• Produce a paper with a clear thesis and appropriate citations based on strong evidence drawn from historical sources.

Suggested Course Materials

All texts are either open access or digitally available through CUNY One Search.

Secondary Sources

“A Brief History of the U.S. Interferences in the Caribbean Basin” Telesur (2019)

Buchenau, Jürgen “The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1946” Latin American History (2015)

Burnett, John “A Chapter in U.S. History Often Ignored: The Flight of Runaway Slaves to Mexico” NPR (2021)

Burns, E. Bradford “The True Verdict on Allende” The Nation (2009)

Danticat, Edwidge “The Long Legacy of Occupation in Haiti” The New Yorker (2015)

Day, Meredith Revolution and Independence in Latin America: The Liberators (New York, NY: Rosen Publishing Group, 2015)

ISBN: 9781680480313

Deans-Smith, Susan “Casta Paintings” Not Even Past (2011)

Eddins, Crystal Nicole “Runaways, Repertoires, and Repression: Marronnage and the Haitian Revolution, 1766-1791” Vol 25, No 1, Journal of Haitian Studies (2019)

Estas, Roberta, “Las Castas – Spanish Racial Classifications” Native Heritage Project (2013)

Finesurrey, Samuel “Case Studies in the History of U.S. Empire and Society” OER Commons (2022)

_________, “Contesting Circuits of Empire: Afro-Caribbean Migrant Labor in Cuba, 1899-1958” Academic Works(2020)

Hirst, Stephen K., and Heather Jasper “The Indigenous Rebellion That Inspired Peru’s Independence” BBC (2021)

Lantigua-Williams, Juleyka “40 Years Later, U.S. Invasion Still Haunts Dominican Republic” The Progressive Magazine (2005)
Lopez, German “How the War on Drugs Perpetuates Violence in Latin America” VOX (2014)

Lynch, John Latin America Between Colony and Nation (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan 2003)

ISBN: 9781349418565

McPherson, Alan A Short History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2016)

ISBN: 9781118953990

McSherry, J. Patrice “Operation Condor and Transnational State Violence Against Exiles” Vol 36, No 2 Journal of Global South Students (2019)

Miller, Bonnie From Liberation to Conquest: The Visual and Popular Cultures of the Spanish-American War of 1898 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011)

ISBN: 9781558499249

Murphy, John Ed. Gods and Goddesses of the Inca, Maya, and Aztec Civilization (New York, NY: Rosen Publishing Group, 2015)

ISBN: 9781622753970

Portillo Villeda, Suyapa “The Root Cause of Central American Migration is U.S. Imperialism” Jacobin (2021)

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, “How Mexican Immigration to the U.S. Has Evolved” Time (2015)

The Rise of Allende: An Interview with Marian Schlotterbeck, The Tribune (2020)

Primary Sources

Bartolomé de las Casas, A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1584)

The Haitian Declaration of Independence (1804) 

Simón Bolívar, Letter from Jamaica (1815)

Mexico’s Plan de Iguala (1821)

Cuba’s Platt Amendment (1903)

Emiliano Zapata, Plan de Ayala (1911)

Suggested Course Assignments and Grading

A+	4.0	97-100%
A	4.0	93-96.9%
A-	3.7	90-92.9%
B+	3.3	87-89.9%
B	3.0	83-86.9%
B-	2.7	80-82.9%
C+	2.3	77-79.9%
C	2.0	73-76.9%
C-	1.7	70-72.9%
D+	1.3	67-69.9%
D (passing)	1.0	60-66.9%
F	0	0-59.9%
NC*	Not calculated	0-59.9%

Weekly Quizzes (35 Percent): Every week there will be a quiz on the assigned materials and the previous week’s lecture. There are open note quizzes so you are expected to bring your notes on both the readings and from the previous week’s lecture. A times there will be map questions and timeline questions, but the vast majority of questions will be standard multiple choice questions.

There will be 11 quzzes throughout the semester and seven will count towards your final grade. They will almost always taking place on Mondays in the first 10-15 min. of class. If you miss a quiz it will count as a dropped quiz and not hurt you, but you cannot make it up.

Tracing a Latin American Nation (35 Percent): As individuals or in small groups you are going to become an expert on a nation in Latin America. You are going to trace the following over the course of the semester, presenting (as a group) and writing an essay (as an individual) on the nation of your choice. 

Final Exam (20 Percent): The final exam will consist of short answers and a single essay.

Participation (10 Percent): You are expected to attend and participate in class discussions.

Suggested Course Schedule with Possible Assigned Readings 

Monday March 10	Map Quiz — Introduction to Course, Evaluating Grading System
Due Tuesday March 12	Assignment 1 — 1) Finesurrey, Conquistadors and Early Spanish Society in the Americas.pdf 2) Chasteen, Las Casas Reading & 3) Crash Course History: The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway InflationWATCH to 6:07
Wednesday March 13	Quiz 1 — Colonial Life in Latin America & Casta Exercise
Due Sunday March 16	Assignment 2 — 1) Crash Course History: Atlantic Slave Trade 2) Chasteen, Colonial Rebellions Reading
Monday March 17	Quiz 2 — Slavery and Resistance in the Americas
Wednesday March 19	Burbon Reforms, Native Rebellion and Tupác Amaru Revolt
Due Sunday March 23	Assignment 3 — 1) Crash Course History: The Haitian Revolution & Latin American Revolutions 2) Chasteen, Haitian and Latin American Revolutions
Monday March 24	Quiz 3 — The Haitian Revolution
Wednesday March 26	The Americanos & The Wars of Independence.
Due Sunday March 30	Early Semester Checkin Form
Monday March 31	No Class
Wednesday April 2	Tracing a Latin American Nation — Create Biliography
Friday April 4	No Class despite Monday Schedule, work on annotated bibliography. Submit photo of you working on material in library.
Due Sunday April 6	Assignment 4 — 1) Chasteen, International Wars in Latin America 2) National Public Radio: The Flight of Runaway Slaves to Mexico 3) Chasteen, Neocolonialism: Tracing an Export Economy 4) OPTIONAL: Crash Course History: War and Nation Building in Latin America
Monday April 7	Quiz 4 — Building New Nations Among Foreign Wars and Imperial Design from the Triple Alliance War to the War of the Pascific, From Mexico to Nicaragua
Wednesday April 9	Work on Tracing a Latin American Nation
Due Sunday April 13
Monday April 14	Spring Break
Wednesday April 16	Spring Break
Due Sunday April 20	Assignment 5 — 1) Zinn, The Spanish American War. 2) Contesting Circuits of Empire: Afro-Caribbean Migrant Labor in Cuba, 1899-1958
Monday April 21	Quiz 5 — The White Mans Burden from Cuba to Panama and Nicaragua to Hispanola Part 1
Wednesday April 23	The White Mans Burden from Cuba to Panama and Nicaragua to Hispanola Part 2 & Work on Tracing a Latin American Nation
Due Sunday April 27	Assignment 6 — 1) Harman, The Mexican Revolution 2) Chasteen, Activist Leaders of the 1930s
Monday April 28	Quiz 6 — The Mexican Revolution
Wednesday April 30	The Great Depression and a Moment of Hope & Work on Tracing a Nation Presentations Group Work
Due Sunday May 4	Assignment 7 — 1) Case Studies in History of U.S. Empire: Overthrowing the Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz,
Monday May 5	Quiz 7 — Imperialism and Resistance in Central America
Wednesday May 7	Tracing a Nation Presentations Group Work
Due Sunday May 11	Assignment Eight — 1) Harman, The Cuban Revolution 2) Vox: A Brief History of the U.S. and Cuba
Monday May 12	Quiz 8 — The Cuban Revolution
Wednesday May 14	Tracing a Nation Paper Assignment
Due Sunday May 18	Assignment 9 — 1) The Nation: The True Verdict on Allende Group Tracing a Nation Video Presentations Due
Monday May 19	Quiz 9 — The Southern Cone Dirty Wars
Wednesday May 21	No Class
Due Sunday May 25	Assignment 10: 1) Vox: How the War on Drugs Perpetuates Violence in Latin America2) Time: How Mexican Immigration to the U.S. Has Evolved 3) Zinn, Wars in Central America
Monday May 26	Memorial Day
Wednesday May 28	Quiz 10 — The War on Drugs in Latin America
Due Sunday June 1	Assignment 11 1) Felipe Mendoza, The Political Landscape of Latin America & Draft of Final Paper
Monday June 2	Quiz 11 — Magby Presentation & The New Left and Modern Latin America
Wednesday June 4	Final Review
Monday June 9	Optional Virtual One-on-Ones
Sunday June 15	Final Papers Due & Final Exam Due