Latin America: History, Politics and Cultures

Full course description

What we call America is a continent that Europe only came to know existed a little more than 500 years ago. The idea of a "Latin" America is even more recent. This course expects to offer students different perspectives to think about Latin American societies and provide students with an overview of key Latin American social issues and theories.

We will begin by reflecting on "the idea of Latin America" from the standpoint of decolonial theory. We will look at the continent before the arrival of Europeans and learn about the history of conquest and colonization. The look at Latin American history will also focus on the process of organizing the newly independent states during the XIX century and the challenges associated with building a national identity. The tasks will then focus on more recent events such as the military regimes and state violence of the second half of the XX century, the struggles for constructing a public memory, the problem of narcotraffic, the US-Latin American relations, and the presence and struggles of Latinos in the US. The course will finish with tasks around the topics of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity, finalizing with a discussion of what alternatives to mainstream development paradigms Latin America has to offer. Transversal topics will be social inequality, marginalized groups' social struggles, and the alternative politics of women, blacks, and indigenous social movements.