Latin America: History, Politics and Cultures

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What do you know about Latin America? In broad terms, "Latin America" refers to the countries in the Americas that share a historical experience and language. It is a region of growing economic importance, rapid political and economic change, and significant cultural and geographical diversity. Often, movies and media depict Latin America through stereotypes that resemble the exotism with which this region has been looked at from the western perspective: wilderness, indigenous cultures, warm weather and people, but also authoritarian regimes, corruption, and drug economies. This course intends to challenge stereotypes and provide students with no prior knowledge of Latin American history, culture and politics with an overview of the subcontinent’s main social issues. A transversal topic during the course will be the connections between Europe, the US and Latin America, from colonial times to the present. We will begin with an exploration of South American human and physical geography and get a quick glimpse of the region before 1492, the year of the "discovery". We will then search for what these diverse people and cultures have in common by exploring the colonial history and the emergence of independent states during the XIX century. We will also look at the relations between Latin America and the industrialized world during the XX century to understand phenomena such as the military regimes, the re-democratization processes and the struggles for a collective memory through cases such as Chile, Argentina and Peru. Then we will discuss the illegal drug economies and its associated violence in countries such as Colombia and Mexico, and we will discuss issues of poverty, inequality, urbanization and slum formation through the case of Brazil. Finally, (6) we will look at well- known artistic and literary manifestations, and discuss how the history and processes that we analyzed during the course influenced Latin American cultures.