William Beezley’s Judas at the Jockey Club describes multiple conflicts that took place under Mexican dictator Porfirian Diaz’s regime. It was the conflict between los de arriba (the topcats) and los de abajo (the underdogs). Mexican upper-class people wanted to modernize the state and embrace western ideologies and sports like baseball, cycling and mountaineering, vowing to transform Mexico City into a new Paris. Lower class people, on the other hand, resisted the change as it ruined old traditions but made little positive impact on their lives. The conflict was best illustrated by the Judas burning tradition, a symbolic celebration of the underdogs, which attracted the participation of the elites and the Jockey for a moment, but then left back to the lower class.
Although Zinn argues that the conflicts caused by the differentiating social classes in order to dissolve the class divisions was the main cause of the American Revolution, the “other side of the story” is told by Schweikart and Allen, as they reason that it was actually the British who unknowingly burdened the colonies with oppression, which brought about the revolution itself. In Zinn’s fourth chapter of A People’s History of the United States, Tyranny is Tranny; he focuses more on the class differences in society that triggers the opposition against England, rather than the effects of British oppression. He states that the “American leadership was less in need of English rule, and the English more in need of the colonists’ wealth” (Zinn 60). With this said, the colonists then focused more on the pursuit of exploitation and profit, which would definitely spark rebellions of the poor against the rich especially because the poor had been overwhelmed by British taxes and the fact that only a small percentage of the wealthy controlled a huge majority of the city’s taxable assets. For this reason, the poor developed a hatred for the upper class that would
The Underdogs Throughout history when the people of an established society are upset with the government there is always pattern of reform. This was the case for the Demetrio and his band of rebels during the Mexican Revolution which began as united movement against the three decades of authoritarian leaders such as Porfirio Diaz, Francisco Madero, and finally Victoriano Huerta. However, Demetrio and his band did not set out for reform because of the same reasons. Each member of the group had a different reason that they wanted change within the Mexican government. Nevertheless, the purpose of Demetrio and his band of rebels was to get rid of authoritarian rule and make Mexico more like democratic America, but instead they lose track of what
Louis Grande History 121 Professor Wolfe Drinking, Homicide, and Rebellion in Colonial Mexican Villages As we have learned in this class so far, it is that the Spanish conquerors invaded Latin America and forced a culture shock upon the rural, farming Indians of Latin America. Therefore imposing the native people into peasant-like roles and dominating their society. Before I even began to read this book, I knew going into it that it was going to be difficult to get the correct perspective on the native Mexicans’ culture. Very commonly in history books, the stories of the oppressed and less fortunate are actually written by those in a position of power. It is extremely difficult to get a true sense of the illiterate culture that existed since that many of the peoples that lived within that culture were, in fact, illiterate.
He argues that racism is not natural because there are recorded instances of camaraderie and cooperation between black slaves and white servants in escaping from and in opposing their subjugation. Chapter 3, "Persons of Mean and Vile Condition" describes Bacon's Rebellion, the economic conditions of the poor in the colonies, and opposition to their poverty. Chapter 4, "Tyranny is Tyranny" covers the movement for "leveling" (economic equality) in the colonies and the causes of the American Revolution. Zinn argues that the Founding Fathers agitated for war to distract the people from their own economic problems and stop popular movements, a strategy that he claims the country's leaders would continue to use in the future. Chapter 5, "A Kind of Revolution" covers the war and resistance to participating in war, the effects on the Native American people, and the continued inequalities in the new United States.
Bless Me Ultima by Anaya Rudolfo is a novel about a young boy, Antonio, whose conflicted ancestry causes him to question many of the beliefs instilled in him. As Mexicans, his father is a descendant of the Spanish conquistadors and his mother is a descendent of the indigenous people who, instead of continuing to fight a losing battle, decided to compromise by adopting much of the Spanish culture. The coexistence of two cultures is referred to as syncretism. All Antonio’s young life has been dominated by this syncretic conflict, though he is expected to eventually choose between the two sides of his ancestry, either the pastoral life of his mother’s indigenous side posed by farming or the priesthood, or the warring side posed by his father’s ancestors, the Spanish conquistadors (Themes: Theme Analysis, n.d.) Ultima convinces him that his fate does not lie in his ancestry alone; rather his fate lies in his own conviction irrespective of ancestry; the decisions he makes need not defer to either side of his ancestry (Theme Analysis: Coming of Age, n.d). Even Antonio’s father comes to terms with the indigenous side of Antonio’s ancestry when his warring sons desert him in order to roam free.
This transition caused American settler's living in Texas to seize several of Santa Anna's garrisons, including the Alamo. The author states though that the questionable historical inaccuracies occur when historians and directors try and find out why the Americans decided to stay and fight for the Alamo when there was no clear chance of winning the battle. The 1960's movie suggests it was a fight for freedom for Americans, and therefore could be why the director left out the fact that the fight for defending the Alamo was led by four groups of people, including one group of Mexicans seeking to restore the Mexican Republic. In addition, the author
Williams has read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and where Julius Lester does not understand the novel, Williams does. He begins bye recapping the book’s long, history of censorship. “The earliest censors… believed the novel would corrupt the young” (Williams 98). In the story, Huck would spit and do rude things that were believed to be unsuitable for young readers at the time. These opinions have, however, changed.
The reoccurring themes of violence, greed and corruption are key factors that have historically hindered the pursuit of democratization for many Latin American states. These characteristics are also tools, which many Latin American government leaders have utilized to manage and maintain political power in their respective countries. In particular, “Nicaragua’s socio-political profile resembles other Latin American countries with a long history of political conflict and polarization, weak state capacity, extreme poverty” and inequality (Bay-Meyer, 398). In Tina Rosenberg’s novel, “Children of Cain”, she emphasizes the prominence of fear as a tactic employed by the Sandinistas in Nicaragua to control the country throughout the 1980s. Since then, Nicaragua has managed to see a tremendous level of progression after its first coup d’état staged by General Sandino to seize control of the country from under the rule of the United States.
This term in literature concerns with the impacts and traces that aftermath colonization and its manifestation in literary works. There are many controversial attitudes about Joseph Conrad thoughts regarding the ideas of colonization; according to Edward Said Conrad "writes as a man in whom a Western view of the non-Western world is so ingrained as to blind him to other histories, other cultures, other aspirations" (2). He also goes on to say: Conrad does not give us the sense that he could imagine a fully realized imperialism: the natives he wrote