Unit 3 - Making Latin America:

From Colonization to Urbanization

Part 1
Introduction

Lecture adapted from the work of P. Vandergeest

Balboa and the dogs - Theodor de Bry

Course World Region:
latin America & the Caribbean
Lane, Kris (2019) The First Global City. Aeon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFVUQN9CYEc&feature=related
 Making Latin America
Lecture Outline
Part 1 – Introduction to “Making Latin America”
Part 2 – European Occupation:
Conquest and Colonization
Part 3 – Events that produced LA’s Geography:
Revolution and Land Reform
Part 4 – Events that produced LA’s Geography:
Dictatorships and Wars
Part 5 – Democracy… or not?
Part 6 – Inequality in Urban Latin America:
Weak institutions or Urban Fallacy?
 El Barzón
Ø Actual footage from
Mexico during the Mexican
Revolution (1910-1920)
Ø Armies, revolutionary
fighters on horseback,
farmers, street scenes
Ø Amparo Ochoa’s song is
one of many folk songs
about that time period
Ø Key idea: people working
the land are not benefiting
from it
Ø Emiliano Zapata and
indigenous farmers face off
with large landowners
 Today, in Brazil, and elsewhere

module/brazilian-landless-workers-movement
https://solutions.thischangeseverything.org/
Landless Workers Movement (MST):
The hemisphere’s largest social movement organization, with about 1.5
million members. Founded in 1984. Led more than 2,500 land occupations,
with about 370,000 families who have won 7.5 million hectares of land
 Key questions
for understanding

Sugarcane (1931), by Diego Rivera

Latin America:

ØWho controls land?

(Who does the work?)
ØWhat conflicts emerge
from land ownership?
Which European country/ies colonized
Latin America and the Caribbean?

A. Spain
B. Portugal
C. France
D. Britain
E. Netherlands
F. A) and B)
Spanish: Green
Portuguese: Orange
French: Blue
British: Grey
Dutch: Grey
Viceroyalty of New Spain, 1786-1821
Marston et al,
2017 – Fig.7.1
Collins World Atlas
Illustrated Edition (2021)
pp.18-19
 Earthquakes and Volcanoes
Fault lines
“ring of fire”

Collins World Atlas

Illustrated Edition (2021) pp. 14-15
World Population

Collins World Atlas, Illustrated Edition (2021), pp.20-21

 Urbanization

Collins World Atlas, Illustrated Edition (2021), pp.22-23

Social Indicator - health

Collins World Atlas, Illustrated Edition (2021)

Social Indicator - Equality

Collins World Atlas, Illustrated Edition (2021)

Production and Trafficking
of Opiates and Cocaine

Collins World Atlas, Illustrated Edition (2021)

 Making Latin America: From
Conquest to Revolution
Part 2:
European
Occupation:
Conquest and
Colonization

Balboa and the dogs - Theodor de Brye

Marston, et al (2017), Fig.7.18
 Treaty of Tordesillas

Cantino Planisphere, 1502

 Spanish and Portuguese treaty to
divide up the world between them!

Source: Parrots American History

 https://blogs.getty.edu/iris/an-overview-of-latino-and-latin-american-identity/
“America with those known parts in that unknowne worlde both people and
manner of buildings,” 1631, John Speed, Abraham Goos, and George Humble.
What happened to the Indigenous peoples?

The Arrival of Cortés, Mural by Diego Rivera, Palacio Nacional de México

 68voces.mx

Indigenous in Latin
America Today
Ø Originally, 1750 languages
Ø Today: still >1000
Ø 68 Indigenous languages
in Mexico (364 dialects)
Ø 1.5 million Nahuatl
speakers
Ø 28 Mayan languages (3-4
million speakers)
Ø 8-10 million Quechua
speakers
Ø Nearly 3 million Aymara
speakers
Latifundia (Spanish Feudalism)

Most good land

given out as really
large land grants to
generals like Cortés,
and to aristocrats.

Hernán Cortés
 Latifundia (Spanish Feudalism)

Large tracts also called:

Ø Encomiendas
Ø Haciendas
Ø Estancias
Ø Ranchos

Hernán Cortés
 Haciendas
(or latifundia, or ranchos, etc.)
The peons (peasants) needed to:
Ø Work the patron’s land in return
for a small plot of land to grow
food, or
Ø Work the patron’s land, splitting
the harvest (called
sharecropping), or
Ø Pay a cash rent – rare in earlier
periods
This is the key to everything
that happened since.
Ex-Haciendas as hotels
The Arrival of Cortés - Mural by Diego Rivera, Palacio Nacional de México
Cerro Rico and the Imperial Municipality of Potosi, by Gaspar Miguel de Berrio, 1758
Exploitation of Africans
African Diaspora in Latin America
133 million people today

Brazil – 97.2 million

Venezuela – 14.5 million
Colombia – 4.0 million
Mexico – 1.3 million
Ecuador – 1.0 million
Peru – 0.7 million
Central America – 1 million
Southern Cone – 0.4 million
https://www.worldbank.org/en/to
pic/poverty/lac-equity-
lab1/ethnicity/ip-population
 Making Latin America: From
Conquest to Revolution

Part 3
Events that produced
LA’s Geography:
Revolution
and Land Reform
Balboa and the dogs - Theodor de Brye
 Independence
from Spain and Portugal

Marston et al, 2012

 New emerging commercial
agricultural economies

Key example: United Fruit, now Chiquita

 Agrarian Revolutions

Mexico, Revolution. Photo by Agustín Victor Casasola

 Revolution and Land Reform
Land Reform: Government program to buy or
confiscate land from large landowners, and
distribute to small farmers. Sometimes
revolutionary government, but sometimes to
forestall revolution.

Agrarian Revolution: A party comes to power

often via military force, and confiscates land to
distribute to farmers.
 Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)
The beginning of the revolutionary era in Latin America
 Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)
The beginning of the revolutionary era in Latin America

Emiliano Zapata Credit: Casasola

 Mexican Revolution (1910-1920)
The beginning of the revolutionary era in Latin America

Francisco (Pancho) Villa

Emiliano Zapata
 1930s in Mexico:
Land distributed to peasants as “ejidos”

Credit: SIPAZ
More agrarian revolutions
(1940s onwards)

Fidel Castro with Guevara

Che Guevara
 Land reform
President Lazaro Cardenas
Government program to buy or
signs land reform law, 1934
confiscate land from large
landowners, and distribute to
small farmers.

“Land and Freedom” - Zapata

 Land Reforms in Latin America
• Mexico: 1910 to 1930s (by revolution)
• Cuba: 1959 (by revolution)
• Nicaragua: 1979 (by revolution)
• Bolivia: 1952-1964 (by election and
revolution)

• Guatemala: 1952-1954 (by election)

• Chile: 1970-73 (by election)
• Venezuela: from 2001 (by election)
• Honduras: 1973- (by election, limited)
• Dominican Republic 1961- (by
election, limited)
 Mixed legacy of land reforms
Very limited land redistributed
(often continued agitation today)
Most (or lots) of
land distributed: • Brazil
• Mexico • Paraguay
• Bolivia • Argentina
• Cuba • Colombia
• Uruguay
• Nicaragua • Honduras
• Chile (to 1973) • Ecuador
• Venezuela?
Members of the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST), who are protesting for change in the process
of land reform, hold a flag up by burning tires on a highway in Brasilia. REUTERS / Ueslei Marcelino
 Things to Remember
1. Latin America was formed through conquest
2. Spanish and Portuguese imported a system
of land grants and inequality
3. Land inequality as foundation of 20th century
revolutionary movements
4. Many places mentioned in readings and
lecture