Latin American Revolutions: Mexico, Brazil and Gran Colombia

Recently I learned about the Latin American revolutions that occurred in the 1800s, after the successful Haitian revolution. The essential question for this lesson is "Why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race? How are the events in the Latin American Revolutions evidence of this social imperative?" This question is important to think about because many times in the worlds history people have been discriminated against because of their ethnicity and not given equal opportunities in life as those whose differences are only the color of their skin. In class, we separated into groups and each group was given a specific revolution to research more in depth, and my group was given the Mexican Revolution. To understand better how things were in Mexico at this time, we looked at the different ethnicity's that made up Mexico, and created a pie chart to show their populations. By reading about the revolution, we created a timeline of what happened.

This is my groups timeline of the events that happened during the Mexican Revolution:

January 1811 - Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla got captured, and executed.
1820 - Liberals took power in Spain and new government promised reforms.
Early 1821 - Agustin de Iturbine, leader of royal forces, negotiated plan of Iguala with Vicente Guerro.
August 24th 1821 - Spanish Viceroy Juan de O'Donoju signed Treaty of Córdoba.
1822 - No Bourbon monarch to rule Mexico, Iturbine made Emperor 

1823 - leaders Santa Anna and Guaralope Victoria deposed Iturbide and set up republic.

The way that the people of Mexico went about their revolution is very different than the revolutions that happened in Gran Columbia and Brazil. Something that the people chose to do differently was how they fought during the revolution. The Brazilian revolution was completely peaceful, but both the Gran Colombian and Mexican revolutions had violence involved. Another difference is all three revolutions were led by different people. The leader of the Mexican revolution was miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, the leader in of the Brazilian revolution was Pedro, and the leader of the revolution in Gran Columbia was Simon Bolivar. A similarity of these revolutions is that they were  all fought in order to receive independence. Also, all of these revolutions occurred in the same time period, in the early 1800s. Another similarity between these revolutions is that they were all fought for independence.

Even though these revolutions took different approaches, all three were similar because race was an issue. The leader of the Brazilian revolution, Pedro, used race against his people, only allowing Portuguese born people and Peninsulars into his cabinet. Because of this, his people begin to like him less. In the Gran Columbian revolution, the leader, Simon Bolivar, brought races together by having them all fight in the army. The goal of his revolution was to end the racial segregation that was created by the current Spanish caste system. Lastly, race played a large role in the Mexican revolution. The leader, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla wanted restore racial equality by ending the Spanish rule over Mexico. All three leaders made race a large part of their revolutions and based their decisions on it, for equality or segregation.

Sometimes in today's world we forget what an immense role race once played on peoples everyday lives. In addition, we live in a place where racism is barely an issue, so we may not realize how some peoples lives are affected everyday by it. In the south, racism is still a work in progress, and unfortunately we are far from racial equality in all of America. Recently, race has been one of the biggest topics in the news, after the events that took place in Ferguson, Missouri. An unarmed black man was killed by a white cop, and the trial concluded that the cop was not guilty of murder. While this is an awful conclusion given the evidence, I believe that it shows how much we have improved as a nation. Not because of the decision, but how people reacted to it, maybe not in the most peaceful ways, but people expressed their dissatisfaction for this racial inequality, something that decades ago would never have happened. I still believe that we, as a country, need a lot of work until racial equality can be a reality. I think that it is important to look at the issue of race in our lives, because innocent people are still being affected by this, and it is not fair. If we ignore the issue, then it will not get any better and more innocent people will have to suffer. Although I believe that each day our country is getting closer to racial equality, and it is nowhere near as extreme and cruel as it used to be, it is still a topic that needs to be addressed and something that must be worked on.

 

                                                    Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Leader of the Mexican Revolution        http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Miguel_Hidalgo_y_Costilla.png