We are all Humans

The essential question for our unit on the Latin American Revolutions is as follows, "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?". 

We went about starting this lesson by viewing a map of South American Countries that had the year of their independence included. We previously learned about the Haitian Revolution in 1804 and the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Knowing this information, we realized that most of the countries had gained their independence after both of those events. This may be because they were angry with the results of the Congress of Vienna that cracked down on social structure and political policies, and they were inspired by the Haitian Revolution to create their own revolts for independence like the Haitians. 
Next, we made a pie chart showing the percentages of different races in Latin America. Mine is on the above.  What's funny about the percentages though, is that if you look at the social structure pyramid to the left, the Peninsulares have the most power, and they are the least present in the population. It sounds a lot like how Haiti was. We also discussed how your rank in social class depended on how white you were and there were many terms made up to describe how white a person was.  


The class then broke into three groups. Each group was assigned one of the following counties: Brazil, Mexico, and Gran Columbia. I was in the group that was assigned Mexico. We read about our country and made a timeline of important events that took place in the country. My timeline for Mexico can be seen to the below.

 After everyone in the class had completed their own timeline of their Latin American Country, we formed new groups where there were at least two people who had studied the other two countries that the others didn't. We shared our timelines and overall summary of our countries revolution and tried to come up with commonalities and differences between the three. 

Our commonalities and differences that we found are as follows: Commonalities

• First rulers of power after Independence only remained in power for a short amount of time.
• All three revolutions were successful and split ties from European powers. 
• Each three revolutions had a primary goal 
• All early 1800s 

Differences

• Brazilian revolution wasn't violent 
• Gran Colombia resulted in several independent countries 

We took a closer look at how race was involved in each of these revolutions. We noticed that in Mexico, the revolution was started by a priest and one of the three key reasons hes mentions for starting the revolt, is racial equality. Also, Pedro becomes the new King of Brazil and only allows white Europeans (Peninsulares) in his cabinet (high government positions). This of course upsets the people in Brazil who just fought to get away from European rule. In Gran Colombia, Simon Bolivard, a creole, was able to unite people despite their race in one army to fight the Spanish and Peninsulares. In this situation, you see many races being banded together because they all feel mistreated. These revolutions show that racial equality is important because it could break out into violence and revolts. Also, in the end, we are all humans and are not superior to one another because of where we come from. 

Currently, there has been recent protests and arguing about the event that took place in Ferguson, Missouri. Police shot unarmed, black teen Michael Brown. Many people think that if it was a white teen then it wouldn't have ended how it did. Protests have broken out all over the area and people are debating and arguing over whether this is a racial issue, or if it was the right thing to do. Difference in race still cause violence today. To learn more about the events in Ferguson, Missouri click here.