Week 8: Signs of Crisis in a Gilded Age
This week's readings illustrated the effects of modernization that landed to Latin America slowly and unevenly. While modernization seemingly pushed societies forward by introducing new forms of technology and infrastructure, it only benefitted big cities and the elites, leaving the countryside struggling. Juan Carlos Mariátegui criticizes in "The Problem of the Indian" the gamonalismo system in Peru, which allowed the European landowners exploit the indigenous people. He proposes that the feudal system should be revoked and the indigenous allowed to own their land. This piece reflects the issues that the people living in rural areas, mostly indigenous encountered even if modernization had begun. Through all of this weeks readings it becomes evident that Latin America had profound admiration towards their North American counterparts, but simultaneously they viewed themselves fundamentally different from them. This is especially highlighted in Daríos poem in which he ackn...