I agree that “Spanish America is a geographical area within which the power struggle between archaic and modern traits stands out very clearly.” An archaic society is a society governed by blood relations and marital rules. In an archaic society the individual is unimportant, what is important is the collective which is emphasized by the need of a strong family. These strong family ties in turn lead to high levels of corruption such as nepotism where people in power favor their relatives or very close friends and these relations are given jobs that they are either under qualified in taking or someone else is better qualified in undertaking. A modern society in juxtaposition emphasizes the role of the individual. It is through the efforts …show more content…
Cocaine and Cannabis are the two main drugs trafficked out of Latin America and Cocaine is made out of the Coca plant which is native and cultivated only in the western part of South America. This cultivation and distribution of drugs from Latin America is overseen by drug cartels mainly those in Colombia and Mexico. Mexican drug cartels are considered the United States’ largest threat in organized crime. These drug cartels strongly represent archaic society within Latin America today because of the way they are structured. Drug Cartels in Latin America have strong family ties “There is a strong distrust of strangers in Mexico, with cartels & politicians preferring to trust family; a similar culture exists in Sicily, allowing the Mafia to thrive.” Latin America is also a clear representation of a modern society. Modernity began with the development of cities and the word ‘politics’ derives from the Greek word for city. The Greeks also created the “Kleroterion” which was a lottery device that randomly selected citizens for public posts, this is important because it created a political system where the family was not important. This is relevant to Latin America representing a modern society because most of these countries are democracies and in a democracy the people vote on who should be in power and a politician can only have so many
Tutino, John. "Power, Class, and Family: Men and Women in the Mexican Elite, 1750-1810." The Americas, No. 3 (1983): 359-381. http://www.jstor.org/stable/981230 (accessed December 1, 2013).
Alvarez demonstrates generational boundary when discussing,“The quince tradition has always been important, but there’s this retroculturation going on right now” (56). Alvarez illustrates that retroculturation is a pattern within the Hispanic community where loss of culture is present for a generation. Alvarez explains how the first generation wants to assimilate in America with their culture, while the second generation has adapted to American norms so they have lost their culture and no longer speak spanish; however, the third generation is born and bred in America and now wants to learn about their hispanic culture by learning Spanish. Teens shop at popular American malls but listen to Spanish radios to embrace diversity (56). Similarly, Munoz is confronted with the issue of generational boundaries when he admits, “I was born in 1972, a generation that learned both English and Spanish” (308). The generation before Munoz grew up speaking only Spanish which causes a barrier between one families generation to the next. Munoz speaks Spanish at home and English in public along with his other cousins who serve as translators for their household. While the second generation before Munoz have no way of following Spanish because they have already adapted to American norms and in some ways lost an important cultural aspect (308). Alvarez and Savan are interconnected because each
The early years of colonial Mexico were a time of great change, as the native Indian populations were decimated by disease and increasingly dominated by the Spanish social and economic structure. Under the encomienda system, the initial flood of Spanish immigrants were provided with a support structure in New Spain, as the Indians’ land and labor were put at their disposal in exchange for moral guidance.[3] As Spain sought to reap the benefits of its new colony, the need for dependable labor in Mexico’s agr...
In the years following the Spanish conquests, the southwest region of the United States developed into Spanish colonial territory. Indians, Spaniards, and blacks occupied this territory in which the shortage of Spanish women led to the miscegenation of these cultures. The result of mixing these races was a homogenization of the people of various cultures that came to be called mestizos and mulattos who, like present day Mexican Americans, inherited two distinct cultures that would make their culture rich, yet somewhat confusi...
The Spanish began their movement to Southwest America in the late sixteenth century. From that point on, their influence both on the Native Americans and the environment was extraordinaire. The goal of the Spaniards with regards to the Native Americans was to transform them “into tax-paying Christians.” This is in contrast to the idea that their goal was to eradicate the Indians form the Americas. Consequently, the Spaniards took many Indians so that they may plant their religion in the Natives and to use them as cheap labor. This led many Indians to learn the customs and language of the Spaniards so they could to be able to thrive in the Spanish culture. Thus, some Natives acquired Spanish, which was the main source of their Hispanicization; this was the notion of Indians becoming encompassed by the Spanish society. Furthermore, Indians gradually learned skills, obtained land, and sometimes found Hispanic spouses, thus furthering their Hispanicization. They now began to live in a Spanish manner and blend into the bottom of the Spanish societal ladder. This “acculturation” of the Native Americans was in contrast to the models of early English colonization. Spanish goals and plans sought to involve the Indians so that they may live in their society even if at the lower end of it’s ladder. English colonies viewed the Natives as savages and looked to them for slave labor or to rape their women. They did not plan to take the Indians into their society as the Spaniards did so throughout this era.
These letters reveal how the rebellions were able to weaken the Spanish empire and they display how they aided the destabilization of the Spanish government and the faith the people had in it. They also offer the indigenous view of the functions of colonial Andean society. The native Andean society created a structure in these reducción towns that had an immense role in constructing the opposition to colonial rule. The Andean communities were able to maintain their own traditions and community organization while they adopted the structures thrust upon them by the colonial
The cartels are now in control of most of the drug trades and are successful. The Mexican border gives them the power to go everywhere they desire, making them a relentless force. “To date operation Xcellrator has led the arrest of 755 individuals and the seizure of approximately 5 U.S. Currency more than 12,000 kilograms of cocaine, more than 16,000 pounds of marijuana, more than 11,000 of methamphetamine, more than 8 kilograms of heroin, approximately 1.3 million pills of ecstasy”(Doj 2). Mexican cartels extend to central and southern America. Columbia is the supply of much of the cocaine exported to the U.S. Colombia is under control of South American gangs, they do business with the Mexican cartels to transport drugs the north. The Northern Mexican gangs hold the most control because the territory is very important (Wagner1). They are many different types of cartel in Mexico it also signifies that there are killing each other so their cartel can expand an...
First of all, it is important to highlight that Colombia plays a particular role in the chain of money laundering globally. Colombia has been classified by many as the main producer and exporter of cocaine in the world ; in consequence, it should be expected to find generous literature and articles regarding money laundering which support this assertion. Surprisingly, a specialized database as Jane’s Information Group only lists a few more than one hundred results regarding this topic for the last twenty years. On the contrary, Factiva database lists more than five thousand results under the same parameters of search. Similarly, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime presents more than five thousand articles related to money laundering in Colombia. Hence, it is possible to visualize the limited resources and effort that Jane’s allocates to cover this important issue of international crime in comp...
Since it was first discovered by European explorers, Latin America has supplied raw materials and labor to Europe and other locations around the world. Eduardo Galeano writes about the exploitation of native Latin Americans in his 1973 book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. Galeano takes a historical approach and examines colonial and post-colonial interactions between Europeans and Latin Americans. He asserts that the native Latin Americans were essentially powerless to fight this exploitation because of the dominance of the European powers. In his 2008 book Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug, Paul Gootenberg writes about the discovery of cocaine and its transition from a regional good to a global commodity. Gootenberg combines history and economics in his view of the relationships between the two powers. Unlike Galeano, he shows a side of Latin American history in which the native people of Latin America had power, however limited, to control their positions in the economic system imposed by the Europeans. Gootenberg accepts Galeano’s theory of dominance as a starting point but complicates it by including the agency of the local people of Latin America, especially Peru. Gootenberg shifts the focus of his book from the national and European players to the local Latin American actors involved in the cocaine commodity chain—from growers and harvesters to refiners and distributors. This theory involves more of the disparate components present in the economies of Latin America; therefore, it is a better way to describe historical relationships between Latin America and Europe.
The current “War on Drugs” involves skirmishes in an arena with two fronts: The consumer and the manufacturer. The successes and failures of the battle are not clearly identified without first looking at how the battle can be ultimately won. When it comes to cocaine, the problem of punishing the whole instead of the individual is hard to define. Many countries use the raw ingredient, the coca plant, as part of a social and cultural structure. The only way to win the “War on Drugs” is to focus war efforts on fighting the manufacturer of the finished cocaine product.
The following essay examines the definitions of organized crime from the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and how they relate to or are applicable to Pablo Escobar in his leadership role of his organization, known as the Medellin Cartel. Furthermore, an analysis of Pablo Escobar through Mark Bowden’s book Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World’s Greatest Outlaw, provides a look at Columbia’s social climate during Escobar’s reign and its contribution to his outlaw sense of social justice, his self-image, and his strength and weaknesses which ultimately resulted in the collapse of his organization and his expiration.
...t Spanish historians of America” (7). People in modern day Argentina will relate with these works of literature because their government system is still under the same idealized form that the past was trying to create. The people living today will see how the conflicts they deal with today regarding social class emerged in the late eighteenth century to nineteenth century. They will realize that the same conflicts they deal with are the same conflicts previous generations dealt with. The vision of the nation these authors illustrate might provide current Argentine citizens with a vision of how the nation of Argentina should be in the twenty-first century and later generations.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 2002, Globalization, Drugs and Criminalisation: Final Research Report on Brazil, China, India and Mexico, viewed 3 April 2014, http://www.unesco.org/most/globalisation/drugs_vol2.pdf
Life in Mexico was, before the Revolution, defined by the figure of the patron that held all of power in a certain area. Juan Preciado, who was born in an urban city outside of Comala, “came to Comala because [he] had been told that [his] father, a man named Pedro Paramo lived there” (1). He initially was unaware of the general dislike that his father was subjected to in that area of Mexico. Pedro was regarded as “[l]iving bile” (1) by the people that still inhabited Comala, a classification that Juan did not expect. This reveals that it was not known by those outside of the patron’s dominion of the cruel abuse that they levied upon their people. Pedro Paramo held...
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, “One of These Days,” describes the disparity between everyday working class people and higher class politicians. The story focuses mainly on two contrasting characters: a humble dentist, Aurelio Escovar, and an aggressive and abusive mayor who takes advantage of his townspeople. Deep in this piece, the situation between the two characters symbolize the corruption of power and the negative influence it can put on society. Though the mayor owns all of the dominance out of everyone in the town, the dentist receives influence for a period of time, taking advantage of it at all cost. We learn at the end of the passage that no matter the identity nor class of an individual, the excess of power can lead to corruption.