Blog 11: Another September 11th

Another September 11th

Every year when September the 11^th comes around, we are all reminded of the terrible tragedy that took place here in America on that awful day. I never knew that there was another country out there that felt the solemnity of a historical tragedy on that day as well. On September 11^th, Chileans don’t think of twin towers or plane crashes but of the overthrow and death of Allende. When I read about it in the book, I did not even realize how depressing what happened in Chile was but watching the video in class and the heroic but sad way that Allende died. It really made me think. I came across this picture that says “Remember September 11^th 1973”

There wasn’t really a description with the picture and I couldn’t find out who made it so I have analyzed it and tried to interpret it myself. The Year 1973 is much bigger than the rest of the date. I think that whoever made this did that to emphasize that there is another “September 11^th” that most people don’t think about. Most people remember the Americans who died that day but most don’t know that Chileans died too.  I did some research and found out that there was a controversy regarding how Allende died. The military said that he committed suicide but some of his supporters argued that he was assassinated. Years after his death, in 2011, international investigators concluded that he did indeed shoot himself with a rifle. The picture has the quote of his last speech right before he committed suicide. This is what he said, “Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, the great avenues will again be opened through which will pass free men to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers.” I think it summarizes what he stood for and what he was trying to accomplish; a better society and a better life for all Chileans, but especially for the workers who had been oppressed.  When I first saw the picture, I thought the man holding the gun was Pinochet. It looks more like Allende though. I don’t know why they would show Allende holding a gun. Maybe they were trying to show that he committed suicide? I am assuming that the red broken glasses are Allende’s after he died.  The background of the picture is this photo. It shows the military on top of a building pointing their guns at the presidential palace. After seeing these pictures and learning about the history of Chile, I will remember two tragic historical events on September 11^th.

My Response to Leah's Blog Diez

Leah,

I did not know anything about the copper mining process either. I cannot believe how much copper Chile has, almost a quarter of the whole world's reserves in just one country! That is crazy. Where is the rest of the Copper located?  I never knew how complex the process of getting copper and refining it was, your blog was very helpful. Did they use all of these complicated techniques when Chile first started mining copper? or has the process completely changed since then? Does the United States still purchase most of it's copper from Chile? I wonder if the copper from my pennies came from Chile.

Blog 10: La Calavera de la Catrina

I loved looking at José Guadalupe Posada’s artwork on Friday. After seeing all of his work, I wanted to know more about his Calaveras, specifically La Calavera de la Catrina. Calaveras are images of skull or skeletons. I thought that what Professor Keister said about his image of La Calavera de la Catrina was very interesting. Here is a picture of her:

 

 As you can see, she is dressed in extravagant fine clothing, and was probably very wealthy. He said that the message behind the print was that although you may be very rich and successful and have all of these great material things, when you die, it doesn’t matter; you are still dead. I decided to do some research on La Catrina. La Calavera de la Catrina was intended to depict social satire and commented on the political and social lives of Mexicans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. La Catrina was a high society Mexican woman. The image shows that everyone is equal in the end. Despite prosperity and wealth in their lives on earth, the rich are equal to the poor when they die. They can’t take it with them.  Posada made her during end of the reign of Porfirio Diaz. In a way, she symbolizes the Mexican revolution because she symbolizes the end of the power and wealth in the hands of few and the hopes to spread it to many. As Professor Stark was saying, she also became an icon of the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos or the Day of the Dead, a day where Mexicans celebrate the souls of the dead.

I think that the message that La Calavera de la Catrina portrays is a very important one. Money really isn’t everything and when you die, it means nothing. What is more important is what you did with your life. It is more important to die knowing that you made a positive impact in someone else’s life than to know that you made lots of money. I think this is a lesson that many people have yet to learn. What do you think? Can money buy happiness?

My Response to Elena's Blog 9

Elena,

Wow! How interesting, I never knew the three wise men's names. I wonder if the author, Garbiel Garcia Marquez, choose the name Balthazar on purpose. Both men gave children gifts. In the bible, Balthazar is a rich man who gives to Jesus, whose family is not wealthy. In the story "Balthazar's Prodigious Afternoon", Balthazar is poor and gives a gift to a wealthy family. This is a very interesting connection though!

Blog 9: American Idot

Every time we learn about the United States’ involvement in Latin America I am always surprised to discover how much information has been kept out in our history classes.  For example, most of our history books don’t even include the Haitian Revolution.  While reading Chomsky’s book on the Cuban revolution, I learned a lot about the United States that I did not know before. Previous to this book, when I thought of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I thought that Cuba was wrong to bring the missiles in and threaten to attack us for no reason. What they did not teach us, however, was that there was a reason. The United States was essentially using terrorism against Cuba and they were merely trying to protect themselves from us. The United States sabotaged and destroyed sugar fields by bombing them and crashing planes over them. They were involved in bombing ships that entered Cuban ports and bombing or destroying Cuban mines. They also set fire to Cuban stores. All of these acts of terrorism and arson that killed many Cubans were done in secret. The U.S denied their involvement. Not to mention the many failed attempts to assassinate Castro.  As students, we were kept in the dark about all of this. Instead, we portrayed Cuba as the bad guy. This is just one of the many examples of a time where we covered up things that we did that were embarrassing and then portrayed the other country as the bad one. The song “American Idiot” by Green Day kind of reminds me of how we tell our history. Here are the lyrics:

GREEN DAY LYRICS

"American Idiot"

Don't wanna be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind f*** America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along to the age of paranoia.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

Don't want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's calling out to idiot America.

Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue.

It may be kind of a stretch but I think there are some similarities. First of all, in a way, we can be “idiots”. We only know history from our biased point of view. We listen to what we are taught in school and in our history books and don’t question it. We don’t bother to get the other side of the story. We are influenced by the media and propaganda that is put out to sway our views to see things the way people in power want us to see them, “one nation controlled by the media”. I’m sure they did not put pictures of us bombing the Cuban sugar plantations up on the news and in newspapers. But I bet they put negative things about Castro and how the Cubans and Soviets were bad during the Cuban Missile Crisis. This created a lot of apprehension, “welcome to a new kind of tension”, “Sing along to the age of paranoia”. In a broader sense, I think that by trying to intervene in the politics and economies of many Latin American countries, we did much more harm than good. We only created enemies in the end and in a way, alienated ourselves from them. For example, Cuba wants nothing to do with us. We have, in a way, created an alien nation by trying to control other countries. Green Day may have been just trying to promote individualism through this song, but in my opinion, it can also talk about the way our history is portrayed to our citizens.

My Response to Stephanie's Blog # 8

Stephanie,

I was also confused about why a mural about the history of Mexico would start with white people instead of the indigenous people who had lived there thousands of years before the white people discovered it. I don’t think he did it to make the white people who would see it at the hotel happy either. It is very interesting that the left side of the mural is much darker and the right side with the revolution seems much brighter and more colorful. I think you’re right; I think it does glorify the Mexican revolution. Much of the mural depicts characters from the revolution. I think he wants to show the progress that Mexico has made and the benefits of the revolution by depicting the revolution as a bright, important, positive event.  Great analysis!

Blog #8: Dreams Vs. Reality

This week, I went back and re-read “The South” by Jorge Luis Borges in order to respond to our discussion question. As I was reading it, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “Did Dahlmann ever leave the sanitarium and die in a knife fight in the south or was it all just a dream?” The more I looked into it, the more convinced I am that he never really left the hospital. The most convincing quote is when Dalmann was on the train looking out the window and thinks to himself, “Tomorrow I'll wake up at the ranch, he thought, and it was as if he was two men at a time: the man who traveled through the autumn day and across the geography of the fatherland, and the other one, locked up in a sanitarium and subject to methodical servitude.” He talks about being two different men: one who is traveling back to the ranch (Dream) and one who is still stuck in the sanitarium (Reality) I think he is dreaming about taking a train across the countryside and reading his book but in reality he is imprisoned in the hospital dying. In the documentary on Borges, I remember the narrator saying something about the themes of Borges’s writings including the idea of dreams vs. reality. This story may be one of them. There are other parts of the story that also lead me to believe that Dahlmann was dreaming. He even says,“The solitude was perfect, perhaps hostile, and it might have occurred to Dahlmann that he was traveling into the past and not merely south.” In the beginning of the story, we are told that Dahlmann wanted to die like his maternal grandfather so I think that by going to the South, he is traveling back in time in order to die a romantic death. Dahlmann also saw some elements of the sanitarium on his journey to the South, “Once inside, Dahlmann thought he recognized the shopkeeper. Then he realized that he had been deceived by the man's resemblance to one of the male nurses in the sanitarium.” He thought that the nurse that was caring for him was the shopkeeper in his dream.  Last, the ending seems to me like he is dreaming his death. Dahlmann was challenged to a knife fight with gauchos in the south and he went out to the countryside fearlessly to die, “They went out and if Dahlmann was without hope, he was also without fear. As he crossed the threshold, he felt that to die in a knife fight, under the open sky, and going forward to the attack, would have been a liberation, a joy, and a festive occasion, on the first night in the sanitarium, when they stuck him with the needle. He felt that if he had been able to choose, then, or to dream his death, this would have been the death he would have chosen or dreamt.” He even says he would pick this death over dying in the sanitarium. In the beginning of the story, we are told that Dahlmann wanted to take after his maternal grandfather, “in the discord inherent between his two lines of descent, Juan Dahlmann (perhaps driven to it by his Germanic blood) chose the line represented by his romantic ancestor, his ancestor of theromantic death”. The knife fight is the romantic death that he had wanted to die just like his maternal grandfather’s death. I think Dahlmann used his imagination to change his destiny. What do you think?