Author Archives: Chris Fried

Latin America in the News: Pope Francis’ Colombian Visit

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via CatholicNewsAgency.com

Pope Francis recently finished up a six-day tour of Colombia, in which he visited multiple religious sites to give sermons and meet with Catholics. The last visit made by a pope was in 1986 by Pope John Paul II under tumultuous circumstances; at the time, conflict between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) was raging and limited the Pope’s access to the Colombian people. While Pope Francis was not restricted by the tensions between FARC and the Colombian government, the conflict informed much of his trip through the country. Recently the Colombian government held a referendum on whether or not FARC rebels should be allowed to return to civilian life if they renounce their allegiance to the domestic terrorist organization. The referendum failed among the Colombian people, but the Colombian Congress approved the measure. With this, 7,000 former rebels have agreed to lay down their arms and cease fighting to return to normal civilian life. In addition to this, FARC is forming a legitimate political party in order to properly engage with the country’s political process.

To many Colombians, this is not a positive development; FARC’s guerilla actions and conflict with the government over the past 52 years have resulted in an estimated 220,000 deaths and six million displaced individuals. Clearly, many citizens have been impacted by this conflicted, and are clamoring that the former rebels receive some sort of state-sanctioned punishment. In light of this development, Pope Francis has been arguing that the people of Colombia must find it in their hearts to forgive the rebels and embrace a path towards peace at any cost. Prior to his visit, he addressed the Colombian people with a video and declared that “Let us take the first step” towards peace was the overarching message of his travels.

Obviously, this is not a universally welcomed message, and there are multiple other circumstances that are complicating the situation. While the Vatican is vehemently pushing for the adoption of a “peace at any cost” policy for its followers and the Colombian people, Evangelist churches based in Colombia believe that it goes against religious values held by Christians to allow these deeds to go unpunished. Even further, the Vatican being so closely aligned with the government may prove to be disastrous. While FARC has already held up their end of the arrangement, the government has failed to follow through on multiple aspects of the agreement, including providing areas formerly controlled by FARC with access to clean, running water. The future of the situation is uncertain, but could have large implications for the Catholic Church’s presence and influence in Colombia.

The article focuses mostly on the happenings of the Colombian government and the Vatican, which limits an opportunity to look at how the average Colombian citizen is represented within the media. A few quotes from citizens are given, but their individual stories are marginalized in the context of the story, which I find perplexing given the amount of space the article gives the importance of public opinion. The Colombian government itself is portrayed in a fairly neutral tone. The author mentions that the government had been working on a peace agreement for some time, but also that they had not followed through on several promises and that the actual implementation of the peace agreements “could present the greatest challenges this year”, which felt like a slight indictment of the Colombian government.

I found this article important to consider in the context of our class due to the fact that we will be looking at the role that the Catholic Church plays throughout the South American continent. Throughout Europe’s history of colonialism, the Catholic Church was a vehicle of oppression and justification for imperial expansion. We have already seen this in several readings’ allusions to the importance of reading the Bible and spreading the values of Christianity, but as power over the continent becomes more solidified, the role of the Church becomes prominent. This history is important to acknowledge when looking at contemporary events such as the ones described within the article.

In addition to the New York Times article on this subject, the news network teleSUR has a wonderful interactive webpage detailing the Vatican’s relationship with Latin American states over the course of the 20th and 21st century in light of this visit.

Original News Article:

Pope Francis Visits Colombia, Where Even Peace Is Polarizing via the New York Times

Wikipedia Critique – Andean Music

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For this assignment, I decided to look at the Wikipedia page for Andean music. At the very beginning of the article, there is a notification from Wikipedia warning users that there are no citations anywhere in the article. Right away this damages the credibility of the article, as it means whatever information is present has no way of being verified. Looking at the Talk page for this article reveals that there has been little discourse on the construction of the article, only a handful of users debating the nature of “true” traditional Inca music. There are descriptions given of traditional Andean instruments that have links to many other Wikipedia pages that have a number of citations, which lends some amount of credibility to this section. The “Modern history” section gives broad details about the development of certain musical movements and musicians in the Andean region from the 1960s onward, but it feels very limited in scope and biased towards the promotion of a select few bands. I’m sure there is a rich history of music’s evolution throughout the Andean region, but this article is unable to explore any of it while simultaneously keeping the reader from discovering more outside of the realm of Wikipedia. The history of this article shows that there was, at some point, external links, but were removed over time. Much of the recent work has been provided by one user, adding more connections to other Wikipedia articles. Overall, this article could be interesting to help a reader discover more contemporary musicians from the Andean region, but lacks any sort of intellectual/academic credibility.

Class Notes – 8/30

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We started class on Wednesday by clarifying that we need sign up for Wikipedia as soon as possible, and that we will be having our Map Quiz at the beginning of class on Monday, September 4. Alberto presented his Latin America in the News post, which dealt with the Guarani people of Paraguay, and a recent celebration to help promote and celebrate diversity.

Afterwards, we identified various popular terms used for referring to the indigenous populations of the Americas (Indian, Native American, First Nations) and recognized that it is important to refer to groups of people/individuals as they want to be identified. In addition to this, it is important to recognize what these phrases can’t do; when looking at this history of colonialism, we need to understand that there is a huge amount of cultural and linguistic diversity. If an observer thinks about the history of colonizing Latin America as only two populations, Indigenous Latin Americans vs. Spanish Invaders, the history will not be easily understood.

After this discussion, we were split into groups for the rest of the class. The first topic was looking at why we chose certain areas of Latin/South America as likely to be inhabited. After talking among ourselves, we created a class list of important influences for deciding where large civilizations can form; access to waterways for transportation/trade, access to fresh water, the right amount of rainfall, flat land, non-extreme temperatures, and the ability to grow a surplus of food so people can contribute labor towards anything other than agriculture.

This was how we discussed the importance of environment, as environmental factors are what determines where large groups of people can live/gather. The environment determines what indigenous/Spanish populations could interact and at what historical moments. We didn’t necessarily quote any specific passages when discussing this, but the discussion relied heavily on the maps provided for readings and Bauer’s analysis of the environment’s importance in the development of history throughout the world (16).

After this, we moved on to collectively define Material Culture. Values are assigned to goods, imprinting societal values onto physical objects. They become valued outside of their pure economic value. These objects are used to define a community’s/individual’s culture; what does a particular object’s presence mean/represent? What does an image seen on repeated pieces of pottery in a specific region mean? This method is incredibly useful when looking at the remains of a civilization, as it displays the relationship between the society and nature, how leisure time was spent, how race & gender manifested, and much more. Food in particular is an incredibly significant aspect!

Links

I’ve found two links by the historian Jared Diamond that deal with his theory of the environment’s role in the formation of civilizations, one addressing his original formulation of the theory and another applying his own theories to the current global climate. I’ve also found an article that works to apply theories of Material Culture to the contemporary production of art in Michigan.

Potential Exam Questions

 

  • Imagine you are researching the remains of an ancient culture, and you’ve noticed that one particular type of object has been found multiple times throughout the site. What conditions would help you determine the role that they played in this society?
  • Are there any other non-human factors, other than the environment, that need to be considered when determining where civilization can thrive?
  • Try applying the idea of material culture to contemporary American society: What will future historians think our cultural values were by looking at American currency?