What are some examples of cultural wars/conflicts in Latin America?

am doing an essay on a region that I was assigned by my professor. I have been researching for days and have found nothing. The examples can be historical or current as long as there is enough information about it, so that I can do further research. There is some stuff I found on brazil but not much more information. Any help would be appreciated!

Reply 1

Napp

22

You could have fun and do the one on football between Columbia and uruguy (if memory serves) - that COUnts as cultural doesn't it? :lol:

Otherwise theres the various conbquests of latin America. The Mexico america war would be interesting with Santiana being rather a character in it. Hmm, to be honest there are plenty and most of them are/were cultural to varying degrees (or simply about resources). If you want to be a smart ass some of the cartel conflicts could be explained through a cultural lens as well.

Personally, i'd go with the US-Mexico war though. However, what is the definition of 'cultural' here? As you have said religious during the post but cultural in the title. The two not really being the same.

Reply 2

Huzam001

15

Incas or aztecs maybe? Sorry I don’t really know much about Latin America and most of its from Horrible Histories lmao

Reply 3

Napp

22

Original post by Huzam001

Incas or aztecs maybe? Sorry I don’t really know much about Latin America and most of its from Horrible Histories lmao

Its a good topic to read up on. Shame the *****y UK history curriculum only gives a vague nod to it in primary school

Reply 4

michaelhw

17

T

Original post by Huzam001

Incas or aztecs maybe? Sorry I don’t really know much about Latin America and most of its from Horrible Histories lmao

There is a literary tradition called "the indeanista novel". You might google that. Writers try to use set stories in pre-columbian native american societies. When these novels started appearing, they noted that native american chiefs behaved like european aristocrats, much was projected into an empty space. Recently there have been lidar used at the latin american rain forrest. It stripped away the overgrowth digitally, and below they could see that some of the empires that later had been swallowed by the jungle in fact were significantly larger than previously supposed.
There was also a very tragic thing that happened during the period of the conquistadors, namely that a priest named Diego De Landa burnt many native american books or codexes, and thus significantly reduced what prosterity can learn about their way thinking and their stories.

If you go down further south, you will find a story tradition known as gaucho fiction, and when you see some of the stories what strikes you is how violent they seem compared to contemporary European stories.

When orson welles created his war of the worlds play (based on the HG wells novel) with Koch, there were latin american versions in chile and ecuador that resultated many dead. I made this radio piece concerning the one in ecuador, there is a convenient book on that by one of the people involved. But I did not research the one in Chile. That might be an idea?

https://historyradio.org/2017/01/21/the-war-of-the-worlds-in-ecuador/

I also think the cuban revolution had a huge effect on latin america, which is much larger than people realise, and that the legacy of the monroe doctrine and very bad behaviour by the US, sort of opened up a space for liberation theology and the like. This very funny song by Warren Zevon sort of summarizes a little of US attitudes towards latin america during the late twentieth century

[video="youtube;F2HH7J-Sx80"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2HH7J-Sx80[/video]

At the start of the US war in Mexico, there was an event concerning the sinking of The Maine, which is very similar to the bay of tonkin event during the vietnam war, or "the weapons of mass destruction" episode with W. Bush. In the case of The Maine lies were pushed forward by press barons.

(edited 6 months ago)

Falklands war.

Original post by Guru Jason

Falklands war.

That is certainly the most relevant subject for the UK, but it is also the most difficult to evaluate objectively. Are you being a jingoist? Are you overcompensating? Are you on target? The way to to that is to see it all from the argentinian perspective, and then let their voices speak, and not express too much sentiment one way or the other. These are their views, i am not responsible for them and so on. If you do it another way, you are writing about thatcher and British history, and not about latin american culture. What our veterans saw etc. A great, but different subject.

(edited 6 months ago)

Reply 7

Guru Jason

21

Original post by michaelhw

That is certainly the most relevant subject for the UK, but it is also the most difficult to evaluate objectively. Are you being a jingoist? Are you overcompensating? Are you on target? The way to to that is to see it all from the argentinian perspective, and then let their voices speak, and not express too much sentiment one way or the other. These are their views, i am not responsible for them and so on. If you do it another way, you are writing about thatcher and British history, and not about latin american culture. What our veterans saw etc. A great, but different subject.