Latin America in Movement and Perspective: Learnings for Schools

Catherine WalshUniversidad Andina Simon Bolivar, Ecuador

and Mellon Visiting Professor, Duke University

Key questions:Latin America in whose “perspective”/from what point

of view? •What is the perspective from which the US typically

sees LA?•How does LA see itself? And in what ways do

dominant geo-politics orient –or not- both North and South perspectives?

•What is the movement that LA is experiencing today and how does it turn geography and politics, but also

knowledge and culture, on its head? And what are the challenges -and movements- all this presents to schools

and to our perspectives?

I. Geography, politics, and power

in perspective

1. The map:

How does the map re-present and re-produce our perspective of Latin America, the US, and

the World?

Why is the north

always up?

Why is the north

always up?

On the traditional world map used in schools and everywhere, the Equator is not at the center, the North occupies two thirds and the South one, when in reality…

“We learn world geography through a map, which does not show the world as it is but as its owners decide it is…”

•

In the more accurate Peters map:

South America is twice the size of Europe and

the America of the South is much larger than the America of

the North.

North America fills more space

than South America

Europe is shown as larger than South America

PETERS PROJECTION MAP

the North occupies 18.9 million sq. miles as compared to the 38.6 million sq. miles that is the South

MERCATOR MAP

The Peters map -the 1st to clearly show that maps are unavoidably political- lets us see the World in its true proportions. But while it has been widely adopted elsewhere, in the US it

remains a curiosity. Why?

In the traditional Mercator map:

“This map, which makes us smaller, symbolizes all the rest. Stolen geography, plundered economy, falsified history, daily usurpation of reality: the so called Third World, inhabited by people who are considered third class, occupies less, remembers less, lives less, says less [and in essence is less]….” (E. Galeano)

Latin America: in the US’s shadow & “backyard”…• Since 1890, there have been more than 50 direct

US interventions in Latin America and hundreds of indirect ones;

• In the 1st half of the 20th century Nelson Rockefeller designed and carried out a plan for the US exploitation of oil & natural resources in LA, involving the US gov’t, CIA, missionaries, and Latin American dictators;

• In 2010 the US established 7 military bases in Colombia

• Since 1890, there have been more than 50 direct US interventions in Latin America and hundreds of indirect ones;

• In the 1st half of the 20th century Nelson Rockefeller designed and carried out a plan for the US exploitation of oil & natural resources in LA, involving the US gov’t, CIA, missionaries, and Latin American dictators;

• In 2010 the US established 7 military bases in Colombia

… and under the US’s wing… •Most Latin America dictators and military chiefs have been trained by the US School for the Americas, many Right-wing presidents have also attended Harvard’s Kennedy School…

How come “America” and

“Americans” are used as synonyms

for the US?

How come “America” and

“Americans” are used as synonyms

for the US?

Doesn’t this invisibilize and marginalize the other Americas and Americans?

Doesn’t this invisibilize and marginalize the other Americas and Americans?

Hmm, geography, politics, and power

in perspective!

Hmm, geography, politics, and power

in perspective!

Language contributes to this top-down perspective…

And why are people from

Latin American referred to as “hispanics”?

And why are people from

Latin American referred to as “hispanics”?

Imperial and colonial categorizations and classifications

that superiorize and inferiorize, that negate and invisibilize national, cultural,

continental, historical identities and geography itself

2. Race Racialization and the use of the idea of “race”

are key practices and referents in the perspectives of the US about LA

–the top looking down- , but also within LA itself -the bottom looking up-

Official history tells us that the “Conquest” brought “civilization” despite the presence of millennial nations and civilizations

While there are over 50 million people of African descent in Latin America today, Blacks remain absent in history, and in accounts of nation-building, where the heroes and leaders are always white and of Spanish or Portuguese descendent

The key reference of “independence” was,and remains to be, the French Revolution

LA’s National projects have always found their base in social “whitening”, in the model and imperatives of Western modernity, and the “mono-cultural” Nation-State

(the gaze toward North)…

Not the Haitian Revolution

With the national“forefathers” all white

National projects founded on

Import of white European immigrants

and attempted “elimination” of

indigenous and blacks

“racial democracy” “Mestizaje” asthe dominant matrix

of power

Models of hierarchical social classification : Whites Mestizos Indigenous Blacks

In this still-colonial model/discourse of power, the use of the idea race

remains key, including in negating indigenous and black cultural practices,

ways of being-living, and knowledge(knowledge still seen in an euro-usa-centric perspective)

This continues in US Latin American communities, where white and “whitened” Latin Americans consider themselves superior,

and indigenous and Afro Latinos inferior,the latter also often excluded by US African Americans.

Yet in the perspective of US society and schools,

Latin America and Latin Americans are homogenizing categories

Latino, Hispano, Hispanic = Spanish-speaking and Brown

Ahhh, geography,

politics,power in (colonial) perspective!

Ahhh, geography,

politics,power in (colonial) perspective!

II.PERSPECTIVE

IN MOVEMENT … AND UP-SIDE DOWN

In the 12th Century the official geographer of the kingdom of Sicily drew a map of the World that Europe

knew about, with the south on the top.

8 centuries later, an Uruguayan painter drew a map of South America with the north down.

“Our north is south …. To go north our ships don’t go up but down.” -J. Torres-Garcia

Since 1992Native peoples of the Americas have begun to refer to

themselves as peoples of ABYA YALA

AN

And to name themselves on their own terms, as collective peoples and nations

with histories, languages, territories, knowledges, cosmovisions that still live today

From the America –or Abya Yala- of the South, and particularly the Andes, come today “other” perspectives and politics that

not only challenge dominant views but give lessons to the North and World:

NATURE as the subject of rightsNATURE as the subject of rights

DECOLONIZATION of EDUCATION DECOLONIZATION of EDUCATION

Today’s projects grounded in perspectives that come from the struggles, thinking, and practice of indigenous communities,

proposed and conceived for all of society

Refounding of State PLURINATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL STATERefounding of State PLURINATIONAL AND INTERCULTURAL STATE

BUEN VIVIR/LIVING WELL/collective well beingBUEN VIVIR/LIVING WELL/collective well being

Feb. 2011: Largest environmental suit in the World decided in favor of Amazonian plaintiffs in Ecuador

against Chevron-Texaco

Important lessons that challenge the dominant geopolitics of the US in and with regard to LA, and make evident today’s

MOVEMENT IN PERSPECTIVE

In Conclusion… if the map has been one of the key tools in constructing a dominant geopolitical perspective, what happens when its

directionality moves?

This is the way indigenous people have always seen the World, that is with the up side down

As the presence of Latin Americans continues to grow in the US (around 50 million) and in NC

(one of the fastest growing states with now close to a million), the question

becomes not only how non Latinos in NC and the US see Latin America

and Latin Americans, but also how Latin Americans see you: the people next door.