Introduction
This is the course website/blog for History 165 at Cleveland State University, taught by Professor José O. Solá.
In Spring 2010, HIS165 meets on M/W/F, from 9:45 to 10:50 a.m. at the Science and Research Building Room 152.
Professor Solá has office hours scheduled on M/W/F from 11 a.m. to 12 at Mather Mansion; you may also make an appointment by contacting professor Solá via email or calling his office at (216) 523-7189.
Course Content and Objectives
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to major forces and events that have shaped current day Latin America and the Caribbean. As such, it covers an enormous breadth of time and space–too enormous to cover without focusing on a handful of significant themes. Using representative countries from the region (North, Central, Caribbean, and South America), we will explore topics like nationhood and nationalism; dictatorship, democracy and revolution; capitalism and underdevelopment; the struggle of oligarchs, industrialists, peasants, workers, intellectuals, foreign interests, the military, the urban poor- in essence, men and women.
The course begins by studying the Pre-Conquest period and ends by considering Latin America’s most recent past. It focuses on issues relating to the formation of viable nations, the integration of Latin America into the capitalist world economy, and the social and cultural consequences of this effort, sometimes called “modernization”. We will focus primarily on countries that allow for critical and comparative examination of the processes mentioned, and the countries that I know best. These include Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. However, we will also discuss aspects of the history of most of the Latin American countries.
Understanding the present history of Latin America requires that you approach this course with broad and open minds–minds not afraid to consider how historic class structures have affected the emergence of Latin American nation-states, the emergence and destruction of democracies, the rise and demise of dictatorships, and the emergence of insurrections and revolutions. Latin America is vast region, and its historical development has been extremely complicated and diverse. Given the limits of time available to us, I have chosen to emphasize “introductions” to a number of regions and countries, again, in a comparative context.
jsola