Cocalero

Cocalero follows the election of Evo Morales in Bolivia and the significances of this election for the indigenous peoples of the country. These people backed him wholeheartedly with their unions because he represented them more than any other candidate had. He was one of them. He knew what it was like to be a coca farmer and the injustices they felt and the hardships that they went through. His election to the position of President of Bolivia was a mile marker in history and is possibly one of the most historical events that we have covered in this class; he marks the first ever popularly elected indigenous person into the presidency. This was a triumph for indigenous people in Bolivia and all over South America. This election signaled hope for the people who for hundreds of years had been taken advantage of and had their land taken by Spanish and European peoples.

The plight of indigenous peoples in South America has no been one of triumphs or joys. It has been one of being dominated and discrimination since the arrival of Europeans. When they arrived, native peoples had been living and working the land for over 10,000 years and had their own societies and way of doing things. Powerful families were over the groups but land was a communal thing and labor was split equally between the people. After the arrival of these new people everything changed and they were forced into working for these conquistadors and somehow manage to still provide for themselves and local markets which were dependent on local products which still holds true today. (Field 40-41)

Finally in the nineties the indigenous peoples of Ecuador made a stand and marched on the capital to finally reclaim the land that for thousands of years had been theirs. There were three crucial marches from 1990 to 1992. The first of which was covered in Les Fields article but ended up with very little actually getting done in favor of the Indians. Sawyer’s article covers the march in 1992 and the small successes that were achieved for the community. It seems as if in both articles the main issues that keep these people from reclaiming their lands is the prejudice held by everyone about them and what they want. They don’t want the land that is not rightfully theirs and they are productive people just not by modern day economy standards. Because they don’t cut down trees in the Amazon and use modern day technologies, they are not considered productive which is contradictory to Ecuador’s motto of, “Ecuador was, is and shall be an Amazonian country”. (Sawyer 76) If there is no Amazon than one cannot be a country of it. The biggest issues in getting the land is all about silly wording of what it is these people want and what they should be considered.  “They demanded the legalization and autonomous control of ancestral “territory” (not land) belonging to Indian “nationalities” (not ethnic groups). Throughout the negotiations, the government insisted that it adjudicated only “land” and, with respect to Indians, only to “ethnic” communities. The debate over these terms was a struggle over meaning, legitimacy, history, and identity. “ (Sawyer 77) This is all just legal mumbo jumbo that keeps the government in power over people that it does not think should have anything that keeps them from making money.

These struggles signify how much this election could mean for the indigenous people of Bolivia but possibly for the people of other South American countries like Ecuador who clearly have prejudices towards indigenous peoples. It is even shown in the movie the prejudices that people in Bolivia had towards Evo just because he was an indigenous farmer.

Our Brand is Crisis

Our Brand is Crisis is a political documentary from 2005 which covers the political campaign company GCS and the advising that they give to Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, "Goni." These political advisers bring American style politics to Latin America, most specifically Bolivia. They use focus groups and political smear campaigns to win Goni the election and do so my a minuscule amount despite his not so gleaming record from his past presidency. The main issue at this time is the lack of income and jobs for the indigenous people of Bolivia and their issue with the exporting of oil through a pipeline that goes through Chile. Goni represents himself as someone who cares about these people and their needs but in the end is just like every other politician and does not help the indigenous people like he promised.
Politicians like that are rampant in the Latin America and the plight of the indigenous people is one that is just not getting any better. This is evident through out John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." His job was specifically to convince third world nations that certain dams or massive projects would be economically beneficial to the country but then bankrupt them in debt afterward. The mission closest to his heart was his mission in Ecuador, where the ending result put indigenous tribes in a terrible position. The oil companies were taking over and destroying the rain forest in which these tribes had lived for years. Ecuador's first democratically elected president in years, Jaime Rold6s, was the one person on the side of these tribes but just so happened to be killed in a plane crash in 1981 after threatening to keep all foreign business out of Ecuador is they did not start benefiting the people. (183) 
All of these events happened because of the greedy of a few rich people and have put the tribes and lower classes of these nations into jeopardy of surviving day to day. "Ten years later, the neoliberal, free-trade, "market-friendly" policies of orthodox neoclassical economics have become the norm in virtually every Latin American nation. Increasing poverty, stagnant or falling real wages, and a further and steady widening of the distribution of income in virtually every nation has also become the omnipresent and largely ignored social context of the neoliberal era." (Cypher 47). This free trade and big business options to these nations is killing them and making the rich richer and benefiting only Americans just like this campaign did. These advisers did not know what it was like to be Bolivian or what they really needed, they worked for whoever paid them and did whatever they could to make the money in return.
There comes a time when we have to stop playing America politics in other countries and come together to help out the world and not just ourselves. "The Prophecy of the Condor and the Eagle" is the perfect example of what we need to do and should be the lesson that we all take from this. Our American perspectives need to be broadened and we need to bring our hearts and brains together and stop living for just our own greed. (Perkins 247) These people represented Goni without taking in the full spectrum of Bolivian politics and who it was that was actually best for these people.

"These battle lines would ultimately define who we are as a civilization. We were poised to force this tiny country to open its Amazon rainforests to our oil companies. The devastation that would result was immeasurable." (Perkins 241)

La virgen de los sicaros

"Our Lady of the Assassins" is an odd and very depressing love story about a man named Fernando and his lover Alexis, a young boy who tends to be a bit trigger happy. Fernando is an older man who has been jaded by the world and seems to hate absolutely everything in it except for sex. He says to Alexis, "You can't live without sex. People go crazy without sex. Look how nutty the Pope's become." However he soon meets Alexis on his return to Colombia and finds someone in this world to love. Alexis is a gun toting 16 year old who finds that the best solution to solving a problem is to just shoot someone. He is completely a product of his upbringing and the world around him. Hylton starts the third chapter on page 31 with a quote from Eric Hobsbawm, "...I discovered a country in which the failure to make a social revolution had made violence the constant, universal, and omnipresent core of public life," and while this relates back to his section on the 30's and 40's it holds true throughout the history of Colombia. Vargas even says on page 123, "Values such as vengeance and the violent settling of scores are an increasing part of everyday life."
Both articles by Hylton and Vargas constantly refer back to the instability of the government and the lack of control that the government seemed to have. Both make it clear that even though there was a government in Colombia, there was really no one to govern anyone and that is where the guerrillas came into play. The insurgency of guerrillas brought about paramilitary groups. Both who decided to take it upon themselves to govern the areas that states were not controlling properly and between themselves created a war. the fuel to this fire was the drug cartel which seems to have sparked the entirety of Colombia into life. Each group could manipulate local elections to run in their favor and would slowly supplant the system into getting themselves legitimate power. Even the drug traffickers could legitimize themselves buy buying land properly. (Vargas 123).
All of this chaos and lack of government is quite evident in Our Lady of the Assassins. Alexis was brought up in a Colombia where you were paid for every enemy you killed by Escobar and it became the norm for young boys to go around killing each other for the heck of it or because someone higher up the food chain told them too. When a country's main export is an illegal substance, values can sometime get skewed and things like shooting off fireworks when a shipment gets into the US becomes a normal activity. It seems as if the government of Colombia would get it's stuff together and actually govern it's people and have ways set in place to resolve conflicts, than these guerrilla and paramilitary groups wouldn't need to exist or have any role in Colombian life. Then maybe killing would not be the norm and Alexis might have survived to move away with Fernando...
"'Thou shalt not kill.' Why? Taking someone's life is doing them a favor. A huge favor. Let them live. It's what they deserve."

Cocaine Cowboys

The movie Cocaine Cowboys gives insight to the cocaine wars that took place in Miami in the 1980s. It has interviews with Mickey Munday and Jon Roberts, two men who smuggled and sold an inordinate amount of cocaine into the United States from Columbia. Both men ended up working with the Medellin cartel and eventually went down with it. The movie discusses how these were not drug dealers as much as business men, the drug dealers were people like Griselda Blacno who would order hits on any one person who rubbed them the wrong way.

This cocaine business came to Miami as a transition from marijuana to something more and mostly came about from the Cubans. The Cubans had been in the cocaine business for quite sometime. "Cuba was the hub for burgeoning international cocaine traffic and tastes during the 1950... Havana's notorious gambling and pleasure clubs, and freewheeling prostitution industrybecame the era's prioneer test markets of cocaine. The spreading modern taste for cocaine, including among curious American tourists, was a Cuban invention, worthy of it's own cultural history." (Gootenberg 150). the Cubans ended up with an established trade in Miami and felt threatened when the Columbians came to play. This sets up the story for the cocaine wars to begin. The greed and hatred of the dealers is what set Miami up to be a drug war capital.

Younger's article focuses on the United States role in the "control" of drug crops and the smuggling of drugs from South America. On page 134 the article talks about the US making "drug producing and transport countries" get certification that they were cooperating with the United States in getting rid of local drug cartels. The entire article discusses different countries and how the United States initiative is actually harming these countries. In an effort to keep cocaine out of our back yard we are promoting using toxic herbicides to kill the coca plant in Colombia which could have terrible environmental effects. (143) This method is also only reportedly used on small farmers and is taking away the lively hood of these people. Is killing their plants really the right answer? Why not crack down on the plants that actually turn the leaves into cocaine?

One gets the sense from these articles that is the United States had not made such a fuss about cocaine to begin with that maybe the trade would have died down. "To be sure, there had long been some recreational use of cocaine, and illicit sales, but both fell into severe decline by the1920s. Cocaine had never spawned any organized form of illicit production or systematic traffic from producing zones." (Gootenberg 137) Maybe if we hadn't been the anti-drug cowboys the drug could have just died out. It always seems as if the more you tell people that they can not have something the more they want it and the harder it is to get something, the higher the prices go and that's where people in other countries like Cuba and Colombia get the motivation to go into the drug business to begin with.

After watching this movie and reading these articles, one is left with the odd feeling that cocaine really did good for Miami, it kept the economy going and provided jobs for many people who worked in business that were frequented by people who had drug money. If things would not have turned bloody and people like Griselda Blanco would not have went on a killing spree, the argument could be posed that the world would be a richer and less messed up place if we would just legal the drug trade, reap the tax benefits from it and then maybe people would not want it so much.

Bus 174

Normally in movies the guy that has taken hostages is the bad guy, you are not supposed to feel sympathy for him or his plight but Bus 174 does a role reversal and really makes the audience feel sympathy fr this boy who is a creation of the harsh environment of Brazil. The interviews from people on the bus to the police negotiators to the reporters who filmed the entire debacle, one is left with a confused sense of who was really the victim in all of this. That theme is evident in the writings of both Ramos and Guillermoprieto.

Ramos' short story about being robbed is one that should really enrage the audience. The man can't even take a taxi home or look like a semi-well off man without getting held up. However, the story goes on to really make you feel bad for both parties. He's just a man trying to make a living and these men are too but in totally different ways. The robbers weren't bad men, they weren't out right killers but they did precisely what they had to do to survive and this theme translates perfectly back to Sandro. His life on the street molded him into someone who had to do unsavory things just to survive and try to make a life for himself. That is the harsh reality of the streets of Brazil and the children that are left to survive on their own.

Guillermoprieto focuses on the Americanization of Mexico and how it makes people fear for losing their culture and how modernization is putting some people in fear of losing what economic comfort they actually have. Just like the movie and the other article one is left wondering who is the victim? Is modernization to blame for a cultural blending? Is free trade really going to hurt another country that much? Is the victim Americans who could lose their jobs to Mexican workers in Mexico who work for cheaper prices or the workers already in Mexico who could lose their jobs to imports?

These articles are so loaded with confusion that one really does not know what party to root for the same is most certainly said for Bus 174. The hostages on the bus need support, the police chief needs support to actually do the right thing, and Sandro needs support to realize that nothing good is going to come out of this, and absolutely nothing does. Who really is the hero of Bus 174? Who's the hero of any of these tales?

Cidade de Deus

Cidade de Deus is a complex movie from 2002 that gives an in depth look at a favela that produced many hoodlums and many social problems for the people who lived in the favela. The movie gives insight into the tangled weave of gangs and violence and the monetary constraints of the people of this favela. It centers around a few main characters, Rocket, the narrator, Lil' Z, Benny, Carrot, and eventually Knockout Ned. These characters become inter weaved with each other through a complex social system that they themselves created.

It could be said that the reason these people, Lil' Z, Benny, and Carrot, were driven to drug dealing and being hoodlums in general, was the lack of money/jobs available in the favela. The Pino article says it best in the opening paragraph, "Favelados have served the city of Rio de Janeiro in every imaginable capacity, but when their services were no longer required they have been discarded like rotten fruit."The opportunity for jobs for people living in the favelados was small, depending on which one you lived in. Pino goes on to compare three different favelados all of which had different economic issues and job opportunities than the others. Pino goes on to discuss how laborers from the favelas were lucky to get a full-time permanent job. It was very rare for these workers to get a permanent job until he discusses the last favela which was lucky enough to have plants such as GE right beside itself and gave its people more job security than most people had. On pages 24-25 in the Pino article it says that "Nineteen hundred shanties reported an average income of Cr$245 per household." This lack of income can explain why these kids felt the need to steal and in the end become drug lords, these actions gave them the opportunity it have money that they could have never gotten their hands on before.

Oliveira goes on to compare the Brazil favelas with ghettos in New York City to help people comprehend what it was like to live in these areas. It is clear that the mentality of these areas were much different than the ghettos in America. The ghettos came about from whites leaving the urban and going to the outskirts of the city while favelas were formed by people who built their houses where they thought work would be. It was cheaper to build a house in a favela than rent an apartment in the city. They have very little political weight and Oliveira goes on to discuss the differences in these areas by comparing their political involvement. "In Brazil much of the progressive black political leadership that achieved political office arose from the community-based movement, while in the United States it arose from the civil rights movement." pg. 84. The favelas had to stick up for themselves in politics, no one else was looking out for them like the civil rights movement did in America and this fact could also play in the creation of hoodlums in the favelas. No one was watching their back and they make it clear in the movie that the cops did not come there.

These two articles give a bit of insight into why these kids become the drug lords that they did; however, there is always more factors than one can explain in a simple article. In the favela, one had to look out for themselves and the ones that they cared about and that mentality produced the scenes that happened in the movie.

The Beginnings of El Che, The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries is a film about two young men who journey through South America while on break from school and who discover a world far more complex than their social structure in Argentina had ever showed them. The movie begins very lighthearted and comical but slowly gets darker as the story progresses. The inconsistency between life of city dwellers and indigenous Indians is shown and is depicted as having a huge effect on the two boys. The leper colony is what is shown last and is presented to have the biggest effect on their perspective of this inequality. If one did not know anything about this movie or the people depicted in it before hand than it comes as a surprise at the end that one of the boys, Ernesto Guevara, goes on to become a Latin American hero and plays a role in the Cuban revolution and will become known throughout the world as El Che.

His life is one that us heavily speculated on and it seems as if everyone wants to give an opinion of what it is that shaped his world view, what it was that made him make the transfer from Ernesto Guevara to El Che. Elena speculates that Guevara’s upbringing as a middle class boy in Argentina played a role in his transformation. He had access to books and education that provided him the sight to see what was really going on in the world. His eyes were open to the differences between middle class, working class, and indigenous people. Also, his lack of opinion on the Peron government is a huge topic for Elena. HE is depicted as have respect for the equalization that the working class got under Peron but utter disgust with the tourism market that was opened up. He seemed to scoff at people that traveled  to resorts or the coasts, he was a believer in what seems to be traveling to learn and see the world. It is brought to light in this article though that his trip with Alberto was not his first out, he had previously traveled around Argentina and this fact could explain why he wanted to go out farther this time.

Drinot and Zulawski focus on Peru and Bolivia and their effect on the shaping of El Che’s worldview. Both talk about how little Che seemed to know about the indigenous people, it seems by the time it came to care, he cared much more for helping the people inside of knowing truly where they were coming from. Drinot points out that Guevara still played into many social stereotypes of the Indians, which is quite odd considering they were who he seemed the most interested in during his travels. He does not seem interested in politics though, very little writing exists, he focused much more on the people than the politics.

Overall, the movie is a pretty good depiction of what could have been a mile marker in Ernesto Guevara’s transformation in El Che and it seems that he will be written about by many people for years to come and the speculation about his life will never end.