Fall 2014 History 103 Seminar

University of California, Berkeley

The Question of Progress in Latin American History –or, What Have Latin Americans Been Fighting About for Two Centuries?

Professor: Pablo Palomino

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Seminar Meetings: Fridays 10-12, 2303 Dwinelle

Office Hours:

Tu 9-10 & F 1–2:30 and by appointment, 3323 Dwinelle pablomin@berkeley.edu

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Progress has always been a puzzle in Latin America’s history: a challenge for intellectual and political elites, an elusive dream for ordinary Latin Americans, and the cause of new challenges and problems wherever it did take place. For historians, progress used to represent the very sense of universal history, a narrative that sneaked into current visions of “Western modernity” and “globalization.” What has “progress” meant particularly for Latin Americans? What is, for instance, the meaning of “progress” in the Brazilian flag? In political terms, what ideas of “progress” animated oligarchic, liberal, populist, military, revolutionary, and democratic projects? Because progress involves planning and envisioning the outcome of present actions, the history of progress is, in certain way, a history of the future.

The goal of the seminar is to help students situate a problem of their choice—from public policy to political ideologies, from religion to economics, from the arts to the sciences—and trace its history in terms of the political debates that pursued the goal of progress (or to stop it) in that specific realm. Students in history and humanities, as well as both the hard and social sciences, will be able to intervene in today’s debates about the future—economic regimes, environmental policies, institutions, technology, and culture—informed by an explicit idea of progress instead of an implicit or ideological one. The course:

This course aims to foster a deeper knowledge of Latin American societies among students already familiarized with the region, and to introduce those who are discovering

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it into one of the most relevant problems of modern and contemporary history, faced by virtually all societies: “progress.” What is progress? How has this keyword been reformulated in the political, legal, economic, social, and cultural struggles that shaped modern Latin America? How did it shape the imagining of the future? Does “progress” mean extractive capitalism, or is it also the path to diminish socio-economic inequalities? How did “progress” impact the physical environment? Is itself a consequence of external imposition, state planning, or social cooperation? Is it just a utopia? Who defined it, and which paths to achieve it have been elaborated in Latin America? Is it inevitable? Is it, after all, desirable?

Organized chronologically, the course presents, on the one hand, ideas and political debates around the problem of progress, and on the other, the social history behind them. The lectures will bring together the two poles, and section meetings will focus on articles and books dedicated to specific contexts and histories. In both section meetings and office hours students will get feedback on a short paper, in which they will elaborate an original definition of progress, grounded on a short set of documents and readings on a historical event, place, or period of their interest. The readings will provide empirical analysis of key cases and serve as models of particular forms of history: environmental, intellectual, of gender, race, and so forth.

The course begins with the attempts at reforming the socio-economic structure of the Iberian empires and the debates of post-Independence thinkers and leaders of the young Latin American republics regarding different ways to progress. Then it moves to the turn of the twentieth century, when positivist thinkers and state modernizers debated the meaning of progress with spiritualist, millenarian, and grassroots projects around cooperative, local, national and transnational forms of social organization. The third stage of the journey focuses on the mid-twentieth-century populist alliances around “social progress” with its extended citizenship, nationalist projects of industrialization, welfare state and union-based popular organization. The fourth module deals with the “structural crises” that broke the populist alliances in the 1960s and 1970s, and with two radical understandings of progress that emerged in those years: the revolutionary and the neo-liberal. The fifth and final module introduces the current debates on progress among neo-liberal, neo-developmental, environmental, center-left, and post-colonial ideas and policies across the region. Assignments:

Paper: in 10 double-space pages, students will choose in Week 4 a historical problem of their choice—for instance: gender equality, electoral law, private property, use of forests, ethnic relations, school, political violence, scientific knowledge, migrations—in a country, region, or city (or a comparative approach to two of them) and elaborate either an original definition of “progress” or an argument about its meaning, based on the close reading of primary documents and scholarly texts to be determined on an individual basis in office hours. Grading: Class attendance and participation: 60% Paper: 40%

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Schedule Week 1 (8/29): Introduction: “Progress” and “Latin America.” Description of the seminar, readings, assignments, grades, and office hours Part 1: The Origins of Latin America’s Quest for Progress Week 2 (9/5): Colonial Progress Readings: - David Weber, Bárbaros: Spaniards and their Savages in the Age of Enlightenment (Intro, Chapters 1 - 2 - 3 - 6, and Epilogue) Week 3 (9/12): Progress vs. Millenarianism Reading: - Alberto Flores Galindo: In Search of an Inca: Identity and Utopia in the Andes (1986) (Selection) Part 2: Progress’ Utopia in the Nineteenth Century Week 4 (9/19): Positivist Progress Reading: - Rebecca Earle, The Return of the Native (2007) (Selection) - Roberto Gargarella, Latin American Constitutionalism, 1810-2010, Chapter 5 “Positivism and Revolution at the Beginning of the New Century” (2013) (p. 107-134) Week 5 (9/26): Eugenic Progress Readings: - Euclides da Cunha, Rebellion in the Backlands (1902) (Selection) - Alejandra Bronfman, Measures of Equality: Social Science, Citizenship, and Race in Cuba, 1903-1940 (2004), Chapter 5, “Social Science, State-Making, and the Politics of Time” Part 3: People’s Progress in the 20th Century Week 6 (10/3): Living Standards: Socio-Biological Progress Reading: - Moramay López-Alonso, Measuring Up. A History of Living Standards in Mexico, 1850-1950 (2012) Week 7 (10/10): Students’ Presentations

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Week 8 (10/17): Popular Consumerism as Social Progress Reading: - Eduardo Elena, Dignifying Argentina. Peronism, Citizenship, and Mass Consumption (2011) Suggested reading:

- Joel Wolfe, “Populism and Developmentalism,” in Thomas Holloway, A Companion to Latin American History, Blackwell, 2011. (p. 347-364)

Week 9 (10/24): Popular Housing and Urbanism as Social Progress Reading: - Sarah Selvidge, “Housing and Urban Modernism in Mexico, 1920-1960” (2014) Part 4: Anti-Imperialist Progress Week 10 (10/31): Socio-Economic Structural Obstacles to Progress Reading: - Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and development in Latin America (1971) Week 11 (11/7): Progress as Popular (and Revolutionary) Education Readings: - John Hammond, “Popular Education in the Midst of Guerrilla War: An Interview with Julio Portillo,” in Journal of Education 173:1, 1991 (p. 91-106) - Clark Taylor, Seeds of Freedom: Liberating Education in Guatemala (2013) Part 5: Present and Future of Progress Week 12 (11/14): Current Roadmaps to Progress: Neo-liberalism, Neo-developmentalism, and Environmentalism Reading: - Elizabeth Fitting, The Struggle for Maize: Campesinos, Workers, and Transgenic Corn in the Mexican Countryside (2011), Chapters 2 and 3. Week 13 (11/21): The World Bank Perspective Reading: - World Bank Report (VVAA), Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class (2013) Week 14 (12/5): Students’ Presentations [Week 15 (12/12): Recitation Week (no meeting)] Week 16 (Monday, Dec. 15) Paper is due.