Latin American Revolutions

In class, we learned about the revolutions in Latin America. The revolutions of the Latin American countries of Mexico, Brazil, and Gran Columbia led to the abolishment of slavery in those countries, but also brought those countries closer to racial equality. These revolutions were a milestone in the quest to end slavery in many other nations across the globe, and set the motion in the anti-slavery movement. Without these revolutions and the people who contributed to them, slavery ending and racial equality may not have occurred. To further our knowledge on these events, we broke up into groups, each of us studying a different revolution. We read up on documents about the specific revolution, and then created timelines of the major events based on the reading. BY doing this, we not only learned the importance of these revolutions, but also the impacts of race and slavery on the New World colonies.
Our group was given the Gran Colombian Revolution. Here is a timeline of the major events:

• April 19th, 1810: Simón Bolívar leads a conspiracy to take control of the Venezuelan government. 
• July, 1811: National Assembly in Caracas declares Venezuela's independence. 
• July, 1812: The Spanish regain control of the entire province. 
• 1813: Bolívar returns to Venezuela and wins six successive engagements against the Spanish. On August 6, he enters Caracas and takes control. 
• July, 1814: Bolívar loses control of Caracas again. Marches to Bogotá, recaptures the city from the Spanish.
• 1817: Bolívar builds up an army
• 1819: Bolívar has an army of 2,500 men. They cross flooded tributaries and mountains, losing a considerable amount of rebels.
• August 7, 1819: Spanish surrender. 
• December 17, 1819: Republica de Colombia is proclaimed 
• June 21, 1821: Bolívar wins a battle at Carabobo
• May 24, 1822: Bolívar's general wins a battle at Pinchincha
• May, 1830: Bolívar resigns as leader of Colombia and retires to Europe. However, he reaches Santa Marta and dies of tuberculosis. 

The revolution, and the two others from that matter, originated mainly from racial inequality. The white Europeans put the African and indigenous slaves up against extremely harsh conditions, such as harvesting sugar cane. The sugar cane will cut the harvester very badly sometimes, and the workers would often be cut. But the Europeans did not care about this. All that mattered to them was that the natives were not white and that meant they were less than them. The Europeans had more advanced technology than the natives and slaves, so they did not think much of the threat of a revolt. However, they did not have numbers on their side. The native population made up 50% of total population of the colonies, and the slaves made up 11%. How much did the Europeans make up, do you think? 0.5%. This advantage in numbers was a major contributor to the success of the revolutions. The oppressed races in the areas, the natives and African slaves, fought for their independence and racial equality, as race was another major factor in the cause of the revolutions. All three of these revolts were fought to become independent from their European ruler, as well as to give rights to those who were enslaved or racially discriminated against. However, the revolutions did have their differences. One difference was that while the Colombian and Mexican revolutions involved fighting, the Brazilian revolution was non-violent. And, one important aspect of these revolutions is that racial inequality still remained problem.

Racial inequality is still a problem in modern times. Of course it is not as noticeable as it was during the Civil War period or the Civil Rights movement, but people are still racially profiled and discriminated against everyday. One recent example of this is the shooting in Ferguson, MO, where 18 year old Michael Brown, a black teenager, was shot by officer Darren Wilson, a white cop. This is an extremely controversial case, with protests sparking up all across the country. It is even moire so controversial that the officer was not convicted in his court case, a decision that was widely disliked among people across the country. Although this country has come a long way from its racist past, there is still racism in America, even though it is not nearly as prominent as it was in the past. We need to, as a community and as a country, work to overcome racism and discrimination, just as those in the Latin American Revolutions did.