Does Skin Color Still Matter?

This is the social pyramid we looked at. 

The essential question for the Latin American lesson was, “Why is it essential to acknowledge human value regardless of race? How are the events in the Latin American revolutions evidence of this social imperative?” In class, we studied the impact of race on Latin American revolutions for independence. First, we looked a pie chart of the race percent of the population in Latin America and we looked at a social pyramid. According to the pie chart, the Indian’s made up 50% percent of the population. The Creoles made up 23% of the population. They were the people who were born in the new world but whose parents were either Spanish or Portugal descent. The African Slaves made up 11% of the population. Both the Mullattoes & the Free Blacks made up 8% of the population. The Mullattoes were people with at least one parent with African descent.  The Mestizos made up 7% of the population and they were the people descended from a white parent and a parent with Indian heritage. The Peninsulares made up 1% of the population and they were the people born in Spain or Portugal who migrated over to the new world.  In terms of the social pyramid, it was the Peninsulares on top then it went the Creoles, the Mestizos, the Mullattoes, the Indians, and on the bottom the African slaves. After looking over both the chart and the pyramid, we then analyzed Casta Art. The painting showed the different types of names for different relations between people. This just proves the importance of racial distinction in Latin American colonies because there was a different word for everyone.

This is the Casta Art we analyzed. 

The next thing we did in class was an activity called 3 Routes to Independence. The first step was to create a timeline. The class divided into smaller groups and each group did one of the three topics: Mexico, Gran Colombia, or Brazil. Since there was more groups then topics multiple groups did each topic. My group did Gran Colombia and we then had to read through a summary of the Gran Colombia revolution and create a timeline with key events including important people.

Here is my group’s timeline: 

• April 19, 1810- a junta expels the Spanish governor of the province of Venezula and takes controls
• July 1811- a National Assembly in Caracas formally declares Venezulas independence 
• July 1812- the Spanish recover a military initiative and regain control of the entire province 
• 1813- Simón Bolívar returns to Venezula and wins six successive engagements against Spanish forces 
• August 6, 1813- he enters Caracas and takes political control with doctoral power
• July 1814- Bolívar has once more lost Caracas; he goes to Bogotá and he succeeds in recapturing from the Spanish  
• End of 1817- he is back in Venezula and building up a new army in an inaccessible region on the Orinoco River
• 1819- Bolívar's small force of only 2500 men, uses cowhide boats to cross a succession of flooded tributaries of the Orinoco and a mounting crossing 
• August 7, 1819- the Spanish Army surrenders 
• August 10, 1819- Bolívar enters Bogotá
• December 17- the Republican de Colombia is proclaimed (covers modern day Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezula
• Venezuela; June 24, 1821- Bolívar wins a battle at Carabobo which brings him once again Caracas 
• Ecuador;May 24 1822- Antonio José Sucre wins a victory at Pichincha and brings the patriots into Quito
• Bolívar remains ruler until 1830, he resigns and wanted to retire in Europe but dies of tuberculosis 
• September- Ecuador and Venezuela formally form Gran Colombia

After creating our timeline and having it approved by our teacher we did a jigsaw activity. My group which did Gran Colombia had to get together with two other groups. One group had to have Mexico and the other group had to have Brazil, so that we could exchange timelines. Within our jigsaw groups, we had to come up with 2 similarities among all 3 revolutions and come up with 2 differences between all the 3 revolutions. For the two similarities, my group came up with that all of the revolutions had the same time period of events and that 1822 was the year all the countries gained their independence. For the first difference, my group came up with Brazil was a peaceful revolution and Gran Colombia and Mexico were both violent revolutions. The second difference my group came up with was that the three revolutions were in different places, there were different leaders, and they were fighting against different things. In the Brazil Revolution, at first Jose was killed because he did not have an elite status and then Pedro tried to make Portuguese people the only people with power. In the Mexico Revolution, Miguel called for the end of 300 years of racial equality. In the Gran Colombia Revolution, Bolivar’s main goal was to liberate New Granada from Spanish control. Even though the revolutions had three different routes to independence, race was an issue in all three.

Judgments are still being made based on race in today’s society and that is just wrong. One big example which brought up a big up rise was the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. An 18 year old black man was shot by a white Ferguson police officer on August 9, 2014. The officer that shot Brown was found not guilty. When Brown was shot he was unarmed and many believe that he was surrendering while the police officer shot him. This incident led to numerous amounts of protests and continued on for a while. Because of Brown’s skin color many believed that was why he was shot. This could be true or false, but either way race should not be something people should still base judgments, decisions, or anything else off of. Race is still an issue in our world today and it should not be.