Chicano Ecology 540 Chapter 2 Modern Latin America

The stasis of Skidmore’s analysis is connected to the power struggle of the inhabitants of Latin America, their assimilators, who then construct a feeling of inferiority among the native people. In this section of the book there is a clear perspective about what elite were aiming to do in reconstructing social order and class structure. I never thought that there was a building up of events, or big picture to this. Skidmore writes, “Latin America has occupied an essentially subordinate or “dependent” position, pursuing economic paths that have been largely shaped by the industrial powers of Europe and United States. These economic development have brought about transitions in the social order and class structure and these changes in turn have crucially affected political change” (43). The planting of this construct is very well explained, and thought out. I don’t know exactly if this is what really happened. To say that one wants to pursue an economic path through industrial power puts a limit on the ways that land is own, it is cultivation, and ultimately the ways people live through the land. This has been an ongoing topic in this class and I think finally I am starting to see how the domino effect plays into my particular topic. Through Rufina Amaya’s testimony, I can pinpoint ways in which the stasis is unknown. A group of military men come to El Mozote and take charge? No, this can be it. There needs to be a leading up to these events. All that is known is that they are out to get the people who are in aide to the guerrilla coup. What do this mean for this village? It means, they should be wiped out, eliminated, not just displaced from their homeland—extinct. I think that the history behind this event comes from a bigger notion. A notion of this assimilation through industrial infiltration. The use of weaponry, weapons as a tactic of fear, and the deadliest rape. All of these men, these soldiers were literary men of the same country, or even village. How are their paradigms of inferiority created? How can a man, or men who are from the same country eventually become powerful than their counterparts through a weapon? Through militarism or government power? This intensely puzzles me. I want to know what their perspective were away from the heavy brainwashing that they underwent. Skidmore sheds light on this, although through a industrial perspective when he says, “The elite’s commitment to liberalism was reinforced by their deep concerns about the supposed racial inferiority of their native population” (46). The exigency in connection to this situation is in part because of the elite’s vision of liberalism. In this situation I felt that liberalism is important focus because of how global economic expansion was a force many wanted to reach. I also thought about the elite’s commitment to killing in Amaya’s village as the only testament this men had of actually killing people, being the elite eve within their own people, and rising to the top through these actions. Interestingly, in Amaya’s testimony a few of the men did not want to follow through with the killings, but their partners through persuasion were the enablers of trust, and manhood. They knew they had to do it or else they would also die. Through this, the stasis, and exigence are pivotal for the account and testimony of Amaya.