Equality over Everything

Recently in History class we learned about various latin American revolutions, and how people fought for independence. More specifically we studied three; that of Mexico, Gran Colombia, and Brazil. Race was a large part of all three of these revolutions, it is also a big part in many other things that take place in our world. The main point of this lesson was to pinpoint why it’s so crucial to acknowledge human value no matter what race a person is, also to figure out how the events in the Latin American Revolutions were demonstrations of this moral. To start off the lesson in class we filled in a pie chart based on the population of different races in Latin America. This then gave us a better idea of who the majority was at this time. As you can see in the chart below, the least populated group was the Peninsulares, they made up 1%, these people were born in Spain and had migrated to the colonies, they also worked in the higher ranking jobs. While the least populated group was considered the highest rank, the majority of the people were Indian, and they were forced to provide labor for the Peninsulares.  The people were so focused on race at this time that they created a system to tell what you would be labeled according to your heritage, and this would determine your social rank in life. This system was called a Canasta. The particular social rank in Latin America at this time was; Peninsulares, Creoles, Mestizos, Mulattoes, Indians, and African slaves. Next we split into three groups and we each created a timeline for one of the revolutions. After all timelines were done we mixed so that each group now had at least one person from each revolution who could explain their timeline to the others.

This is the make up of different racial groups in this time period in Latin America.

This is the timeline of the Gran Colombia Revolution.

My group chose to study the Gran Colombia Revolution. Once we finished our own timelines, in our new groups we discussed commonalities and differences. Two similarities between the revolutions of Mexico, Gran Colombia, and Brazil are that all three took place and ended around the same time; about 1800-1830. Also all three revolutions took place in the current day Americas. The differences that we came up with in our second groups was that the revolutions were all lead by different people, and the countries also spoke different languages. The three revolutions had differents way of gaining their independence but the problem of racial discrimination took place in all three. The Gran Colombia revolution was lead by Simon Bolivar who was born in Venezuela, and was fighting against discrimination due to birthplace. The Mexican Revolution was launched by a catholic priest by the name of Miguel Hidalgo, he issued the “Cry of Dolores” which called for an end to 300 years of spanish rule, and of course racial equality. The Brazilian revolution was a little different, the cause was new taxes and imperial control, so once there was a gradual transition towards Brazil’s independence Pedro decided that only peninsulares could serve in his cabinet. This is where race played a card in the Brazilian revolution. The bottom line that came out of all of these revolutions is that no matter race, or birthplace people should not be discriminated against. Racial equality has sparked many revolutions and led to many countries independence.

In our world today race is still an issue, you would think that because it has caused so many problems in the past, people would realize that it should not be an issue. Recently there has been many reports of unarmed African American men who have been shot down due to a policemen suspecting they are doing something wrong; when in reality they aren’t and because of their race they have been discriminated against. This issue of race that has costed many people their lives, most definitely still needs to be considered today. People have lost their lives fighting for racial equality and if we still have not achieved that goal then what have those people died for?