I am excited to be part of two presentations with amazing collaborators this Friday at the 2024 National Council for the Social Studies conference in Boston. One presentions will encourage participates to reframing discussion of Atlantic revolutions by centering marginalized voices. My part in this flows the simple notion that Black Lives Matter(ed) in the revolutionary Caribbean. Bram Hubbell will discuss incorporating indigenous lives, and Angela Lee will show how to bring more women’s lives into our discussions of an Age of Revolutions.
Bram recently wrote a very interesting post for his Liberating Narratives newsletter that leads nicely into our session (subscription required and very worthwhile for anyone working with World History). In the post (seriously, click here, subscribe, and read) Bram identifies stories of Black and Indigenous agency in the wars of independence in Spanish America. I especially appreciated the link to this article on the Huánuco Rebellion of 1812 in Peru. Despite doing some reading that lead to my post on americanos, I was not familiar with this event even though it fits themes of John Chasteen’s Americanos: Latin America’s Struggle for Independence which informed my post. This shows the challenges and opportunities inherent in teaching about a complex topic such as the varied independence movements in Latin America.
Looking at materials teaching materials for Latin American independence movements I noticed the vastness of the topic allowed curriculum writers a lot of discretion in framing. One reactionary education syndicate used these event as an opportunity to use their blonde Columbus image to lead into their story, which also included a resolute Cortes as context for Nineteenth Century events. More common is using Enlightenment intellectual culture from Europe as the context or cause of Latin American rebellions. This was, of course, one aspect of the context for these events, but we should be sure that we are highlighting representative dimensions of these Revolutions. The OER project’s graphic biographies, include Manuela Sáenz, for instance. When explaining the process of independence in Mexico with World and US History students, I always try to work in the story of Vicente Guerrero, the revolutionary general and president whose ancestry was said to include African, Indigenous, and Spanish forebears. Like the picture of Columbus, this commonly used picture of Guerrero was made after his death. Unlike blonde Columbus, the portrait of Guerrero does suggest something about the mestizo people and culture that he represented. Mexico abolished slavery while he was President.
Complexity requires us to choose and we should the highlight experiences of the people who made up these revolutions.
