The Making of Latin America: Contemporary Thoughts

          In Professor Stark's part of the class, the discussion of Mexico has seemed to have one common motif throughout the whole conversation - the struggle to create a national identity. But, from hearing the state that Mexico was in at the time, it is not surprising that they were struggling so much to create a unified identity. There were two parts of that struggle that really stuck out to me - the sheer size and spread of the land that they were trying to unite, and trying to incorporate the indigenous into their society.           The amount of territory that Mexico used to possess blows my mind. It was such a huge expanse of land, so much so that the climate and geography differed drastically from one area to the next. In all of present-day California, there were a total of 3,000 people. I put that into perspective for myself by thinking about the fact that there were 1,200 students in my high school alone, being the smallest o...

          I think you're offering some really good insight into nation/nation building. You've got me thinking - what IS more important when building a nation? Is it something that we can quantify? Is it something that we can just use as a blanket statement for all nations, or is it dependent on the situation and the past of the people that you're trying to make into a nation? In class we talked a lot about different ways to classify a nation (ethnic vs. civic), but never really pondered the weight of those two individually.           This is something that I've thought a lot about too. When growing up and being taught about countries and nations, we are taught in a way that gives us the impression that the two are synonymous. Educators make it seem like once you have a set leadership and develop a country, then you automatically have a nation. But, through this class, we are learning that this is definitely NOT the case. Just because y...

      As we have been discussing what makes a nation in class lately, it has gotten me thinking about how we classify a nation. We have focused on two different "classifications" of what a nation is - civic vs. ethnic. But, are there other ways to classify a nation? I have a hard time believing that a certain believed nation could be described as completely a civic nation or as completely an ethnic nation. I guess where I get confused is what is actually considered a nation - when speaking of nations, are some civic nations and some ethnic? Are both classifications just lumped together as being a nation in general, while in all reality it is either ethnic or civic? In my opinion, a nation is a mix of the two of the two classifications. Then why are these the only two classifications that we, along with historians and philosophers, seem to talk about? Are the defining features of a nation up to the person who is defining the nation, or are there set guidelines? Does there ...