"Teaching the Latin American History Survey: From Deeply Embedded Structures to Revolutionary Ruptures"

Jeremy Adelman, in the Preface and Introduction to his edited volume Colonial Legacies: The Problem of Persistence in Latin American History (NY: Routledge, 1999) does a masterful job of highlighting many of the challenges involved in teaching, narrating, and writing about Latin American history (especially the colonial period, in this case). He cautions strongly against characterizing persistence in Latin American history as "essence" or "eternity," while also acknowledging and analyzing the roots of the longstanding narrative of persistence and repetition in the region's past.

Adelman repeats the commonly reiterated story that: "If the United States constantly adapted to future horizons, Latin America remained anchored to social relations, modes of behavior, and cultures of an earlier era. Where the United States made perpetual ruptures the hallmark of its history, Latin America forged its historic time lines out of deep continuities. Latin America still bears the shackles of its birth. The past is destiny." (1) He of course challenges this lasting narrative by deconstructing its origins within the "Black Legend" framework, and argues: "Recent scholarship, while often agreeing that some political, social, and cultural forces resist temporal pressures, tends to show that these structures did not go uncontested." (2) Adelman discusses the ways in which these common narratives were constructed, and how they have shaped the assumptions people hold about the region and its history. He clarifies that: "arguing that Latin America has been stuck in an inherited mold compared to other New World societies, is itself a rehearsal of old arguments. These arguments themselves are the bequests of colonialism . . . English colonies were destined to be the ideal hosts for a flourishing, unitary, and linear drive to modernity; Inquisitionist Latin America became the foil, a host for multiple, fragmented, and superimposed pasts, at once Indian and European, universalist and particularist, driven yet static." (3, 8)

In this paper, I will argue that the pedagogical approach to the teaching of the Latin American History survey course should begin by introducing the idea of "history as narrative," built upon the foundational principle that interpretations and narratives of history are themselves socially constructed, usually for political, economic, cultural, and/or social reasons. A well-designed course should: introduce students to the ways in which narratives are constructed; analyze the myriad of ways that historians have deconstructed dominant narratives and offered new (revised) ones; and help students understand that the stories we tell are recursively related to our own context and subjective values and beliefs. Indeed, any assumptions we hold are themselves the "bequests" of various constructed narratives that have been internalized from generation to generation. So, a strong Latin American History survey course needs to challenge students—domestic and international alike—to reflect on the existing stereotypes and perceptions they hold (consciously and unconsciously) about Latin America's history and the region's place within a larger global context. In other words, any effective pedagogical approach to the topic should engage students in the process of self-reflectively interrogating their own identities, and to strive to investigate the topic outside the sway of their own narratives and cultural assumptions and stereotypes, ones they consciously or unconsciously hold about Latin America, themselves and others.

Parallel to these broader goals should be an effort to address larger questions of continuity and change, and structure and agency, as seen in Adelman's introduction mentioned above. The common adage that "history repeats itself" really is at best misleading, because it implies that there have been identical moments in history and ignores the reality of changes throughout time. But it is fair to say that some patterns in history have endured from generation to generation, and that the forms of continuity have influenced human lives throughout time. This is not, however, the same as saying we all are merely shaped by, and the product of, the circumstances within which we are born and live. Indeed, historians over the past 30–40 years have gone to great lengths to uphold the notion that humans have agency, i.e., that humans can make choices and take actions that impact their...