Latin American history take-home exam
Part I
40%
Do either part A or part B
A. Complete the short series of the following terms. Do so in a way that incorporates their description and significance, and also that links them to one another in chronological order and that also emphasizes causal relationships between them.
John Foster Dulles
Jacobo Arbenz
Guatemalan coup 1954
Che Guevara
Fulgencio Baptista
Fidel Castro
Cordobazo
Liberation Theology
School for the Americas
Dilma Rousseff
Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo)
B. Complete the short series of the following terms. Do so in a way that incorporates their description and significance, and also that links them to one another in chronological order and that emphasizes causal relationships.
John Maynard Keynes
Milton Friedman
Chicago Boys
Neoliberalism (Chile 1970s/Most of Latin America 1990s)
Lost Decade
World Bank
NAFTA
The Zapatistas
Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Pink Tide
Buenos Aires Consensus
Part II
60%
Take-home essay
Prompt: Despite some notable successes with democracy and political liberalism over the past 200 years (and especially recently), twentieth century Latin America has largely experienced a long and often cyclical history of undemocratic regimes (regimes that rejected political liberalism). What in your opinion explains this cyclical history of undemocratic regimes in the 19th and 20th centuries?
One way to begin to think about how to answer this question is to think in terms of cultural explanations, economic explanations, political explanations, and/or social explanations. Another way to begin to think about this question is, What were the alternatives to liberalism and why were these attractive, and to whom? These are not the only two ways to approach this issue!
Minimum word length: 1200
