Question

Why are the Latin American people still struggling with control of their everyday lives? How does this perspective compare to our current freedoms in the United States, and how does this affect your individual knowledge about freedom?

Answer 1

Everyday Life In Latin America During The Early to Mid 1900’s

From the early to mid 1900’s Latin America strayed away from rural, agriculturally based traditions to modern, industrialized way of living. This included an urban middle and working- class. *This transformation manifested many aspects of everyday life such as employment, housing, food, popular entertainment, and art. Whether it was a political issue or cultural, there was a common struggle for people who lived in the countryside to have control over their everyday lives.

People who lived in the countryside had a hard time adjusting to the modernization that was taking place throughout society. They felt that if they conformed to a more modern life that they were giving up their long-term traditions and beliefs. Along with the rural dwellers, many people of the upper class resisted modernity, which were the largest promoters of change. *They were torn between their goals to transform their nations and the lower classes and their worries about whether they could control these changes.

Employment rates in Latin America 1997-1998

According the LAP, the movement of people from the countryside to the cities was and continues to be the most crucial process in Latin America. From 1950 to 1960, many Argentines, Chilean, and Brazilian people left their homes in the countryside to move to the cities. The increasing amounts of large land ownership left many people without land or available jobs. Because of the advances in technology and crop changes, large landowners required fewer workers to help maintain the land. Only seasonal work was needed. In the cities, more employment was available and there were opportunities for education. However, life in the city still had its everyday struggles.

Although education and jobs were more readily available in the cities than countryside, a majority of the people who lived in the cities remained poor and uneducated. As stated in LAP, literacy rate for those older than 15 years of age was 50 percent, and only 7 percent of the people possessed a secondary education. Work also became harder because large businesses were replacing personal relationships with impersonal bureaucracies. The sudden rush of people from the countryside and abroad put a lot of pressure on existing facilities. The result of modernization left the streets unsanitary and the air polluted more than ever before. Epidemic diseases also swept the cities.

Rural population in L.A. 1990

Although there were improvements in education and health care systems, for the first half of the twentieth century Latin Americans’ standards of living fell far behind those living in western Europe and the United States.*

Everyday people, especially those living in the countryside, struggled and fought to keep their traditions and control over their daily lives. The many factories, railroads, highways, telephone, radio, electricity, centralized governments were too much for many people of Latin America to handle. Small landowners, and urban and rural working classes remained independent and resilient to all of the changes. They adopted new ways to adapt to the new conditions of everyday living.