American Revolution Dbq

1) Occurring from 1791-1804, the Haitian Revolution has often been described as the largest and most successful slave rebellion in the Western Hemisphere. Slaves initiated the rebellion and by 1803 they had succeeded in ending not just slavery but French control over the colony of Saint Domingue as a whole. The French Revolution served to inspire a number of Haitian-born revolutionary movements to emerge simultaneously, standing behind ideals such as the French Revolution’s “Declaration of the Rights of Man”. Haiti thereby became the first black republic in the world and the second nation in the western hemisphere to win independence from a European power. Haiti’s revolution would serve as a powerful example for the possibility of a successful slave revolution in Latin America and the United States.

2) The Virgin of Guadalupe was a religious figure from Mexican lore that came to represent the Mexican people’s identity during the beginning of their uprising against the Spanish. Father Hidalgo, who helped to start the uprising in Mexico, needed a symbol to bring together the creoles, mestizo, and indigenous peoples of Mexico. He utilized “Long Live the Virgin of Guadalupe, and death to the Spaniards!”

as a rallying cry to draw the Mexican people under one banner against the Peninsulars and Spain. Although his rebellion was unsuccessful, it would begin the end of the Spanish caste system for the indigenous people of Mexico. Today, the Virgin of Guadalupe still stands as a symbol of the Mexican people.

3) Tupac Amaru was the leader of an indigenous uprising in 1780 against the Peninsulars in Peru. The revolt was largely influenced by the struggles the indigenous people of Peru suffered under the Spanish Bourbon Reforms. After initial success, Spanish forces and loyalists suppressed the rebellion and Tupac Amaru was executed. Although unsuccessful, he later became a legendary figure in the Peruvian peoples’ struggle for independence and rights movements for the indigenous population, as well as an inspiration to indigenous people around Latin America. His uprising taught the creoles of Peru the dangers of direct confrontation with the Europeans and indirectly slowed Peruvian independence efforts.

4) Napoleon Bonaparte and his conquests across Europe had a significant impact on the various independence movements of Latin America. England stood in opposition to the radicalism and militarism building in Napoleon’s France and therefore allied with the anti-Napoleonic Spanish and Portuguese patriots to stand against French expansion. Napoleon’s conquest of Spain and Portugal led to him naming Joseph Bonaparte as the Spanish monarch, a move that would have divisive consequences throughout Spanish America. The Spanish Americans no longer felt loyalty to their newly appointed, distant, and illegitimate ruler and accepted new liberal ideals such as popular sovereignty. This would ultimately open the path for independence in Spanish America.

5) The Casta Paintings are a series of paintings created in the 1700’s that depicted a variety of the racial combinations that existed between families in the New World. As the various races of Mexico began to intermingle and form families, racial diversity became prevalent in collaboration with a social class system heavily based on race and place of birth. Mexican Casta paintings document the complex process of race mixing among the three main groups that inhabited the Spanish colony, Indian, Spanish, and African. Casta paintings are significant because they offer a window into the racial hierarchy that existed in Mexico and other Latin American societies. In addition to this, they highlighted aspects of the New World that were foreign to the people of Spain who viewed them.

6) Caudillos were military leaders who came to political power in the middle of the nineteenth century in Latin America following many of the independence movements. In the aftermath of the revolutions occurring around Latin America, they were charismatic military leaders who garnered popular support and often overthrew the government in place through military coups. Many of them were wealthy Creole aristocrats who had made their names fighting in the revolutions. For the most part, they posed as reformers who embraced enlightenment ideals, but tended to rule in an authoritarian style. They often ruled in a way as to maintain their power and denied the people basic human rights.

7) The Oriente is an area of Cuba that is considered the heart and soul of the Cuban revolution for independence. It is also the location of the death of Jose Marti, who died at Dos Rios fighting for independence in the late 1800’s, and he would go down as a national hero and symbol of the revolution. The most important Independence Wars occurred in the Oriente. It would also serve as a stronghold for revolutionary support during the various wars and a safe haven for African Cubans.

8) The quotation about men of color figuring into the Revolution was an excerpt from Ada Ferrer’s novel Insurgent Cuba and it refers to the service of freed slaves in the Cuban independence movement.

The racial tension in Cuba was extremely high, and when slave owners freed their slaves to help serve in the revolution, it came with an expectation of increased rights in the new nation that they had shed their blood for. Spanish propaganda sought to create a greater racial divide between the whites and blacks of Cuba, but the blacks who served fought with great intensity and pride to correct the wrongly cast image they were given. The question being posed in the quotation is an attempt to counter anyone who wished to deny the contribution from slaves in the

revolution.

9) The poem by “Juana Pena” is a poem that poses as have a black narrator who was Argentine. The poem was apart of the nativist movement in Argentina to inspire national pride in the wake of the Argentine independence movement. The author is representative of the black urban population in Buenos Aires, who helped figure into the nativist movement. This movement was necessary because the Creoles that were leading the independence movement could not garner enough support against the Spanish on simply offerings of advanced human rights alone.

10) The image with the large words “El Racismo” above it was a cartoon from Cuba that came about during the early stages of the Cuban independence movement. The cartoon plays on the heavy racial stereotypes that the Spanish were attempting to implement to make whites fearful of working with blacks in the revolution. Common Spanish myths that were propagated were black on white violence and African man and their sexuality towards white women. The Spanish also attempted to cultivate a dislike for African culture and questioned the character of black men. This propaganda was successful in bring the Ten Years War to a stalemate due to fear over a black dictator, and would not start to be reversed until the end of the independence movement.