Following the wars of Independence, in the early 1800’s, Latin American countries adopted a representative form of government based on a constitution. Newly independent countries weren’t immediately full-on democracies, so citizens weren’t yet given full rights. Suffrage was limited to free men who owned a certain amount of property or engaged in specific occupations. Only 5 to 10% of the population was eligible to vote and participate in the government due to anarchist, socialist, and communist parties that overruled in some countries. However, revolutions in many countries began, in which many of them were initiated because citizens longed for more rights. In the 1900’s, within an eighty-year period, the rights for humans in Latin America were a part of many movements and society overall. Universal suffrage was a phenomenon. Many different philosophers and rulers contributed different perspectives in relation to rights of the individual over this course of time. Specific historic events influenced ways in which people were deemed equal or represented. Movements of ethnic and cultural pride, involving political figures were of great importance. The involvement of other countries also significantly impacted human progression in Latin America, setting a precedent that countries in Latin American would later replicate.
Within the 1900’s women strongly resisted military regimes. The struggles of women were recognized worldwide as an example of resistance to dictatorship, which was a significant moral impact. In Latin American countries, women joined together in different groups or held protests dealing with issues throughout society. In Brazil, women joined “militant motherhood, ” where they discussed how human rights were abused ...
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...rked to his advantage and he won, he had mortgaged all of his personal estate in doing so. Also when an election wasn’t contested, voters became angry because there was no one to buy their votes (130).
In 1949, women were first enfranchised in Chile (206). In the 1964 presidential elections one half of the voters were women, marking a significant turn in Chile’s society. Also women demonstrated their devotion to their involvement in politics.
After a long history of struggle for suffrage movements and human rights, within the late 1900s, women became significant electoral voters. Together, people joined forming grassroots movements and non-governmental organizations devoted to improving conditions for women. Initially, politics had been viewed as an exclusive masculine realm, but now all genders and races had basic human rights, including the right to vote.
The rise of nationalist movements and the modern nation-state has affected women’s political and economic participation and social freedoms. Based on the following documents, there were many opportunities and barriers that nationalist movements posed concerning women's rights in the twentieth century. Many women saw the opportunities of the movements accessible to women, but other women focused on the barriers and didn’t feel that the opportunities were accessible.
As Randall explained of her experiences in Cuba, 'the Cuban Revolution proclaimed women’s equality and seemed to have made enormous strides in its direction. The Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) had been established at the beginning of the revolution in order to organize women around the new social goals and make their needs known to Party leadership. It quickly became a mass organization with a membership of ninety seven percent of all women over the age of fourteen. It mobilized women very effectively to an array of necessary tasks' (Lewis 1977).
Throughout the 1800s, women across the world began establishing organizations to demand women’s suffrage in their countries. Today, there are still women in countries fighting for their right to vote. Some countries who’ve succeeded in the mid to late 1800s were Sweden and New Zealand. Once they expanded women’s suffrage, many other countries followed. Like Sweden, countries first granted limited suffrage to women and other countries approved to the full national level. Additionally, there were quite a few countries who had taken over a century to give women the right to vote, Qatar being a prime example. Although the fight for women’s suffrage varied in the United States, France, and Cuba in terms of length and process, each effort ultimately
In previous times, the equality between men and women were at dramatic differences. It is frequently believed that women’s suffrage was desired and fought for only in England and the United States during the 19th century. Though these movement changes in their reasons and tactics, the battle of female suffrage, along with other women’s rights concerns, cut through many national boundaries. Women’s rights and suffrage had changed drastically from the 1890 till the time of Nixon’s Administration. During these time markers women had been treated poorly, they felt as if they weren’t equal to the other citizens of the world, especially the men. There are countless activities involving women, but the most spoke about topics is, women’s rights, their suffrage, and the roles they played.
After gaining independence, Latin American countries had difficulty in how to govern the newly instated states. In the chaos, people took advantage of this and instated themselves as dictators. They had simply took the position from the Spanish that they tried to vanquish (class notes). The power structure remained and the people who fought for independence were largely ignored and continuously oppressed. These dictatorships had remained in power until very recently. Paraguay was finally freed from the dictatorship in 1989 (Chapter
The Allies’ victory in WWII marked democracy’s triumph over dictatorship, and the consequences shook Latin America. Questioning why they should support the struggle for democracy in Europe and yet suffer the constraints of dictatorship at home, many Latin Americans rallied to democratize their own political structures. A group of prominent middle–class Brazilians opposed to the continuation of the Vargas dictatorship mused publicly, “If we fight against fascism at the side of the United Nations so that liberty and democracy may be restored to all people, certainly we are not asking too much in demanding for ourselves such rights and guarantees.” The times favored the democratic concepts professed by the middle class. A wave of freedom of speech, press, and assembly engulfed much of Latin America and bathed the middle class with satisfaction. New political parties emerged to represent broader segments of the population. Democracy, always a fragile plant anywhere, seemed ready to blossom throughout Latin America. Nowhere was this change more amply illustrated than in Guatemala, where Jorge Ubico ruled as dictator from 1931 until 1944. Ubico, a former minister of war, carried out unprecedented centralization of the state and repression of his opponents. Although he technically ended debt peonage, the 1934 vagrancy law required the carrying of identification cards and improved ...
Peeler, John A. Latin American Democracies. Chapel Hill, NC and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1985. Print.
On August 18, 1920 the nineteenth amendment was fully ratified. It was now legal for women to vote on Election Day in the United States. When Election Day came around in 1920 women across the nation filled the voting booths. They finally had a chance to vote for what they thought was best. Not only did they get the right to vote but they also got many other social and economic rights. They were more highly thought of. Some people may still have not agreed with this but they couldn’t do anything about it now. Now that they had the right to vote women did not rush into anything they took their time of the right they had.
Women began to speak out against the laws that were deliberately set against them. Throughout this time period, women were denied the right to vote in all federal and most state held elections. Women struggled to achieve equality; equality as citizens, equality in the work place, and equality at home. During this time, Americans worked to fight corruption in government, reduce the power of big business, and improve society as a whole.
In the United States, women fought not only against the patriarchy, but against racism and xenophobia. While in Mexico, women were prepared to take up arms and defend their country, despite the fact that they were unable to vote.
Women had a major stake in the Mexican Revolution, which began roughly in 1910 under the reign of Porfirio Diaz, considered a dictator by many historians, who ran Mexico with an iron first for around 26 years. Under his fierce dictatorship, women of all classes did not fare well.
The best way to have a career in politics was to obtain a law degree, but only one woman had a law degree by the middle of the nineteenth century. Of the few women who actually were involved in politics, most of them had married a man in a position of power and eventually succeeded them after their husband 's death. Men did not want these women to have a place in the government because they thought females were too emotional and unable to make decisions. Therefore, females were not included in choosing who came into power for a long time. Even when women did gain the right to vote, men believed that that they would vote in favor of changes involving child care and education instead of voting based on class and ethnicity like men did. Many women rarely voted for their own gender because they assumed family obligations would restrict their ability to focus, and since power was portrayed as masculine, men controlling the government was
Much G. L., 2004, Democratic Politics in Latin America: New Debates and Research Frontiers, Annual Reviews
Beginning in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century women began to vocalize their opinions and desires for the right to vote. The Women’s Suffrage movement paved the way to the nineteenth Amendment in the United States Constitution that allowed women that right. The Women’s Suffrage movement started a movement for equal rights for women that has continued to propel equal opportunities for women throughout the country. The Women’s Liberation Movement has sparked better opportunities, demanded respect and pioneered the path for women entering in the workforce that was started by the right to vote and given momentum in the late 1950s.
Time is a massive factor in social change -- being patient is often the key to success. Nearly 150 years after the composition of the Declaration of Independence, American women were granted suffrage in the United States (Roberts 1). Women of other races and ethnicities fought a while longer due to loopholes in the law that still hindered this right, but it was a feat for women still. Suffrage opened doors for more laws passed that freed women from the suffocating confines of misogyny and sexism. There never has been a time in history when it was not a widespread and common belief