Indigenous peoples and civil rights in the Americas

Guatemala

• Background history
  • Spanish colonials upper class
  • Native peoples lower class
  • United Fruit Company had monopoly
  • Supported by US
  • US 1 million dollar “loan” to reduce taxes on UFCO
  • Made social-democratic reforms
  • Agrarian reforms
  • Survived 25 military coup attempts
  • Literacy reforms, improved wages 8%, Law of Forced Rental meant unused UFCO land could be rented to peasants (peasants could own land!)
  • Aims
  • Economic independence
  • Establish of modern capitalist state
  • Increase standard of living
  • Methods
  • Decree 900 - land redistribution for equality
  • Confiscated lots of UFCO’s unused land, and paid $625,000 in compensation
  • Resistance
  • US demanded $15 million, and when he refused they charged Arbenz’s regime with communism
  • US embargoed Guatemala and CIA backed Castillo
  • Undid all recent democratic reforms
  • Purged opposition - 5,000 people killed, 72,000 imprisoned
  • Literacy test for voting implemented, limiting democracy
  • Dictators remained anti-communist pro-US to stay in power
• Spanish colony
• 1839 Independence
• 1844-65 Rafael Carrera, dictator
• 1931-44 General Jorge Ubico
• 1945-51 Juan Jose Arevalo
• 1951-54 Jacobo Arbenz
• 1954-56 Colonel Carlos Castillo
• 1956-onwards - String of dictators
• Methods of discrimination
  • Cheap labour by Hispanic (Crillo) landowners
  • Inferior healthcare
  • General Efrain Rios Montt’s regime 1982-3 - mass murder against Mayans
  • 2% of criollo landowners owned 72% of land around WW2
  • United Fruit Company owned rest of land
• 87% in poverty in 90s
• 50% infant mortality in 90s
• Mayans massacred by army in early 1980s
• Land ownership inequality
• Key events
  • Soviet-backed Mayan rebels against military regime
  • Human rights abuses
  • US supported regime monetarily, lengthening war
  • Death squads in rural areas killed hs of ks
  • 50,000 deaths
  • After attempt to impose authoritarian regime
  • Wave of protests
  • UN and US criticise Guatemala for HR abuses
• 1960-66 Civil War
• 1966-76
• 1970-1996 big rights abuses
• 1970s - Military rulers programme to eliminate left-wingers
• 1981 - 11,000 people killed by death squads and soldiers
• 1993 - Serrano forced to resign
• 1993 - Ramiro de Leon Carpio elected president by the legislature
• 1995 - Rebels declare a ceasefire
• Key groups and people
  • Mayan guerilla army
  • Formed 1960
  • Resources away from local populations
  • Low wages
  • Reliance on US company from locals
  • Deals with government - led to corruption
• UNRG (Guatemalan National Revolutionary Movement)
• United Fruit Company
• Opposition
  • Army in charge
  • Not even politicians had control over army
  • Army generals powerful
• Military dictatorship
• US involvement in 70s and 80s
  • Congress stopped him from sending military aid
• Carter stopped all aid to Guatemala
• Reagan sent $38.8 million aid in 1983

• In total:
• 150,000 killed
• 200,000 displaced
• 40,000 missing

Segregation of African americans

African Americans and the civil rights movement

Origins

Tactics

Organisations

The US Supreme Court and legal challenges to segregation in education

Ending of segregation in the south(1955–1980)

African-American Activism

Role of Dr Martin Luther King Jr in the civil rights movement

the rise of radical African American activism (1965–1968)

Black panthers

Black power

Malcom X

role of governments in civil rights movements in the Americas

Feminist movements in the Americas

Reasons for emergence

Impact and significance

Hispanic American movement in the United States

Cesar Chavez

Immigration reform

Youth culture and protests of the 1960s and 1970s

Characteristics and manifestation of a counterculture

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