I learned the immense influence the U.S had/has on many Latin American countries. To understand the influence the U.S has now, it was beneficial to understand their influence in the past. A lot of their intervention in Latin America was in response to the Cold War. For example, the U.S backed Pinochet, a dictator who committed enormous amounts of human right violations, because Allende was a socialist and the U.S wanted to eliminate the spread of communism.
I learned that in order to understand what is happening in Latin American countries you should be aware of their pasts, for example understand Chile’s history helps understand the protests happening today because of income inequality.
The fight for human rights continues. I think it’s easy to get stuck focusing on all the violence occurring in many Latin American countries but we must not let it deter us from finding solutions, especially with our now learned historian skills and knowlege.
