Week 7: "Export Boom as Modernity"

Throughout the 20th century we see revolution after revolution, the response of the elites to their supposed victimization and threat to privilege. Alec Dawson delves into the response of the elites following the diminished  oppression against ethnic and gendered marginalized peoples when tools were "no longer being used by the subject" (Dawson, Golden Age of the Export Oligarchy). Examining agricultural and technological advancements as a catalyst for both the furthering of oppression and the alleviation of oppression throughout specific casts of people, the lines of social progression becomes blurred. The invention of barbed wire used to divide and classify land ownership furthering the division between the growing upper/middle class and the more rural population. While these more urban workers may experience more opportunity to social development and rights, it was to the detriment of the rural population. Composition wise, these more rural areas were traditionally inhabited with the mestizo, Indigenous, population including those of other marginalized ethnicities. This fortified the dichotomy between the classes and plays into later themes of white feminism. Essentially unlike other places, Latin America's so called rise to independence was less linear when we look at the mass introduction of technologies to Latin America as "the modern instruments of oppression" (Dawson, Golden Age of the Export Oligarchy).