Death of Che

the events leading up to Che Guevara's death are quite interesting. the acts seem very covered and many of the documents are covered with whited- out and blacked-out areas which conceal much of the, possibly, most important information as to what occurred. the things which are revealed are quite interesting in the way in which the US operatives cut off Che's hands to prove it was actually him when they caught him. burying Che in a mass grave to avoid seemed an effective tactic to avoid a martyrs grave and pilgrimage site. though eventually Che was later exhumed and reburied by the government under control of Fidel Castro, the time period between the death and reburial however allowed time for the glory and heroic view of Che to wear off enough for him to no longer be a threat or a rallying point. the picture showed in class was quite amusing because it looked as if it would have been taken directly out of an eighties espionage flick. both men looked like stereotypical "spooks" one in foreign military drab and the other in a white pressed shirt and sunglasses. they may have blended in their era but due to Hollywood's portrayals they stick out like a sore thumb. the events leading up to the actions and death of Che are very muddled and confusing, especially with the withdrawn information. it is difficult to get a full view of what may have occurred. it seems the biggest scare from the existence of Che was that unlike Mao or Lenin he did not aim to convert merely one nation. he was a professional revolutionary, moving from country to country trying to incite revolution. the fear of communism which swept through the United States during the time gave more than enough reason for those in charge to go after a revolutionary whom was not loyal to a single country but to the cause in a broader aspect. he danger from such an individual can be extensive when he holds a view opposite to what u believe in.

Conquest in Mexico

The conquest of Mexico by the Spanish Conquistadors reads differently depending on which source an individual reads. the source from the Spanish show that the forces of Montezuma attacked the Spanish first, rather than being the defending party. the work The Spaniards Entry into Tenochtitlan is very interesting as well as humorous. the writing is humorous in that if the reader takes certain gifting ceremonies out of context of the time and place, and especially the culture, then it makes Hernan Cortes and Montezuma look very homosexual. however the giving of gifts in the form of necklaces and copious amounts of flowers, and more than anything the holding of hands and caressing of hair. though i do not currently understand the customs that allow a man to hold an other's hand while caressing his hair and still be considered completely heterosexual, i do understand that that is the case in the reading. from the readings i understand that the Spanish worked their way into Mexica society through gifts and the translating aid of Dona Maria. dona maria was the name generally used by the Mexica to refer to Cortes because she was his voice in the Mexica society. she is given very much respect in the drawings of Mexica/Spanish interactions. she is shown as speaking as well as shown not neutral or Mexica but close to the Spanish side of the landscape. she is given prominence also because rather than unclothed as the Mexica are shown she wears a full dress. she was also mother of the first mestizo children by Cortes himself. the Spanish view of the new world is the same as that of the Europeans who take control of North America; can we survive here, are there resources, and can we tame the savages. it is pathetic how the ethnocentric view has destroyed so many rich and colorful cultures which could have easily survived till today had Europeans worked alongside the natives rather than sought to eradicate them or subjugate them. the history of foriegn interactions with the European powers is appallingly pathetic and destructive.

Working Men

Frank Higbie's essay "Rural Work, Household Subsistence, and the North American Working Class: A view from the Midwest" is a close up look at the life, families, and culture of the American hobo. Higbie uses numerous accounts by actual hobo workers and government databases to support his work while discussing the lives, their place in the labor market, their relation to the communities they temporarily inhabit while working at their seasonal jobs, as well as their making their own class and their gender and sexual preferences. the hobos were not a part of society that are really welcomed with open arms. the general stereotype of the hobo is that of the train riding, bean eating, dirty drifter. Higbie however shows that these men were not mere wanders but like modern nomads going where the work was. whether it was logging, mining, crop harvesting, or some other type of short-term work the hobo was a man not rebelling against society but rather doing what he could to survive in the society he lived in. though the hobo class was made up of down on their luck farmer owners/workers as well similarly placed industrial workers, but among the hobos were many criminals, disabled men, and manageable drunks. though not all hobos were crooks or drunks, that is the stereotype which stuck to the term hobo most strikingly. the discussions on how society and economy effects the contraction of slave labor in Rome and Hobo labor in America even the illegal hiring of Mexicans and immigrant labor today is an interesting look at the effects of economy on hiring practices, for Rome free labor declines in favor of slave labor because the economy was falling and slaves do not get paid, whereas free laborers and such cost more. modern employers hire immigrant illegal employees in order to reduce their costs due to the fact they can pay them under the table for much less than they would regular employees. thus is the cycle of work in the economies of the world.

week six

i have read a few of the responses so far and this weeks side discussion on student apathy really hit me. first however the dichotomies the tools of research and presentation are highly important to us as we will have to be using them come next semester. rather than full dichotomies however many of the terms on our list are more blended when put into actual use. for exmple, even the most practised of anthropoligists may find it difficult to be completely unbiased and use full emic research. we are all human and no matter how hard we try our own beliefs will rise on occasion when researching cultures we either do not understand or disagree with. while a case study is highly useful to research it is my belief that particularist study needs to be enhanced by nonathletic study. the wider number of reliable sources and research the more complete a picture you get. i disagree with the idea of single factor causes. in my opinion it is largely multiple factors in many actions and what leads up to said reactions. for example the beginning of The Great War is citied as the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand but in fact the cause lies deeper in both the ensuing troop movements by countries who should have been non-players, the hesitation on Austo-Hungary's part to react for justice, as well as the faliure of peace talks. most events had several causes rather than just the one cited in high school history books. we should always dig deeper to find all the causes. as far as ideationalist v. materialist and conflictual v. consensual our world is largely a mixture of each of these causes depending on circumstance and attitudes which are used to drive the world forward. it is not purely on or the other in most cases, if not all.
as far as the apathy of students is concerned, it is has been my experience over the last several years that the SGA election is a joke. few if anyone i know has ever voted because they see no point in it, as nothing will get done by either running party. the students i have talked to rarely even knew the vote had occurred let alone cared much because it has no signifcant, if any, impact on their life at the school. the will continue going to class, continue going to the sports games, or plays they want. and none of this will change based on which student is elected to SGA. i not above of any of my friends either. each election that has passed i have never noticed in change in the university that had any impact on myself or anyone i know. so hail the Coup of the ROTC maybe they will accomplish something.

Journals and Beyond

this weeks class was very interesting. looking at the way a journal is constructed is very helpful since the length of the average journal article is more or less the same length as the papers that we will have to prepare for our thesis work in the coming semesters. the journals are very concise and very to the point. unlike numerous high school papers which are largely fluff and "b.s." our papers, much like the journal articles we read this week, must be precise, well structured, convincing and well researched, without fluff. the Quito article focused on a central issue from a large perspective before refining it down smaller and smaller to the case of women in Quito. when first faced with the idea of my own thesis i was very daunted at the idea because my thoughts quickly went to monographs and the sheer length of even the smallest history books seems an impossible task when you are still in college. looking at the articles and how they are structured brings the future assignment into a better perspective. after exmining the journals this week I better understand the task ahead and how i need to approach it. it really helped with the problem of what to study. the way in which Kimberly Gauderman began with the issue and then progressively refined it into a single case was very interesting and appears a useful tool to remember, whether it helps with this thesis or future ones.

Reagan

The Reagan article on abortion was interesting in that it looked at an issue that has been beaten into people's minds time and again but from an angle that had not yet been discussed. discussing a period of time in which people have not written about yet. writing on a fresh topic is very important because if people are bored with hearing about a topic you chose then your time is wasted in writing because even if you have fresh ideas it will be difficult to get people to read your writing. Reagan's writing however cites mainly coroners and doctors statements. these first hand accounts of these individuals is more trustworthy than doing research based on work other scholars did. though other scholars may provide valuable info as was learned from Historians in Trouble not all historians can be trusted so it is far better to do ones own research focused on primary sources. media has made the abortion issue bigger than it really is. based on Reagan's work it seems that the idea of abortion was merely a generally accepted fact and form of birth control. the experiences and statements that Reagan include about the nonchalant attitudes of women in referring each other to the right doctors or 'home remedies' which will fix the problem or 'sickness' is striking compared to the outspoken abortionists and oppressed women stereotype. these inclusions make Reagan's argument more believable then if she had merely cited the work of another authors research rather than her own.

Ethical History

I was stunned at the blatant lack of ethics, morals, and trustworthiness of the historians and professors we read about in "Historians in Trouble". The extent to which some of them abused their powerful positions, misquoted or misrepresented documents or facts, as well as flat out lying or covering things up was utterly appalling. Our entire academic careers the failures and consequences of cheating and plagiarizing has been bludgeoned and threatened by what would happen if we did not follow the rules. The AHA defines plagiarism as, “the expropriation of another author’s work, and the presentation of it as one’s own." Citations are not hard, especially with the one click process the new Word program uses. It takes some serious lack of morals or an incredible amount of laziness not to cite your sources. A mistake or two may be understandable, we are human after all, but the gross amount of quotes not cited or completely made up by the author is completely unconscionable and wrong. If these individuals were still in college they'd be failing classes and possibly even expelled, yet some found places in the Bush administration or maintained their faculty position. The lack of punishment for these gross misconducts and betrayals is worse than the betrayal themselves. People who read monographs generally believe what they are reading and take it for granted that the author did the proper research and knows what he is talking about; it does not generally cross your mind that hey this individual may have made this up, or skewed the facts. The Statement on Standards makes it clear that historians do not make things up, yet that seems to be the very case for Weinstein who most likely made up large portions of his book. To begin with he was taking notes on someone else's translation of the documents because he could not read Russian, second he paid off the KGB to NOT allow anyone else to see the records he used, as well as the tapes which dispute whether he misquoted interviewees have never been released. Weinstein obviously is hiding something major, like no basis for his book, and thesis, yet he was still put in charge of the National Archives by the Second Bush Administration. The lack of punishment and self-policing the AHA and historians are witnessing is pathetic.