Unit 4: Nationalism in the Early Twentieth Century

In this unit, we'll be studying the development of nationalist ideologies throughout Latin America. In many ways, Latin American nationalisms were a response to the neocolonial economic and social policies that dominated the late nineteenth century. Indeed, the Mexican Revolution, the first social revolution of the twentieth century, began as an effort to oust dictator Porfirio Diaz. Diaz's policies invited neocolonial, foreign economic investment into Mexico and he supported the idea of positivism--a form of scientific racism. In general, his policies boosted Mexico's economy at the expense of impoverished mestizo/a and indigenous peoples that composed most of Mexico's population. The Revolution was a multifaceted movement that built a new form of Mexican nationalism. By the late 1930s, the world context of Depression and then World War II allowed for more economic and political autonomy in Latin American nations. President Lazaro Cárdenas took measures to expand land reform and he nationalized Mexico's petroleum resources. In Brazil and Argentina, "populist" leaders Getúlio Vargas and Juan Perón built on existing labor and political movements to take power in forms that resembled European fascism in many ways. Across the region, the Depression-WWII era was a time in which nations expanded their own industrial sectors, a pattern that scholars of Latin America refer to as Import-Substitution-Industrialization, or ISI.

Image: "Battle of Columbus (1916) aftermath showing burned building" by Bain - Library of Congress. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Columbus_(1916)_aftermath_showing_burned_building.jpg#/media/File:Battle_of_Columbus_(1916)_aftermath_showing_burned_building.jpg