LAM Exam 1

How did the federal government construct and institutionalize the Hispanic category?

The government created the spanish/ hispanic category through the US census in the 1980’s

What did the 1980 census make visible, and what did it compress or hide?

The 1980 census was the first census to include Hispanic and Latino Americans, although this allowed large populations to be shown it also made it difficult to see the diversity within the block. Therefore preventing federal funding to those categories. 

Race

Is determined by your physical traits and features

Ethnicity

A cultural identity, heritage, language, and ancestry. 

Nationality

Nationality is your legal citizenship or formal membership in a specific country

Racial Self-identificitation

How oneself labels their own race or ethnic background, rather than having it assigned by an outside source or institution

Street race

How people perceive your race at first glance 

Why can a shared Latinx category create political capacity while concealing inequality?

It can create visibility for a group of people and assist them through federal funding but at the same time it hides the racial realities and systemic racism that many latinos face

How did land reform become a corporate and national-security threat?

US involvement led to the start of monopolies, specifically through the United Fruit Company who owned nearly half of the Guatemalas arable land.   200,000 acers of

Reconstruct the causal chain from Decree 900 to Operation PBSUCCESS.

The geopolitical shift from the passage of Decree 900 to the execution of Operation PBSUCCESS forms a direct causal chain where domestic economic reform triggered corporate panic, which was then systematically reframed as a Cold War security crisis to justify a covert U.S. intervention in 1954 authorized by Eisenhower.

Guatemala’s attempt to redistribute land angered a powerful U.S. company, which then convinced the U.S. government that the country was turning communist, leading to a secret military overthrow in 1954.

Decree 900 changed the balance of power - redistributed agricultural land to the poor

PBSUCCESS (coup death)- a $2.7 million budget for “psychological warfare and political action”

How did the 1954 coup alter institutions and create conditions for later state violence?   

In 1954 the CIA backed the coup d'état in Guatemala (Operation PBSuccess) that overthrew the democratically elected president Jacobo Árbenz. This intervention abruptly ended a decade of democratic and social reforms, altering Guatemala's state institutions and laying the structural groundwork for a 36-year civil war that resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 people. it also repressed civilians by showing them that they had little power .

Continuity when connecting the coup to genocide

Since the Spanish colonial era, Guatemala maintained a rigid racial hierarchy where the indigenous Maya majority was placed at the bottom, as a population that needed to be eliminated. The 1954 coup maintained the view of the indigenous as a labor force to be exploited and a potential threat to be contained.

Consequence when connecting the coup to genocide

Ultimately the Guatemalan military had political power. The United States began heavily funding, training, and equipping the Guatemalan armed forces in counter-insurgency tactics. The coup ended possibilities of peaceful, democratic reform. By labeling moderate agrarian reform as "communist".

Inevitability when connecting the coup to genocide.

By dismantling democratic institutions the coup closed off peaceful avenues for indigenous and peasant labor reform. The anti-communist ideology merged with racial prejudices against the indigenous population. Arbenz resigned

How did colonial status make reproductive and political experimentation possible?

Imperial authorities operated outside the legal and ethical constraints of their home countries, they could implement radical social engineering and medical trials that would have been politically impossible at home. Stripping colonized populations of legal sovereignty and bodily autonomy, turning colonies into unregulated laboratories for metropolitan powers.

Distinguish birth control, population control, coercion, inadequate information, and constrained choice.

In the 1950s, researchers developed the first oral contraceptive pill. Due to its colonial status, researchers bypassed strict oversight, administering high-dosage formulations to poor, uneducated women who were not fully informed of the side effects or risks in Puerto rico

Gringocentrism

The idea that success can only be accomplished by copying a US model, this delegitimizes local knowledge. 

Selective repression

Instead of using widespread, violent crackdowns on the general public, the government targets specific opposition leaders, civic organizers, or active protesters. The Gag law repressed Puerto Ricans by criminalizing core forms of political expression, identity, and assembly in an effort to crush the island's independence movement. It made owning or displaying the Puerto Rican flag, Prevented freedom of speech and gathering. 

Technocratic colonialism

The US government established an unelected seven-member financial oversight board known locally as la junta (2016). A form of colonial domination, modernity the island experiences is designed to serve the US.

Partial Consent

Allows acceptance grounded in fear. Imperial systems maintain dominance not just through military force, but by engineering a fragile, limited cooperation from the colonized population 

Use the Gag Law, carpetas, PROMESA, or the Oversight Board as evidence

Under the 2016 federal PROMESA Act, the U.S. government established an unelected seven-member financial oversight board known locally as la junta. a 2016 U.S. federal law enacted to manage and restructure Puerto Rico's massive public debt. 

Why could cultural work become a political threat?

In this case there was a social revolution and culture was a way to defend the movement. Especially music, it traveled to so many listeners rapidly. 

How did counterinsurgency turn political opposition into an internal enemy?

It shifted the military’s mission from defending national borders against foreign armies to eliminating “communism”. Tactics like forced disappearances, successfully treated left wing members as people who did not deserve constitutional right

National Security Doctrine (NSD)

Refers to the Cold War military framework adopted during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990), which shifted the focus of the armed forces from external defense to the eradication of internal political enemies.

DINA   

Chiles secret police responsible for systematic kidnapping, torture, forced disappearances, and political assassinations both domestically and internationally (via participation in Operation Condor). 

How did Operation Condor make repression transnational, and how was it reconstructed?

The regimes built a synchronized database in Santiago, Chile. This system allowed secret police to share documents and information on political targets, making it easier to attack and locate them overseas.

Connect political terror to Chile's dated neoliberal restructuring and its persistence after 1990.

The free-market model was implemented by force, requiring state violence to dismantle the previous democratic and socialist order. This structure persisted long after the 1990 transition to democracy because its foundations were legally, institutionally, and psychologically locked into place by the dictatorship.