Latin America History
The history of Latin America began when Columbus,
in an attempt to reach India by sailing west in
1492, reached the Caribbean. Over the next few
decades, the Spaniards established themselves on
several Caribbean islands; the first real colony,
Santo Domingo, was established on Hispaniola in
1496. With the Spanish discoveries in the west, the
need quickly arose for a division of the world
between the two great European seafaring powers,
Spain and Portugal. In the Treaty of Tordesilla of
1494, a demarcation line was agreed upon
approximately 2400 km west of the Cape Verde
Islands; all discoveries west of this were reserved
for the Spaniards, while the Portuguese had a
monopoly on discoveries in the east. It was not
until 1500 that it was discovered how far east South
America stretched, and that Portugal thus had a
right to Brazil.
Early Latin America in particular was
predominantly a Spanish America, and it grew ever
larger; 1519-21 Hernán Cortés conquered the Aztec
Empire in Mexico, and 1532-33 followed Francisco
Pizarros conquest of the vast Inca Empire in the
Andes. Although Spanish America and thus Latin
America approximately 1650 formally stretched from
the southern tip of South America to nearly a third
up in the present United States, from California in
the west to Florida in the east, the real control
was largely limited to coastal areas where
plantation operations were established with
extensive use of African slaves, as well as to the
two large former Native American empires, where one
could have taken over parts of an already existing
highly developed community organization, and where
Native American labor could be used on large estates
and in mining. Diseases of the old world, chickenpox
and measles, the Native American population
decimated violently. According to
AbbreviationFinder, the largest countries in
South America are Brazil and Colombia. For largest
cities in South America by population, please follow
AllCityPopulation.
Eventually, the monopolies of Portugal and Spain
were challenged. Spain was under increasing pressure
in North America until only Mexico remained, and in
the Caribbean it succeeded, among other things. in
the 1600's. France and England to take over
respectively. present-day Haiti and Jamaica. During
the same period, England settled in Belize in
Central America and Guyana on the north coast of
South America, where France and the Netherlands also
gained possessions (French Guiana and Suriname).
Inspired by the independence of the United States
and the French Revolution and with the Creole elites
whose interests had become increasingly incompatible
with the Spanish colonial power, the rebel
leadership won virtually all the Spanish colonies in
America their independence in the early 1800's.
Simón Bolívar's (South America's great liberation
hero) attempt to create a large Colombia consisting
of Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela quickly failed,
as did similar efforts in Central America, and state
borders largely came to follow the administrative
division from the colonial era. Brazil's
independence in 1822 was gained more peacefully and
was more a result of developments in Europe.
Since independence
Especially in the 1800's. For example, the
political life of almost all of Latin America was
marked by strife between the conservatives who
wanted protectionist economic policies and based on
the pro-church landowners and the liberal,
anti-clerical free trade supporters.
The great economic interests and political
influence of the United States are another common
feature of most Latin American countries defined by
Countryaah.com. Since the Monroe Doctrine in
1823, the United States has, with varying ability
and intensity, denied the right of non-American
states to interfere in American affairs and, by
extension, asserted its own right to influence. This
has been reflected in the good neighbor's policy,
but also in strong interference in the internal
affairs of the Latin American countries, sometimes
in the form of military intervention or support for
strongly right-wing military regimes and coup
plotters, etc., when the United States has
considered its interests threatened (see it big
stick policy). However, the neighborhood has also
meant that Latin America was only insignificantly
involved in World War I and II, which here became
periods of general economic progress. The
relationship with the United States is consequently
very ambivalent; on the one hand, for example,
Cuba's Fidel Castro is a popular figure in many
circles because he has been able to resist the
powerful neighbor's many attempts at interference,
on the other, the United States represents
prosperity, which results in large emigration to the
United States and in that American products and
American culture have become increasingly important
in Latin America. Almost all Latin American states
and the United States have been united in the
Organization of American States (OAS) since 1948.
The colonial legacy, the conflict between
conservatives and liberals, and the interests and
sensitivity of the United States towards especially
socialist-colored governments are important
explanations for the fact that Latin America's
recent history for many countries has been an
endless series of civil wars, military coups and
corrupt dictatorships. Banana Republic has been seen
as the epitome of Latin America. However, after the
end of the Cold War and especially after the violent
economic problems of the 1980's, large foreign debts
and strong inflation, there are many indications
that the trend has reversed. Latin America has been
characterized by economic progress since the early
1990's, although the values are still very
unequally distributed. Oppression of the Native
American peoples in particular remains a problem in
many places. Drama and theater in United States,
North America
American drama developed relatively late into an
independent art form and was very little influenced
by developments in other literary genres. American
playwrights have rarely made any successful attempts
in poetry or storytelling.
1800's
The actors and producers were far more
interesting people than the writers of the 19th
century theater audience, who loved magnificently
staged melodramas with lots of people on stage and
spectacular scenic effects. The plays were often
imported English and French audience successes or
dramatized popular novels, e.g. Harriet Beecher
Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin, Life Among the Lowly"
(1852; "Uncle Tom's Cabin or the Negro Life of the
American Slave States"). When American writers like
William Dean Howells wrote original dramas, they
often chose traditional forms from the father to the
blank verse drama.
A certain vitality characterized the popular
vaudeville theater. By the middle of the century,
Minstrel shows had evolved into a traditional form
of entertainment with a uniform regime pattern. A
variant of these were the burlesques (burley cues),
which mainly offered dialect and slapstick comics,
travesties on popular theater plays or current
events, lightly dressed ballet girls and song and
dance numbers.
The 1900's and 2000's
When the Little Theater movement reached the
United States in the 1910's, conditions were created
for a decisive break with the commercial theater
conventions. Among the role models were André
Antoine's Parisian experimental scene Théâtre Libre
(1887–94) and Strindberg's naturalistic drama.
Around the US, small groups of theater-loving
amateurs and professionals were formed who wanted to
try a new kind of drama on stage - the shorter and
easier plays the better. One such group, The
Provincetown Players, was formed in 1915 by a summer
colony of theater people, artists and writers in
Massachusetts. The following summer, young Eugene
O'Neill joined the group and soon became one of its
leaders. O'Neill was the son of a well-known actor
of the old school and had learned theater skills
from the ground up. All the plays he wrote until
1925 were performed by The Provincetown Players at
their theater in Greenwich Village, New York. Other
writing members of the group were Edna Ferber and
Edna St. Vincent Millay. O'Neill's work illustrates
the main trends in the new drama. Particularly
striking is the combination of a deliberately
colorless realistic prose and a boldly innovative
expressionist technique. O'Neill gained great
influence in the American theater, which he
dominated until the late 1940's.
During the 1920's, the playwright Maxwell
Anderson emerged as a significant competitor to
O'Neill. Other dramas during the interwar period
include the experimentalist Elmer Rice and the
politically radical Clifford Odets, who in dramas
such as "Waiting for Lefty" (1935) and "Golden Boy"
(1937) aroused opinion with their anti-capitalist
themes.
New York became the home of the new drama from
the beginning, and the theater street is called
Broadway. There, postwar great playwright Tennessee
Williams and Arthur Miller celebrated their greatest
triumphs, the latter most notably with "Death of a
Salesman" (1949; "The Death of a Traveler").
However, the stiff economic climate on Broadway,
with increasingly costly sets as the main means of
competition, soon tended to make producers reluctant
to invest in untested theater forms. Safe cards were
comedies of e.g. Neil Simon (from the 1960's) and
musicals by Stephen Sondheim (1970's and 80's). The
experimental theater had to seek other scenes
alongside Broadway: off-Broadway. Edward Albee
debuted off-Broadway in the late 1950's, and his
most naturalistic play, "Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?" ("Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?") Also
became his first Broadway success in 1962.
Off-Broadway gained more attention with experimental
plays such as Jack Gelber's "The Connection" (1960),
a brutally realistic study of a group of drug
addicts. Often, successful off-Broadway productions
were moved to Broadway. This applies, for example.
David Rabe's "Sticks and Bones" (1971), which is
about a Vietnam veteran, and Douglas Turner Ward's
"The River Niger" (1973), which depicts the downfall
of a black family. Female playwrights like Wendy
Wasserstein, Marsha Norman and Beth Henley have also
been able to assert themselves off-Broadway. In the
1980's, off-Broadway's role as a nursery for
Broadway in association with a generally more
conservative political and economic atmosphere gave
rise to an off-Broadway for the avant-garde theater.
The vitality of the American theater avant-garde,
represented in the 1950's and 1960's by the
happening movement and the environmental theater led
by Richard Schechner, may have diminished over the
years. Pioneer Age groups, such as Living Theater
and Bread and Puppet Theater, are seeking their
counterparts today. In return, the Community Theater
movement and the often locally funded regional
theater defend its position; a leading group is the
Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago. On Broadway, they
often dominate spectacular musicals. If David Mamet
was one of the 1970's and Tony Kushner one of the
1980's leading dramatists, Tracy Letts can be said
in recent years to defend an American tradition of
O'Neill and Tennessee Williams. Among younger female
playwrights is Naomi Wallace.
Chicanoteater
Ever since the performance of a play in 1598 near
present-day El Paso, there has been a lively,
folk-based theater tradition in areas of Hispanic
population, of ambulatory type and on a large number
of fixed scenes, especially in California and Texas.
During the 19th and 20th centuries, this theater
played an important role in preserving and
strengthening one's own cultural identity in one of
Anglo-American dominated societies. The modern
chicano theater, including the internationally
renowned Teatro Campesino founded by Luis Valdez in
1965 with a strong connection to trade union
movement and social struggle, has developed and
renewed this tradition.
African American theater
A self-conscious African-American theater began
in the 20th century; an early proponent of his own
dramatic culture was William DuBois. The first
success on Broadway was Langston Hughes's "Mulatto"
(1934). The civil rights movement of the 1960's
increased the interest in its own, politically
conscious theater and the Apollo Theater in Harlem
became a center. From that time a playwright like
LeRoi Jones can be mentioned. |
