Week 3

This past week in Latin American Civilization we have been speaking about commemoration speeches given in Mexico during times of strife. For the most part, the speech all had a few things in common. They all called upon the past to guide the future or at least explain the present. All the speeches used Mexico’s past and their formation to convince the current citizens to rally behind the person giving the speech’s cause. This practice of drawing upon the past is not exclusive to these speeches and this tactic is used all the time in current practice. For example, recently elected president Trump ran with the slogan “Make America Great Again”. This phrase calls upon the idea that in America’s history we were once a great and powerful nation but if we rally behind Trump than we can be great and powerful once again. Other examples we see in current day America takes place in the women’s rights movement. Often in speeches, women will draw upon the suffragettes who first worked publicly for the furtherance of women’s rights. Women will call upon the rights movement from the earliest days of the movement to the bra-burning of the 1970s to encourage modern women to stand up and continue the practice of fighting for equality. Clearly, history can be a powerful motivator but it can also be looked at from multiple perspectives which can be seen in the differences of the speeches we’ve read. This can also be seen with the differences of looking to the past for inspiration and looking to the past as a cautionary tale. This can also be seen in modern day America as many people draw connections between Trump and leaders who were considered dangerous and tyrannical, mostly seen in his off-handed statements about registering those who practice the Islam. The point is, history can be interpreted in a variety of ways to make a point about the current state of affairs.