December 16, 2021 • 43 mins
This week on 4 From the South, Steve and Fab talk with Dr. Julia Young, associate professor at Catholic University about her experience backpacking through Mexico, teaching students about Latin America and the political ideology of Latinos in North America.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
It's hello everybody. Welcome back to four from the South.
This is our podcast where we talk about the news
(00:22):
and events of Big Latin America. I'm here with my
buddy for Brittio Capano. How are you doing, Fab? All good?
All good? Here in the big Land America that is
getting bigger every day, every day it expands. Where what's
the newest conquest? I think Europe it's now part Latin America.
I don't know how. I feel like it's it's keep
growing and growing. Well, we have a guest today, fab
who's going to help us interpret and understand all that.
(00:45):
We have Professor Julia Young of Catholic University in Washington,
d C. How are you doing, Julia? Good? Thank you,
It's so nice to be here. Okay, so I'll tell
us a little bit about Yeah, we're excited to have
you as a guest because you're actually a scholar of
Latin American history. Can you tell us a little bit
about your specialty? What's your story? How how how do
(01:06):
you play into the world of Big Latin America. Well, um,
a couple of ways. And I love the concept of
Big Latin America. I started being interested in Latin America
at about eighteen. I try for a couple of reasons
we can maybe get too later. I traveled around, but
(01:28):
I've actually backpacked around Mexico for five months as an
eighteen year old, and it was the first travel that
I ever did. It was in nine eight um, so
it was an interesting time to be there, although it's
always an interesting time to be there. And um and
I think the thing to take to take to the
big Latin America question. I think the thing that I
(01:50):
realized when I had that experience was that I knew
nothing about Mexico, about well, the the whole world really,
but especially Mexico. And this is a country that's right
next to us. I've learned nothing about Mexico and school.
I only knew that there were Mexicans in the United
States and of white Americans who go to Latin America.
(02:15):
I don't know anything. I know nothing. Well, we don't,
I mean in a way that's now my whole career
is teaching students who who for the first time are
taking a class in Latin America and I know and
they're like, I know nothing, and I'm like, no, you don't.
I know exactly what they know? They know about the
Cuban missile crisis. They know Fidel Castro, they know Chaves
like there are some Keith. They know Spanish, they know
(02:39):
like whatever is bad in the news at the moment,
and then they know they know things. They know the
Spanish American War, they remember the main so like they
but that's all they know, and they have no sense,
like they don't know why Los Angeles is called Los
Angeles or Colorado or Florida or whatever. And so it's
really interesting, Like I'm somebody that had experience of not
(03:01):
knowing and then plopping myself down in this country and
being like it's like, what what even is this? And
like how did I not know about it? And told
me about this? Yeah? Right there, right there, literally just
across an invisible, imaginary line. Well now on some of it.
(03:23):
So where was your favorite place you went in Mexico
at oh Man, I mean probably I haven't been back
there since, but probably cheap us Um. Like, I mean,
I ended up studying a really different part of Mexico.
But so maybe it's the idea, like because I've never
gone back, but I went to Santi Stoa and Blanque,
and you know, I actually spent a week alone in
(03:46):
Sancti Sto. Because a lot of the time I was traveling,
I was making friends, and I did some solo traveling,
but um, I kind of met I was plugged into
like the backpacker circuit and um and but so in
Santry Stoa it was by myself, and it was just
this amazing, beautiful, cool city in the mountains with these
indigenous populations that were um so so new to me.
(04:11):
I mean, I just again it was sort of this like, wait, Mexico. Okay,
Mexico is one country, but it has all these angles
and all these different populations, and wait, these people who
don't actually speak Spanish or speak Spanish as a second language.
And so I was just kind of learning and absorbing
so much when I was there. And then it's just
a really beautiful place. And and what was happening at
the time was um, the Easy l N movement in Chiappas,
(04:35):
the Sa Battista movement exactly exactly he was. So he
was like right there in the jungle. So all the
backpackers were like, dude, you have to go to Chiappas
and like, go see if you can meet some gorillas
and get into the jungle and headquarters, and I was like,
you know, I don't want to do that, but I
didn't want to go to Chiappas and so um and
(04:57):
and sort of see it and and read the news
and you know, see the posters that were on the
wall and great posters. That was an amazing era for posters,
good good poster era like and then all the all
the all the there was like the street vendors were
selling little like Sapatista figures in the markets, and so
(05:17):
it was like it was kind of beginning to be
I think they had figured out that, like the gringo
backpackers thought they were hitting again, there was a market
for There was a little bit of like capitalizing going
on there. And and I wasn't I wasn't there at
like the real thing, the real beginning of it was
unto right. So I wasn't there like when it really happened,
(05:40):
but I was kind of there early enough that it
was still kind of cool and hip to be there.
Now I think probably it's too it's all too eight.
I can't put this all together. I don't remember exactly,
but I feel like the band rage against the machine
played a role in popularizing like the Chiapas. Uh yeah,
I mean I remember like chuh yeah. He was really
(06:02):
like into all this yeah, like the Battle of Los Angeles.
That album is about that. Yeah, so everybody got into
this super to know that O. No. But it was
also like it was the first This was when like
the internet was still really new, right and then and
the sa Batistas and and Marcos was using the Internet
(06:24):
to send out his missives, and so there was a
whole thing about like this is the first Internet revolution.
It's like this is what what actually was? They called
it the web, like this is the worldwide revolution. It
was really global America online. He was like sending messages
(06:45):
like like not tweets, of course, he was like sending
emails like that was like the way he no, I
think he would post. He would write these like long
letters and then they would posted on maybe their website
or other websites, all websites yeah yeah, no social media,
no nothing, I mean the Internet. And it was some
(07:10):
ambiguous like is this one person, is this a real
guy who was sort of the movement? Yeah? Yeah yeah,
and he were the masking of the pipe, and it
was it was the you know, and all the same
people that were the Chigava shirts also were really into supers,
and so it was it was like a For the outsiders,
(07:31):
it was like a vibe, it was a feeling. But
for the people that really lived there, it was obviously
a real issue, which is that chap is the poorest
state in Mexico and it's the most indigenous date in Mexican.
People have all kinds of real issues. But I guess,
like to bring it back to me, I in going
there at that time, it was just a concert. Like
every week. I was like, wait, there's there's like there's
(07:54):
a president of Mexico. Like wait, there's a revolution happening
in Mexico. Wait they speak different languages. And so that
trip just basically said I came home and I was like,
I must know more. I do not know anything. And
that's kind of what I've been doing ever since, is
like trying to know more, but with some guided I guess,
(08:14):
with some guidelines or with some UM focused questions. Like
one thing that I got really interested in um as
still as an undergrad, because that was actually I was
a freshman in college. So then the rest of college
I kind of tried to like whenever I could um,
you know, learn more and write papers on Mexico and
whatever and um. And I realized, like I was really
(08:36):
interested in immigration from pretty early on because I think
I said it as I said before, it was I
knew there were Mexicans in the US. I knew there
were a lot of Mexicans in the US, but didn't
know anything about Mexico. So it kind of became this like,
how can I put Mexico. How can I understand the
history of Mexico in a way that helps me understand
this migration and these migrants that are here. And so
(08:57):
eventually I didn't I graduated from under out. I didn't
m a in Latin American studies because I thought that
would is that then I'd like, like, then I'll know
about Latin America, answered away, and and then I was like,
still more Latin America. It's just a bottomless pitch of
(09:18):
like stuff you don't know. That's the worst thing about
getting a PhD and becoming a professor and being a
person who's supposed to know stuff, because you just keep
learning about like new dimensions of things you don't know
anything about. So don't get a PhD. Expensive I want
to say I'm from Latin America and I don't know enough.
(09:38):
I mean, I'm all the time also learning that. Yeah,
there's so many different cultures in one place that it's
it's hard to like, yeah, navigate the whole culture. You
mentioned in a tweet the other day, you haven't heard
about Paraguay in ten years? What happened with Bartaway? Have
you read out The Tomb of the Inflatable? Oh, I've
(10:01):
heard this book, right, Yeah, this is an English guy
who went to Paraguay and really went deep, right yeah, yeah,
I mean he sort of went deep and then he
was also like ha ha, silly Paraguay and its like
but he did do a lot of history and had
adventures and and that's a book about Paraguay that I
actually found on My students read your book. I thought
about having them read his book. Oh you have your
(10:22):
students read my book The Wonder Trail, which you can
get at any bookstore on Amazon U. This podcast is
just an elaborator book advertisement that fab has been kidnapped into. Okay, Julia,
(10:49):
I was looking into your to, your to your resume
and your work. You've written a whole book about an
event called the Cristero War, which happened in the twenties.
Tell us give us a little bit about what that was,
because I had not really heard of this event, and
it seems like you're my foremost scholar of it, at
least in English. Well so totally well, no, totally not.
(11:10):
This is the thing. You are constantly realizing how little
you know, and so I'm like, yeah, I will never
know enough, but I have written a book about it.
I mean, you also have to embrace the fact that
you'll never know enough and just send published with humility. Um.
So I realized I didn't know enough when I went
(11:32):
to do my m A. So then I went to
do a PhD in history in Mexican history at Mexican
and Latin American History, but my focus was Mexico and
I said, I want to write about Mexican immigration. And
I went to a class. I took a class in
the history of immigration. I said, I want to write
about when Mexican immigration started, Like when did it start?
So I can understand why it happened? Sophistical thought process.
(11:54):
And the man who was teaching the class, who was
a visiting professor at the University of Chicago at that time.
And his name is Durand and he's amazing and has
written a ton on on Mexican history. And he said, well,
you should start with the nineteen twenties because that's when
mass migration, that's when all the patterns of mass migration
really began. And so when I started looking about at
(12:16):
this topic of who was coming and why were they
leaving and why was it the nineteen twenties, Like, there
are tons of complicated reasons for migration. Always there the
push and pull factors of migration. They're always multiple push
factors and multiple pull factors, pull factors pulling people to
the United States and push factors pushing people out of
their home country or pulling people to the United States
(12:37):
or any other country they go to. And one of
the reasons people were leaving Mexico during the nineteen twenties
was because there was this war going on, and it
was a war that a lot of people haven't heard of.
You're not the only person at all, because mostly because
from nineteen nineteen twenties, so in a decade before Mexico
had its revolution, um like the Mexican Revolution, which is
(12:59):
one are those you've heard of? Sure? Yeah, some of
my students. That's that's on the like the Bengo card,
like yeah, exactly, bullets, bands of fadiliers and yeah, of course,
(13:19):
um yeah so um. So that had just happened in Mexico.
And one of the things that happened during the Mexican
Revolution is that they the revolutionary government that emerged, like
the faction that emerged Victoria's, decided to put restrictions on
the Catholic Church. And like Fabricio, you probably know about
this or anyone you know, you will you know to
(13:41):
Steve that like the Catholic Church is really important in
Latin America, right because it's everybody was Catholic. They yeah,
and they still have power that that's the same they have.
They're probably going to have the biggest building in town
or one of the biggest buildings in town, starting the
Beau for sure, like the most beautiful building in every
town and time in America. If you're like, what's the
(14:02):
thing I gotta visit? Well, and they are I always
go to the churches. They're they're beautiful and yeah, but
I mean there's so there's you know, Spain arrives and
colonizes Latin America and Spain is Catholic, and all of
Latin America is Catholic, and the Pope puts his rubber
stamp on Spain colonizing America so that they can make
everybody Catholic. Right, and there's no for all the years
(14:23):
of the colonial period, there's no separation between church and state.
And that's fine. I mean, there are issues, but it's fine.
But then in Um in the nineteenth century, as Latin
American nations start becoming independent from Spain, then they have
this question of like, how do we become an independent
nation but still deal with this church where there was
no separation between church and state before. And so in
(14:46):
Mexico and in other countries in Chile to Um, all
these new independent nations starts saying like they start putting
limits or boundaries on the church and the Church's power,
and that the Church doesn't like that, right, And so
this kind of happens in Mexico in the nineteenth century
and then in the and then it comes up again
(15:06):
during the revolution, and these revolutionaries are like, the Church
has too much power, the priests have too much power,
the Catholic Church controls education, they own too much land,
and so we need to put into our constitution restrictions
and limits on the Catholic Church. And so they do
that in the Constitution of nineteen seventeen, which emerges as
Mexico's constitution, and then those laws don't really get enforced
(15:29):
until and the government of Mexico says, you know what
you get, like, you haven't been obeying these laws. Yeah, yeah,
like we're serious, we're cracking down. And so they do
a penal code where you're punished if you obey those laws,
and they say, like, we can't have foreign priests and nuns,
We can't have um, we can't have priests and nuns
(15:52):
wearing their like their religious guard outside in public. You
can't have religious celebrations outside, which, as you know, religious
celebrations outside in like plazas and parks are like a
pretty important part of Latin American culture and yeah, and
Mexican culture. And so so the bishops of Mexico, like
the hierarchy of Mexico, they didn't like this, as you
(16:14):
can imagine, and they responded by saying, okay, they basically
sort of called the government's bluff and they're like, okay, well,
you've made it impossible for us to function. And so
we're suspending the sacraments in Mexico, which again like the
everyone's going to hell from now exactly, you can't get
(16:35):
married whatever you wanted to play. Texas everyone called to
hell right now exactly exactly pretty good baptism, yeah, they
canceled themselves and so uh and so so then, as
(16:55):
you know, like the sacraments are also really important to
people culturally, get getting your baby baptized, you know, um,
being able to go get communion, go to confession, whatever,
and so um and so then Catholics in the most
Catholic part of Mexico, which is kind of like if
you drew a big circle around Guadalajara, so the West
(17:15):
Central part UM, but also in Mexico City and also
really all over Mexico, but in this really concentrated part
of Mexico UM, which is I refer to in my
book as like the West Central region. Other people talk
about that, okay, and so they basically launched a rebellion.
They were like, this isn't acceptable to us. We want
(17:35):
our church, that we want to be able to go
to church, and we don't think and and and we
hate the president and we want to bring we want
to make it possible for the church to function, and
so they had a battle cry which was Bibakrist, which
is long lived Christ the King. And they were kind
of like um pejoratively referred to as Caristao's, like all
(17:58):
those stupid it's like Christer's and then they adopted that
term as like a term of pride, so they're like
seems and they yeah, we're the Christers. So so that
was the war. And the reason this is all connected
to migration is because the war happened in the most
(18:18):
populous region in Mexico and um it really pushed a
lot of people to migrate out. There were other reasons,
but like, but it was really connected to that migration.
And so what I wrote about my book is the
way that people left that, like that sort of Cristero
region during the war and they brought there they brought
(18:39):
the war with them to the United States in a way.
They didn't fight in the United States, but they went
and they raised money to send guns back home. They
participated in conspiracies, they were working with exiled priests and bishops,
and so there's a whole really interesting sort of spy
story about it, and then also it's a story about
the way that migrants bring their politics with them, like right, like,
(19:02):
I mean, well every two like you're talking about Chilean politics,
and you're like you when you leave your country, you
don't stop being involved in what's happening in your kind.
The number numbers in the Chilean elections in Alabama, Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
And also like that, at the same time, you bring
your politics to the place where you're in your where
(19:23):
you're new, and you bring your own vision of this
new country. I mean, when we would think about Latina's
for Trump, it's kind of like that, you know, it's
it's still in some way. Well, you're no, totally. I
mean this is something so I didn't say this this
explicitly in my book, and I'm I'm working on this
in my next project. But what there's this tendency in
(19:48):
US politics, especially on the left, to kind of think like, oh, well,
you know, immigration is really good for Democrats because all
these immigrants are going to come in and they're going
to be lefty liberals because you know, we want to
let them in, so they're gonna vote for us, so
you know, and you know, these Latinos are are kind
of lefty because Caesar Chavez or something that's sort of
(20:09):
really surface level understanding. And it's like there are a
lot of Latino conservatives. I mean, there's a lot of
people who who are fundamentally conservative because of the politics
of their home country, and they're gonna come in and
they're going to support I mean if Republicans. It's a
mistake that both Republicans and Republicans and Democrats make because
if Republicans let in a lot more Latinos like they might,
(20:33):
they would vote for them for surely, and especially what
we're talking about, like very religious people. Yeah, well they
love Jesus and the Bible. You know, it's like, of
course they have a conservative, lean leaning bone of view. Yeah, no,
they're not. They're not super there. They're they're pro life.
They're yeah, pro life. Sorry, they're they're pro life. They're
(20:54):
socially conservative. Um, they really don't like a lot of them.
They really don't like Google Chavez or Fidel Castro, you know.
I mean it's not just Cubans that are Republicans that
are the lean Republican for those reasons, Like, there are
a lot of other and at the same time, I
mean For example, when I'm thinking about people from Venezuela
that when pro Trump is like, yeah, of course they
(21:16):
have Chavis, but Trump is Chaves at the same time,
so they also have populism really works with them. You know,
they're ready vote for another version of the same person.
So even if the thinking of the others opposite pole,
they're still voting for the same again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean. And that's also like the I mean, we
(21:37):
used to say that the populist leader was a kind
of a Latin American phenomenon, right, and then we elect
to Trump and we're like, oh, we can do it too. Um,
But you know, the idea of like a sort of
Latin American like dictator, demagogue or or populist. I mean,
all of these are terms that are often pretty ill defined,
(21:57):
but they are often associated in the American mind with
Latin America. This idea of like a kind of charismatic
dictator figure that has a popular I mean, Peron would
be an example. Yes, um, the guy who can talk
for five hours. That seems like the definition of Yeah,
I'm not sure about that, but like I'm sure I
(22:19):
think that run Argentina from Spain, for a couple of years. Yeah,
there was a Spanish so he was like doing like
the zoom thing in a way before budd Well, that's
the big Latin America, right, Is that big Latin America.
It's yeah, I mean it's everywhere, And the migrants make
Latin America into big Latin America, and then exiles make
(22:42):
Latin America into big Latin America. I mean Portfrego Ideas,
who was president of Mexico before the revolution, died in
France and I was just reading something about some conservative
Mexican exiles in uh in Europe trying to cultivate a
connection with Portflio Ideas his wife. You know. So, like
Latin American politics happens outside of Latin America all the time.
(23:03):
You know, exile is a really important part of political
Exiles played a really important role in Latin America and
probably probably everywhere, but you know, I've studied it in
Latin America. So because they raised a lot of money
for movements. Is the whole thing about like leading the
Pinochet years. I remember there was all these media that
it was like from the left and it was like
(23:24):
why did disappear with democracy show? Is that? Yeah? Because
they were funded by friends and by center studies in
I don't know, Brussels. Uh so they was not hot
to put money on that anymore. And right, right, I
mean the the you if you want to launch a
political movement in Latin America or like a popular movement
(23:46):
in Latin America, you probably need to go where the
money is. And often the money isn't in Latin America. Right,
So you go to the US or you go to
France and you fundraise and you I mean, what I've
wrote about in my book is people fundraising and um
in order to buy weapons or just send money back
to the front, back to the battlefields at home in Mexico.
(24:07):
And that's a really common pattern because if they're you know,
and and it's also you can also be more politically free.
I mean, this is true on the left and the
right in Latin America. Like think about the people on
the Argentine left who left Argentina during the Dirty War,
right because they could, I mean both because they're leaving
for their lives, to save their lives, but also because
they're going where they can be free and where they
(24:29):
can collaborate with each other and maybe like lobby the government,
lobby the US government to help them or whatever. Yeah,
I remember reading the theory that a lot of people
on the left thought that the I mean Salvagin the
suicide like commits suicide during the coup in seventy three
in Chile, and a lot of his friends were like,
(24:50):
he shouldn't do that. He should escape, go to Europe,
get a bunch of money, you know, create a movement,
and came back and continue he's work. Yeah, And I
never thought about that, but yeah, a lot of people
was like, yeah, that's what you do. You don't kill
yourself like this context. I mean I think, I mean,
he's an historical figure also because of many reasons because
(25:14):
of that too. But I never thought that, yeah, that
that was an option, right, Yeah, that's an option, like
go go form a movement in exile. I mean, that's
the story of Cuba, right, of the Cuban exiles in Miami,
and that really consider probably to this day, some of
them consider themselves exiles and not migrants, because they were
(25:34):
there was a common pattern for all Cuban history of going, uh,
you know, it's ninety miles away from Qus, right, so
you just hop over and uh and and regroup and
collect some money and um, I mean Jose Marti did this,
like you know, Um, find some friends, make some speeches,
make some posters and yeah, some some things out and
(26:01):
have a fundraiser. And then if you have a migrant
yeah totally it's great. And if you have a migrant
group that's already in the United States, so that's where
like Mexico and Cuba especially, like you can then go
go um, publicize your cause within that migrant group, right,
and you can actually get potentially I mean, this is
(26:22):
like think about the Bay of Pigs. The people who
fought on the CIA funded anti Castro side at the
Bay of Pigs. Those were Cuban migrants or exiles or
whatever you wanna call them. They were like recently arrived Cubans.
So they were able to, with the help of the CIA,
organize this, um, you know, what they hoped would be
(26:43):
the overthrow of Fidel Castro, and that's been I mean,
think how many think of how many political movements in
the in Latin America have been organized outside of Latin
America with the help of say that again, this is
where the action is. Guys to our Latin American listen,
come on up here, get your organizing done, come back, yeah,
(27:05):
and come back with dollars. Yeah, exactly. This is why.
This is why, you know, American people, when you know,
George W. Bush gets reelected or drunk gets elected, they
sort of threatened to move to Canada or something, but
they never really do because the money is still here
if you want to stay here. Yeah, and then you
you like do a little research on Canada and you're like,
(27:26):
it's it's just not the same. It's just a big
oil company. Yeah, yeah, really a lot of Arctic um No, Yeah,
Canada doesn't. For for whatever reason, Canada doesn't have that
same history of and not as many Latin Americans in
Canada either. Backpacking around Canada's an eighteen year old wouldn't
be quite as illuminating as going to Mexico. There were
(27:51):
I met a million Canadians who were backpacking, of course,
and they all had you know, they all had the
Canadian flags. They're back But that's what happened when your
country is really boring there, and yeah, there's I mean,
they were all they're all super nice, and they're all
like invested in being super nice, and and they were
super nice. But you know, I think there's a sense
(28:14):
of like there's maybe not that much going on in
Canada and so like take advantage of going abroad. But
you know what it's actually I don't want to say that.
I also want to say that there's a culture of
wanting to travel and know the rest of the world
that we really don't have so much in the US.
I mean, it's it was, there's there's a subculture in
(28:37):
the US of people that go and backpack and travel around.
But you're always surrounded by when you do that, when
you backpack or you do like extended travel or living
in other countries, you're always surrounded by like Australians and
South Africa and Canadians. But there is a culture of um,
you know, I don't know. Maybe it's like they know
(28:57):
they live in these more remote places of re actially
remote places, and so they feel like, well, I gotta
get out. I mean especially Australia, right like I gotta
get out of here. And Israelis do it too, Yes,
they feel like they gotta get out and they got
to see the world. And we're just like, I didn't
know there was in Mexico. I didn't My thing is
maybe I don't know if it's just me, but every
(29:19):
time I talked with my American friends, they really scare
of Latin America, like they think it's dangerous in a
way that it is a fantasy, like no, like no
place is that dangerous as they think in their minds.
You know, it's always like can you can you eat
the water? Water? You know, you can't drink the water.
(29:40):
They don't drink water. There's funny. It's like that funny
here because in l A you see all these like
water shops, and there's like a thing. I think it's
a thing of Latino immigrants, Central South American Mexican immigrants
to l A to not want to drink our water
like that. They're usually buying water rather because they're in
the world international arbiter to talk about water. And I
(30:08):
probably round the drink water in Mexico City. Then in Flint, Michigan,
you know for sure we're not. We have this idea
that here everything is safe. Meanwhile, we have we kind
of have a gun problem here, so you know, but
we have this idea that here everything is safe. In
Latin America, everything is unstable and dangerous, and a lot
of that is every movie that's ever been made about
(30:31):
Latin America, especially in Mexico, especially in Mexico City. It's
just like it's all explosions, explosions, all the explosions and
kidnapping and narcos. I mean a friend of mine from Colombia,
he talked to me about when they put a big
billboard of Narcos Colombia, the first one, you know, the
one with publics in in in Colombia, and everyone is
(30:51):
so upset, and of course Netflix couldn't understand why. I mean,
this is a show about you in a way, and
they will know most is because Pablo Escobar was he
killed people that we know, you know, like it's it
was it's i mean, my grandfather have or a friend
of my my neighbor die. So it's still super fresh.
(31:13):
And you're like just putting the face of that guy
in a billboard, you know, it's of course it's you.
You're not gonna like that, I mean, don't they didn't
they have um like Escobar tours for tourists, like you
could voting his mansions, and yeah, that was definitely a thing.
Yeah right, and I remember that that also offended people
(31:36):
and rightly so right because they're like, yeah, for exactly
the reasons you say that, like this guy wrought havoc
on our society and then you're coming here bed and
in the nineties, I mean, not like I don't know,
a hundred years ago, you know, yeah, yeah, and people
and people have long memories about the stuff, and they should.
(31:56):
I mean, even when I was doing work on on
Christo's I would go to certain places in Mexico where
it had really been fun and people were like of
any style, which was the other side, but like it
was people. It was in people's families. It was a
conflict that was remembered, and it's totally forgot. It was
never understood in the US really at all, and um
(32:17):
and even has been forgotten in some parts of Mexico.
They should get back at us by making a show
about like the Sacklers, and they're just like hilarious clowns
and everything they do is silly, and you know they're
right violence. I mean, why don't they make a Narcos
style drama about gun violence in the US where you
(32:38):
can't go anywhere without being afraid of you can't go
to school without being afraid of being shot. I mean,
I'm Sorry, that's dark, but but it does. It is
just so interesting, this kind of this kind of line
or assumption that like you just you're going to get
kidnapped the middle of the minute you walk out of
the on the street in Latin America, but you're never
(32:58):
in any danger in the United States in comparison. And
I think that that's something, I mean, that's something that
goes back and probably has sort of deep historical roots,
the idea that Latin America is less stable. We are stable,
We're a democracy. We are a stable democracy. We bring
democracy to other places. And this is something I really
(33:18):
love about teaching Latin American history is that it really
causes students to rethink US history, to reevaluate in re
s s U S history, because we grow up with
this idea that we are the we are, we are
the country that brings freedom and democracy to the rest
(33:40):
of the world. And then and I don't try not
to be you know, too didactic or political on this,
but I just kind of if you lay out the
history of Latin America since the mid nineteenth century and
up until the present, and you look at just the
sheer number of US interventions in Latin American politics and
(34:02):
the number of times we've sent trips to Latin America
and the number of times we've um helped on seat
democratically elected leaders that we don't like. It kind of
makes you think, will wait a second, no, no, no,
every time you make it worse, I mean every time
it was worse I think for the country. And we're
(34:24):
still I mean in chilea this election right now, it's
still about what happened with Pinochet. I mean still we're
still you know, how to go back to that point
where the country is split to like revisit that every
single election. So thank you, guys, I know, I'm sorry.
Really it really like we really like to hang up
(34:47):
the mission accomplished sign. We like to say, like, okay,
mission accomplished. They tore the statues down now bye bye,
and then and then like you guys deal with the
mass afterwards. Right, So it was Chile, and that was Guatemala,
Like I mean, it's just an endless number of places, um,
and you know, and the thing we like to say
about ourselves like well, we're just trying to we're just
(35:10):
trying to do the right thing. We're just trying to
prevent communism. You know, and I mean it's it's complicated,
and there were reasons for preventing communist like that. There
were certainly, you know, there was violence on all sides
in many places. But we don't have a great track
record on intervening and then solving the problem, right, It's
(35:35):
hard to think of an example where we did that
and then there was no problem after that. You stop
paying attention. That's it. You stop paying attention. Okay, yeah, sorry.
I think I think that part of the problem is
like sort of where I started this conversation of like,
we don't know enough about the context of Latin America,
(35:56):
and we intervene without deep understanding of the history, the culture,
the language, the reasons why a particular person might have
been democratically elected, and instead we're just like, oh, no,
he's bad, he's a communist. I mean, okay, this was
more during the Cold War, but that was the that
was the methodology, right, Like, he's bad, he's a communist,
(36:19):
get him out. Well, let's pay the guys who will
get him out. Summing up here on Wikipedia, list of us,
it's this covert US involvement in regime change. Just to
(36:41):
list to you some of the places Guatemala, Syria, Indonesia, Cuba, Cambodia, Congo,
Cuba again, Dominican Republic, Sufiam, Brazil, Indonesia, Ghana, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Salvador, Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, Chad, Iraq.
Not a list of successful paradises for the most part,
(37:01):
right right, And then and then the best part is
we're like, why are they coming here? Like why are
there people immigrating here in caravans and crossing the border,
Like these two things are totally disconnected in our minds, right,
that our involvement in these countries, and then um, and
(37:22):
then the fact that people are then fleeing these countries
and coming to the most stable and prosperous country in
the hemisphere, which is here, right or I mean same
thing with Afghan migrants or so I mean I think
another thing that we don't do in the US is
like we don't learn Latin American history at all. We
don't think of ourselves as part of the in the US,
(37:43):
we don't think of ourselves as part of the hemisphere.
So this is actually like you guys saying big Latin
America is actually really important that the thing that you're
doing we're doing our part here in the podcast on
podcast at a time. It's really it's you're you're doing
something for the cause for the betterment of the world,
and you should feel good about that. Well you can.
(38:06):
And now when I teach, I try to talk about
the America's, I mean, I have a class on migration
to and from and within the America's because like, we
don't understand that we're the same thing. That things that
happened here happened in Latin America. We're connected to Latin America.
We've intervened in Latin America, but also we've been involved
in Latin America. Latin America has been involved with us.
(38:28):
Like we're not separable. We're all in the same we're
literally connected, and we're all in the same hemisphere, right
and so we just but we but this is part
of the the whole myth of American exceptionalism is like
not only are we the best country and the most
unique country ever, but we're also like somehow not connected
to the other countries that are the share land borders
(38:49):
with us. It's a problem. It leads to us not
understanding the causes of things like migration or instability that
leads to mygration. It's a problem. So it's really it's
important to talk about big Latin America, or about the
America's or about the whole hemisphere because it does it
(39:10):
does help. I mean, I think, really I see this
in my students. Is that I mean, I think I
feel like a successful in a successful class that I've taught,
the student leave feeling like, oh, okay, we are more
connected than I realized, Like I actually need to know
about what's happening in Latin America. It's not really an option.
We shouldn't feel like we can just be in the
(39:30):
United States and ignore what's happening in Latin America. And
at the same time, and this is part of our show,
it's like it's the same, It's just the same. You know,
I have different names, but the characters the same are
very similar. It looks like a regal line between most
of them. Yeah, so you can see what's gonna happen
(39:51):
because the patterns are there. You know, if you learn
from Latin America, you're gonna see what's going on here.
And at the same time, we're also we like Latin
America now is being feeded by all what it's been
done here. I mean in in in the last five
elections in Latin America, there's a guy saying, like, hey,
you know the votes are they didn't count all the votes,
(40:15):
so of course there's there's a there's something there that
people are not paying attention. And it's very interesting. I
mean the current president of Mexico and when he was
first he first ran um in two thousand six for
president I believe that was his first candidacy, and he
(40:36):
lost very narrowly, and he said it was frauday, right,
it was fraud, and he refused to concede. And then
he went to the Socolo in Mexico City and had
a parallel inauguration like his own inaugura. He inaugurated himself
and that's a hundred thousand followers were there and it
(41:00):
camped out in the Socough. I know, this is like
it happened there already end and he and he never like,
he never conceded, and he said, you know, basically fraud,
stolen election, stolen votes. And right now kicking himself that
no one brought him this idea, Yeah, because Alo did,
(41:22):
like he had a whole he did the sash like
that he put another version, his own version of the
presidential sash, like he took the oath of office. So
like Trump, I kind of thought that might happen. Trump
could do like a you know, on the other end
of the mall, he could do a parallel inauguration and
like his followers would have shown up. I mean they
(41:43):
think without the negation, there's still people think he's the president. Yeah,
maybe because he didn't actually have to do it. The
sash is one thing that hasn't quite made it here yet.
Maybe we'll be seeing that the Latin American president always
that's a good research question. Why is that? I feel
like it's a French or a Spanish thing and we don't.
(42:04):
Maybe we're gonna put some people and we'll see that
before too long. Well, professor, we don't want to take
too much of your time. This has been amazing. I
want to leave with the incredible compliment you gave to
our show. And yes, so I think we're all thinking
along the same lines here of trying to figure out
why why it is that we think we're somehow distinct
from these places that are just an imaginary line away. Yeah,
(42:28):
we're we're all we're connected. We're all connected. Amazing. Thank
you for joining us here. Where can people find your
work or if they want to learn more about what
you're working on? UM, I'm not a good self promoter.
I have a Twitter, have a Twitter account that I
use very sporadically. It's a Julia G. Young and you
(42:49):
can google. I've written some off eds and articles and
you can google Julia Young Catholic University and you'll find
those there. So get the Julia Young take it's out there. Well.
Thank you so much, propus. I really appreciate the time.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. For from
the South is hosted by Me, Steve Healey, and Fabrizio Capano.
Robert O'Shaughnessy is our producer. Original theme song by Amy Stolsenbach.
(43:12):
For From the South is a production of Exile Content
Studio in partnership with I Heart Radio is Michael Tour
podcast network. For more podcasts from my Heart, visit the
I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen
to your favorite ships.
It's hello everybody. Welcome back to four from the South.
This is our podcast where we talk about the news
(00:22):
and events of Big Latin America. I'm here with my
buddy for Brittio Capano. How are you doing, Fab? All good?
All good? Here in the big Land America that is
getting bigger every day, every day it expands. Where what's
the newest conquest? I think Europe it's now part Latin America.
I don't know how. I feel like it's it's keep
growing and growing. Well, we have a guest today, fab
who's going to help us interpret and understand all that.
(00:45):
We have Professor Julia Young of Catholic University in Washington,
d C. How are you doing, Julia? Good? Thank you,
It's so nice to be here. Okay, so I'll tell
us a little bit about Yeah, we're excited to have
you as a guest because you're actually a scholar of
Latin American history. Can you tell us a little bit
about your specialty? What's your story? How how how do
(01:06):
you play into the world of Big Latin America. Well, um,
a couple of ways. And I love the concept of
Big Latin America. I started being interested in Latin America
at about eighteen. I try for a couple of reasons
we can maybe get too later. I traveled around, but
(01:28):
I've actually backpacked around Mexico for five months as an
eighteen year old, and it was the first travel that
I ever did. It was in nine eight um, so
it was an interesting time to be there, although it's
always an interesting time to be there. And um and
I think the thing to take to take to the
big Latin America question. I think the thing that I
(01:50):
realized when I had that experience was that I knew
nothing about Mexico, about well, the the whole world really,
but especially Mexico. And this is a country that's right
next to us. I've learned nothing about Mexico and school.
I only knew that there were Mexicans in the United
States and of white Americans who go to Latin America.
(02:15):
I don't know anything. I know nothing. Well, we don't,
I mean in a way that's now my whole career
is teaching students who who for the first time are
taking a class in Latin America and I know and
they're like, I know nothing, and I'm like, no, you don't.
I know exactly what they know? They know about the
Cuban missile crisis. They know Fidel Castro, they know Chaves
like there are some Keith. They know Spanish, they know
(02:39):
like whatever is bad in the news at the moment,
and then they know they know things. They know the
Spanish American War, they remember the main so like they
but that's all they know, and they have no sense,
like they don't know why Los Angeles is called Los
Angeles or Colorado or Florida or whatever. And so it's
really interesting, Like I'm somebody that had experience of not
(03:01):
knowing and then plopping myself down in this country and
being like it's like, what what even is this? And
like how did I not know about it? And told
me about this? Yeah? Right there, right there, literally just
across an invisible, imaginary line. Well now on some of it.
(03:23):
So where was your favorite place you went in Mexico
at oh Man, I mean probably I haven't been back
there since, but probably cheap us Um. Like, I mean,
I ended up studying a really different part of Mexico.
But so maybe it's the idea, like because I've never
gone back, but I went to Santi Stoa and Blanque,
and you know, I actually spent a week alone in
(03:46):
Sancti Sto. Because a lot of the time I was traveling,
I was making friends, and I did some solo traveling,
but um, I kind of met I was plugged into
like the backpacker circuit and um and but so in
Santry Stoa it was by myself, and it was just
this amazing, beautiful, cool city in the mountains with these
indigenous populations that were um so so new to me.
(04:11):
I mean, I just again it was sort of this like, wait, Mexico. Okay,
Mexico is one country, but it has all these angles
and all these different populations, and wait, these people who
don't actually speak Spanish or speak Spanish as a second language.
And so I was just kind of learning and absorbing
so much when I was there. And then it's just
a really beautiful place. And and what was happening at
the time was um, the Easy l N movement in Chiappas,
(04:35):
the Sa Battista movement exactly exactly he was. So he
was like right there in the jungle. So all the
backpackers were like, dude, you have to go to Chiappas
and like, go see if you can meet some gorillas
and get into the jungle and headquarters, and I was like,
you know, I don't want to do that, but I
didn't want to go to Chiappas and so um and
(04:57):
and sort of see it and and read the news
and you know, see the posters that were on the
wall and great posters. That was an amazing era for posters,
good good poster era like and then all the all
the all the there was like the street vendors were
selling little like Sapatista figures in the markets, and so
(05:17):
it was like it was kind of beginning to be
I think they had figured out that, like the gringo
backpackers thought they were hitting again, there was a market
for There was a little bit of like capitalizing going
on there. And and I wasn't I wasn't there at
like the real thing, the real beginning of it was
unto right. So I wasn't there like when it really happened,
(05:40):
but I was kind of there early enough that it
was still kind of cool and hip to be there.
Now I think probably it's too it's all too eight.
I can't put this all together. I don't remember exactly,
but I feel like the band rage against the machine
played a role in popularizing like the Chiapas. Uh yeah,
I mean I remember like chuh yeah. He was really
(06:02):
like into all this yeah, like the Battle of Los Angeles.
That album is about that. Yeah, so everybody got into
this super to know that O. No. But it was
also like it was the first This was when like
the internet was still really new, right and then and
the sa Batistas and and Marcos was using the Internet
(06:24):
to send out his missives, and so there was a
whole thing about like this is the first Internet revolution.
It's like this is what what actually was? They called
it the web, like this is the worldwide revolution. It
was really global America online. He was like sending messages
(06:45):
like like not tweets, of course, he was like sending
emails like that was like the way he no, I
think he would post. He would write these like long
letters and then they would posted on maybe their website
or other websites, all websites yeah yeah, no social media,
no nothing, I mean the Internet. And it was some
(07:10):
ambiguous like is this one person, is this a real
guy who was sort of the movement? Yeah? Yeah yeah,
and he were the masking of the pipe, and it
was it was the you know, and all the same
people that were the Chigava shirts also were really into supers,
and so it was it was like a For the outsiders,
(07:31):
it was like a vibe, it was a feeling. But
for the people that really lived there, it was obviously
a real issue, which is that chap is the poorest
state in Mexico and it's the most indigenous date in Mexican.
People have all kinds of real issues. But I guess,
like to bring it back to me, I in going
there at that time, it was just a concert. Like
every week. I was like, wait, there's there's like there's
(07:54):
a president of Mexico. Like wait, there's a revolution happening
in Mexico. Wait they speak different languages. And so that
trip just basically said I came home and I was like,
I must know more. I do not know anything. And
that's kind of what I've been doing ever since, is
like trying to know more, but with some guided I guess,
(08:14):
with some guidelines or with some UM focused questions. Like
one thing that I got really interested in um as
still as an undergrad, because that was actually I was
a freshman in college. So then the rest of college
I kind of tried to like whenever I could um,
you know, learn more and write papers on Mexico and
whatever and um. And I realized, like I was really
(08:36):
interested in immigration from pretty early on because I think
I said it as I said before, it was I
knew there were Mexicans in the US. I knew there
were a lot of Mexicans in the US, but didn't
know anything about Mexico. So it kind of became this like,
how can I put Mexico. How can I understand the
history of Mexico in a way that helps me understand
this migration and these migrants that are here. And so
(08:57):
eventually I didn't I graduated from under out. I didn't
m a in Latin American studies because I thought that
would is that then I'd like, like, then I'll know
about Latin America, answered away, and and then I was like,
still more Latin America. It's just a bottomless pitch of
(09:18):
like stuff you don't know. That's the worst thing about
getting a PhD and becoming a professor and being a
person who's supposed to know stuff, because you just keep
learning about like new dimensions of things you don't know
anything about. So don't get a PhD. Expensive I want
to say I'm from Latin America and I don't know enough.
(09:38):
I mean, I'm all the time also learning that. Yeah,
there's so many different cultures in one place that it's
it's hard to like, yeah, navigate the whole culture. You
mentioned in a tweet the other day, you haven't heard
about Paraguay in ten years? What happened with Bartaway? Have
you read out The Tomb of the Inflatable? Oh, I've
(10:01):
heard this book, right, Yeah, this is an English guy
who went to Paraguay and really went deep, right yeah, yeah,
I mean he sort of went deep and then he
was also like ha ha, silly Paraguay and its like
but he did do a lot of history and had
adventures and and that's a book about Paraguay that I
actually found on My students read your book. I thought
about having them read his book. Oh you have your
(10:22):
students read my book The Wonder Trail, which you can
get at any bookstore on Amazon U. This podcast is
just an elaborator book advertisement that fab has been kidnapped into. Okay, Julia,
(10:49):
I was looking into your to, your to your resume
and your work. You've written a whole book about an
event called the Cristero War, which happened in the twenties.
Tell us give us a little bit about what that was,
because I had not really heard of this event, and
it seems like you're my foremost scholar of it, at
least in English. Well so totally well, no, totally not.
(11:10):
This is the thing. You are constantly realizing how little
you know, and so I'm like, yeah, I will never
know enough, but I have written a book about it.
I mean, you also have to embrace the fact that
you'll never know enough and just send published with humility. Um.
So I realized I didn't know enough when I went
(11:32):
to do my m A. So then I went to
do a PhD in history in Mexican history at Mexican
and Latin American History, but my focus was Mexico and
I said, I want to write about Mexican immigration. And
I went to a class. I took a class in
the history of immigration. I said, I want to write
about when Mexican immigration started, Like when did it start?
So I can understand why it happened? Sophistical thought process.
(11:54):
And the man who was teaching the class, who was
a visiting professor at the University of Chicago at that time.
And his name is Durand and he's amazing and has
written a ton on on Mexican history. And he said, well,
you should start with the nineteen twenties because that's when
mass migration, that's when all the patterns of mass migration
really began. And so when I started looking about at
(12:16):
this topic of who was coming and why were they
leaving and why was it the nineteen twenties, Like, there
are tons of complicated reasons for migration. Always there the
push and pull factors of migration. They're always multiple push
factors and multiple pull factors, pull factors pulling people to
the United States and push factors pushing people out of
their home country or pulling people to the United States
(12:37):
or any other country they go to. And one of
the reasons people were leaving Mexico during the nineteen twenties
was because there was this war going on, and it
was a war that a lot of people haven't heard of.
You're not the only person at all, because mostly because
from nineteen nineteen twenties, so in a decade before Mexico
had its revolution, um like the Mexican Revolution, which is
(12:59):
one are those you've heard of? Sure? Yeah, some of
my students. That's that's on the like the Bengo card,
like yeah, exactly, bullets, bands of fadiliers and yeah, of course,
(13:19):
um yeah so um. So that had just happened in Mexico.
And one of the things that happened during the Mexican
Revolution is that they the revolutionary government that emerged, like
the faction that emerged Victoria's, decided to put restrictions on
the Catholic Church. And like Fabricio, you probably know about
this or anyone you know, you will you know to
(13:41):
Steve that like the Catholic Church is really important in
Latin America, right because it's everybody was Catholic. They yeah,
and they still have power that that's the same they have.
They're probably going to have the biggest building in town
or one of the biggest buildings in town, starting the
Beau for sure, like the most beautiful building in every
town and time in America. If you're like, what's the
(14:02):
thing I gotta visit? Well, and they are I always
go to the churches. They're they're beautiful and yeah, but
I mean there's so there's you know, Spain arrives and
colonizes Latin America and Spain is Catholic, and all of
Latin America is Catholic, and the Pope puts his rubber
stamp on Spain colonizing America so that they can make
everybody Catholic. Right, and there's no for all the years
(14:23):
of the colonial period, there's no separation between church and state.
And that's fine. I mean, there are issues, but it's fine.
But then in Um in the nineteenth century, as Latin
American nations start becoming independent from Spain, then they have
this question of like, how do we become an independent
nation but still deal with this church where there was
no separation between church and state before. And so in
(14:46):
Mexico and in other countries in Chile to Um, all
these new independent nations starts saying like they start putting
limits or boundaries on the church and the Church's power,
and that the Church doesn't like that, right, And so
this kind of happens in Mexico in the nineteenth century
and then in the and then it comes up again
(15:06):
during the revolution, and these revolutionaries are like, the Church
has too much power, the priests have too much power,
the Catholic Church controls education, they own too much land,
and so we need to put into our constitution restrictions
and limits on the Catholic Church. And so they do
that in the Constitution of nineteen seventeen, which emerges as
Mexico's constitution, and then those laws don't really get enforced
(15:29):
until and the government of Mexico says, you know what
you get, like, you haven't been obeying these laws. Yeah, yeah,
like we're serious, we're cracking down. And so they do
a penal code where you're punished if you obey those laws,
and they say, like, we can't have foreign priests and nuns,
We can't have um, we can't have priests and nuns
(15:52):
wearing their like their religious guard outside in public. You
can't have religious celebrations outside, which, as you know, religious
celebrations outside in like plazas and parks are like a
pretty important part of Latin American culture and yeah, and
Mexican culture. And so so the bishops of Mexico, like
the hierarchy of Mexico, they didn't like this, as you
(16:14):
can imagine, and they responded by saying, okay, they basically
sort of called the government's bluff and they're like, okay, well,
you've made it impossible for us to function. And so
we're suspending the sacraments in Mexico, which again like the
everyone's going to hell from now exactly, you can't get
(16:35):
married whatever you wanted to play. Texas everyone called to
hell right now exactly exactly pretty good baptism, yeah, they
canceled themselves and so uh and so so then, as
(16:55):
you know, like the sacraments are also really important to
people culturally, get getting your baby baptized, you know, um,
being able to go get communion, go to confession, whatever,
and so um and so then Catholics in the most
Catholic part of Mexico, which is kind of like if
you drew a big circle around Guadalajara, so the West
(17:15):
Central part UM, but also in Mexico City and also
really all over Mexico, but in this really concentrated part
of Mexico UM, which is I refer to in my
book as like the West Central region. Other people talk
about that, okay, and so they basically launched a rebellion.
They were like, this isn't acceptable to us. We want
(17:35):
our church, that we want to be able to go
to church, and we don't think and and and we
hate the president and we want to bring we want
to make it possible for the church to function, and
so they had a battle cry which was Bibakrist, which
is long lived Christ the King. And they were kind
of like um pejoratively referred to as Caristao's, like all
(17:58):
those stupid it's like Christer's and then they adopted that
term as like a term of pride, so they're like
seems and they yeah, we're the Christers. So so that
was the war. And the reason this is all connected
to migration is because the war happened in the most
(18:18):
populous region in Mexico and um it really pushed a
lot of people to migrate out. There were other reasons,
but like, but it was really connected to that migration.
And so what I wrote about my book is the
way that people left that, like that sort of Cristero
region during the war and they brought there they brought
(18:39):
the war with them to the United States in a way.
They didn't fight in the United States, but they went
and they raised money to send guns back home. They
participated in conspiracies, they were working with exiled priests and bishops,
and so there's a whole really interesting sort of spy
story about it, and then also it's a story about
the way that migrants bring their politics with them, like right, like,
(19:02):
I mean, well every two like you're talking about Chilean politics,
and you're like you when you leave your country, you
don't stop being involved in what's happening in your kind.
The number numbers in the Chilean elections in Alabama, Yeah, exactly. Yeah,
And also like that, at the same time, you bring
your politics to the place where you're in your where
(19:23):
you're new, and you bring your own vision of this
new country. I mean, when we would think about Latina's
for Trump, it's kind of like that, you know, it's
it's still in some way. Well, you're no, totally. I
mean this is something so I didn't say this this
explicitly in my book, and I'm I'm working on this
in my next project. But what there's this tendency in
(19:48):
US politics, especially on the left, to kind of think like, oh, well,
you know, immigration is really good for Democrats because all
these immigrants are going to come in and they're going
to be lefty liberals because you know, we want to
let them in, so they're gonna vote for us, so
you know, and you know, these Latinos are are kind
of lefty because Caesar Chavez or something that's sort of
(20:09):
really surface level understanding. And it's like there are a
lot of Latino conservatives. I mean, there's a lot of
people who who are fundamentally conservative because of the politics
of their home country, and they're gonna come in and
they're going to support I mean if Republicans. It's a
mistake that both Republicans and Republicans and Democrats make because
if Republicans let in a lot more Latinos like they might,
(20:33):
they would vote for them for surely, and especially what
we're talking about, like very religious people. Yeah, well they
love Jesus and the Bible. You know, it's like, of
course they have a conservative, lean leaning bone of view. Yeah, no,
they're not. They're not super there. They're they're pro life.
They're yeah, pro life. Sorry, they're they're pro life. They're
(20:54):
socially conservative. Um, they really don't like a lot of them.
They really don't like Google Chavez or Fidel Castro, you know.
I mean it's not just Cubans that are Republicans that
are the lean Republican for those reasons, Like, there are
a lot of other and at the same time, I
mean For example, when I'm thinking about people from Venezuela
that when pro Trump is like, yeah, of course they
(21:16):
have Chavis, but Trump is Chaves at the same time,
so they also have populism really works with them. You know,
they're ready vote for another version of the same person.
So even if the thinking of the others opposite pole,
they're still voting for the same again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
I mean. And that's also like the I mean, we
(21:37):
used to say that the populist leader was a kind
of a Latin American phenomenon, right, and then we elect
to Trump and we're like, oh, we can do it too. Um,
But you know, the idea of like a sort of
Latin American like dictator, demagogue or or populist. I mean,
all of these are terms that are often pretty ill defined,
(21:57):
but they are often associated in the American mind with
Latin America. This idea of like a kind of charismatic
dictator figure that has a popular I mean, Peron would
be an example. Yes, um, the guy who can talk
for five hours. That seems like the definition of Yeah,
I'm not sure about that, but like I'm sure I
(22:19):
think that run Argentina from Spain, for a couple of years. Yeah,
there was a Spanish so he was like doing like
the zoom thing in a way before budd Well, that's
the big Latin America, right, Is that big Latin America.
It's yeah, I mean it's everywhere, And the migrants make
Latin America into big Latin America, and then exiles make
(22:42):
Latin America into big Latin America. I mean Portfrego Ideas,
who was president of Mexico before the revolution, died in
France and I was just reading something about some conservative
Mexican exiles in uh in Europe trying to cultivate a
connection with Portflio Ideas his wife. You know. So, like
Latin American politics happens outside of Latin America all the time.
(23:03):
You know, exile is a really important part of political
Exiles played a really important role in Latin America and
probably probably everywhere, but you know, I've studied it in
Latin America. So because they raised a lot of money
for movements. Is the whole thing about like leading the
Pinochet years. I remember there was all these media that
it was like from the left and it was like
(23:24):
why did disappear with democracy show? Is that? Yeah? Because
they were funded by friends and by center studies in
I don't know, Brussels. Uh so they was not hot
to put money on that anymore. And right, right, I
mean the the you if you want to launch a
political movement in Latin America or like a popular movement
(23:46):
in Latin America, you probably need to go where the
money is. And often the money isn't in Latin America. Right,
So you go to the US or you go to
France and you fundraise and you I mean, what I've
wrote about in my book is people fundraising and um
in order to buy weapons or just send money back
to the front, back to the battlefields at home in Mexico.
(24:07):
And that's a really common pattern because if they're you know,
and and it's also you can also be more politically free.
I mean, this is true on the left and the
right in Latin America. Like think about the people on
the Argentine left who left Argentina during the Dirty War,
right because they could, I mean both because they're leaving
for their lives, to save their lives, but also because
they're going where they can be free and where they
(24:29):
can collaborate with each other and maybe like lobby the government,
lobby the US government to help them or whatever. Yeah,
I remember reading the theory that a lot of people
on the left thought that the I mean Salvagin the
suicide like commits suicide during the coup in seventy three
in Chile, and a lot of his friends were like,
(24:50):
he shouldn't do that. He should escape, go to Europe,
get a bunch of money, you know, create a movement,
and came back and continue he's work. Yeah, And I
never thought about that, but yeah, a lot of people
was like, yeah, that's what you do. You don't kill
yourself like this context. I mean I think, I mean,
he's an historical figure also because of many reasons because
(25:14):
of that too. But I never thought that, yeah, that
that was an option, right, Yeah, that's an option, like
go go form a movement in exile. I mean, that's
the story of Cuba, right, of the Cuban exiles in Miami,
and that really consider probably to this day, some of
them consider themselves exiles and not migrants, because they were
(25:34):
there was a common pattern for all Cuban history of going, uh,
you know, it's ninety miles away from Qus, right, so
you just hop over and uh and and regroup and
collect some money and um, I mean Jose Marti did this,
like you know, Um, find some friends, make some speeches,
make some posters and yeah, some some things out and
(26:01):
have a fundraiser. And then if you have a migrant
yeah totally it's great. And if you have a migrant
group that's already in the United States, so that's where
like Mexico and Cuba especially, like you can then go
go um, publicize your cause within that migrant group, right,
and you can actually get potentially I mean, this is
(26:22):
like think about the Bay of Pigs. The people who
fought on the CIA funded anti Castro side at the
Bay of Pigs. Those were Cuban migrants or exiles or
whatever you wanna call them. They were like recently arrived Cubans.
So they were able to, with the help of the CIA,
organize this, um, you know, what they hoped would be
(26:43):
the overthrow of Fidel Castro, and that's been I mean,
think how many think of how many political movements in
the in Latin America have been organized outside of Latin
America with the help of say that again, this is
where the action is. Guys to our Latin American listen,
come on up here, get your organizing done, come back, yeah,
(27:05):
and come back with dollars. Yeah, exactly. This is why.
This is why, you know, American people, when you know,
George W. Bush gets reelected or drunk gets elected, they
sort of threatened to move to Canada or something, but
they never really do because the money is still here
if you want to stay here. Yeah, and then you
you like do a little research on Canada and you're like,
(27:26):
it's it's just not the same. It's just a big
oil company. Yeah, yeah, really a lot of Arctic um No, Yeah,
Canada doesn't. For for whatever reason, Canada doesn't have that
same history of and not as many Latin Americans in
Canada either. Backpacking around Canada's an eighteen year old wouldn't
be quite as illuminating as going to Mexico. There were
(27:51):
I met a million Canadians who were backpacking, of course,
and they all had you know, they all had the
Canadian flags. They're back But that's what happened when your
country is really boring there, and yeah, there's I mean,
they were all they're all super nice, and they're all
like invested in being super nice, and and they were
super nice. But you know, I think there's a sense
(28:14):
of like there's maybe not that much going on in
Canada and so like take advantage of going abroad. But
you know what it's actually I don't want to say that.
I also want to say that there's a culture of
wanting to travel and know the rest of the world
that we really don't have so much in the US.
I mean, it's it was, there's there's a subculture in
(28:37):
the US of people that go and backpack and travel around.
But you're always surrounded by when you do that, when
you backpack or you do like extended travel or living
in other countries, you're always surrounded by like Australians and
South Africa and Canadians. But there is a culture of um,
you know, I don't know. Maybe it's like they know
(28:57):
they live in these more remote places of re actially
remote places, and so they feel like, well, I gotta
get out. I mean especially Australia, right like I gotta
get out of here. And Israelis do it too, Yes,
they feel like they gotta get out and they got
to see the world. And we're just like, I didn't
know there was in Mexico. I didn't My thing is
maybe I don't know if it's just me, but every
(29:19):
time I talked with my American friends, they really scare
of Latin America, like they think it's dangerous in a
way that it is a fantasy, like no, like no
place is that dangerous as they think in their minds.
You know, it's always like can you can you eat
the water? Water? You know, you can't drink the water.
(29:40):
They don't drink water. There's funny. It's like that funny
here because in l A you see all these like
water shops, and there's like a thing. I think it's
a thing of Latino immigrants, Central South American Mexican immigrants
to l A to not want to drink our water
like that. They're usually buying water rather because they're in
the world international arbiter to talk about water. And I
(30:08):
probably round the drink water in Mexico City. Then in Flint, Michigan,
you know for sure we're not. We have this idea
that here everything is safe. Meanwhile, we have we kind
of have a gun problem here, so you know, but
we have this idea that here everything is safe. In
Latin America, everything is unstable and dangerous, and a lot
of that is every movie that's ever been made about
(30:31):
Latin America, especially in Mexico, especially in Mexico City. It's
just like it's all explosions, explosions, all the explosions and
kidnapping and narcos. I mean a friend of mine from Colombia,
he talked to me about when they put a big
billboard of Narcos Colombia, the first one, you know, the
one with publics in in in Colombia, and everyone is
(30:51):
so upset, and of course Netflix couldn't understand why. I mean,
this is a show about you in a way, and
they will know most is because Pablo Escobar was he
killed people that we know, you know, like it's it
was it's i mean, my grandfather have or a friend
of my my neighbor die. So it's still super fresh.
(31:13):
And you're like just putting the face of that guy
in a billboard, you know, it's of course it's you.
You're not gonna like that, I mean, don't they didn't
they have um like Escobar tours for tourists, like you
could voting his mansions, and yeah, that was definitely a thing.
Yeah right, and I remember that that also offended people
(31:36):
and rightly so right because they're like, yeah, for exactly
the reasons you say that, like this guy wrought havoc
on our society and then you're coming here bed and
in the nineties, I mean, not like I don't know,
a hundred years ago, you know, yeah, yeah, and people
and people have long memories about the stuff, and they should.
(31:56):
I mean, even when I was doing work on on
Christo's I would go to certain places in Mexico where
it had really been fun and people were like of
any style, which was the other side, but like it
was people. It was in people's families. It was a
conflict that was remembered, and it's totally forgot. It was
never understood in the US really at all, and um
(32:17):
and even has been forgotten in some parts of Mexico.
They should get back at us by making a show
about like the Sacklers, and they're just like hilarious clowns
and everything they do is silly, and you know they're
right violence. I mean, why don't they make a Narcos
style drama about gun violence in the US where you
(32:38):
can't go anywhere without being afraid of you can't go
to school without being afraid of being shot. I mean,
I'm Sorry, that's dark, but but it does. It is
just so interesting, this kind of this kind of line
or assumption that like you just you're going to get
kidnapped the middle of the minute you walk out of
the on the street in Latin America, but you're never
(32:58):
in any danger in the United States in comparison. And
I think that that's something, I mean, that's something that
goes back and probably has sort of deep historical roots,
the idea that Latin America is less stable. We are stable,
We're a democracy. We are a stable democracy. We bring
democracy to other places. And this is something I really
(33:18):
love about teaching Latin American history is that it really
causes students to rethink US history, to reevaluate in re
s s U S history, because we grow up with
this idea that we are the we are, we are
the country that brings freedom and democracy to the rest
(33:40):
of the world. And then and I don't try not
to be you know, too didactic or political on this,
but I just kind of if you lay out the
history of Latin America since the mid nineteenth century and
up until the present, and you look at just the
sheer number of US interventions in Latin American politics and
(34:02):
the number of times we've sent trips to Latin America
and the number of times we've um helped on seat
democratically elected leaders that we don't like. It kind of
makes you think, will wait a second, no, no, no,
every time you make it worse, I mean every time
it was worse I think for the country. And we're
(34:24):
still I mean in chilea this election right now, it's
still about what happened with Pinochet. I mean still we're
still you know, how to go back to that point
where the country is split to like revisit that every
single election. So thank you, guys, I know, I'm sorry.
Really it really like we really like to hang up
(34:47):
the mission accomplished sign. We like to say, like, okay,
mission accomplished. They tore the statues down now bye bye,
and then and then like you guys deal with the
mass afterwards. Right, So it was Chile, and that was Guatemala,
Like I mean, it's just an endless number of places, um,
and you know, and the thing we like to say
about ourselves like well, we're just trying to we're just
(35:10):
trying to do the right thing. We're just trying to
prevent communism. You know, and I mean it's it's complicated,
and there were reasons for preventing communist like that. There
were certainly, you know, there was violence on all sides
in many places. But we don't have a great track
record on intervening and then solving the problem, right, It's
(35:35):
hard to think of an example where we did that
and then there was no problem after that. You stop
paying attention. That's it. You stop paying attention. Okay, yeah, sorry.
I think I think that part of the problem is
like sort of where I started this conversation of like,
we don't know enough about the context of Latin America,
(35:56):
and we intervene without deep understanding of the history, the culture,
the language, the reasons why a particular person might have
been democratically elected, and instead we're just like, oh, no,
he's bad, he's a communist. I mean, okay, this was
more during the Cold War, but that was the that
was the methodology, right, Like, he's bad, he's a communist,
(36:19):
get him out. Well, let's pay the guys who will
get him out. Summing up here on Wikipedia, list of us,
it's this covert US involvement in regime change. Just to
(36:41):
list to you some of the places Guatemala, Syria, Indonesia, Cuba, Cambodia, Congo,
Cuba again, Dominican Republic, Sufiam, Brazil, Indonesia, Ghana, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Salvador, Afghanistan, Angola, Nicaragua, Chad, Iraq.
Not a list of successful paradises for the most part,
(37:01):
right right, And then and then the best part is
we're like, why are they coming here? Like why are
there people immigrating here in caravans and crossing the border,
Like these two things are totally disconnected in our minds, right,
that our involvement in these countries, and then um, and
(37:22):
then the fact that people are then fleeing these countries
and coming to the most stable and prosperous country in
the hemisphere, which is here, right or I mean same
thing with Afghan migrants or so I mean I think
another thing that we don't do in the US is
like we don't learn Latin American history at all. We
don't think of ourselves as part of the in the US,
(37:43):
we don't think of ourselves as part of the hemisphere.
So this is actually like you guys saying big Latin
America is actually really important that the thing that you're
doing we're doing our part here in the podcast on
podcast at a time. It's really it's you're you're doing
something for the cause for the betterment of the world,
and you should feel good about that. Well you can.
(38:06):
And now when I teach, I try to talk about
the America's, I mean, I have a class on migration
to and from and within the America's because like, we
don't understand that we're the same thing. That things that
happened here happened in Latin America. We're connected to Latin America.
We've intervened in Latin America, but also we've been involved
in Latin America. Latin America has been involved with us.
(38:28):
Like we're not separable. We're all in the same we're
literally connected, and we're all in the same hemisphere, right
and so we just but we but this is part
of the the whole myth of American exceptionalism is like
not only are we the best country and the most
unique country ever, but we're also like somehow not connected
to the other countries that are the share land borders
(38:49):
with us. It's a problem. It leads to us not
understanding the causes of things like migration or instability that
leads to mygration. It's a problem. So it's really it's
important to talk about big Latin America, or about the
America's or about the whole hemisphere because it does it
(39:10):
does help. I mean, I think, really I see this
in my students. Is that I mean, I think I
feel like a successful in a successful class that I've taught,
the student leave feeling like, oh, okay, we are more
connected than I realized, Like I actually need to know
about what's happening in Latin America. It's not really an option.
We shouldn't feel like we can just be in the
(39:30):
United States and ignore what's happening in Latin America. And
at the same time, and this is part of our show,
it's like it's the same, It's just the same. You know,
I have different names, but the characters the same are
very similar. It looks like a regal line between most
of them. Yeah, so you can see what's gonna happen
(39:51):
because the patterns are there. You know, if you learn
from Latin America, you're gonna see what's going on here.
And at the same time, we're also we like Latin
America now is being feeded by all what it's been
done here. I mean in in in the last five
elections in Latin America, there's a guy saying, like, hey,
you know the votes are they didn't count all the votes,
(40:15):
so of course there's there's a there's something there that
people are not paying attention. And it's very interesting. I
mean the current president of Mexico and when he was
first he first ran um in two thousand six for
president I believe that was his first candidacy, and he
(40:36):
lost very narrowly, and he said it was frauday, right,
it was fraud, and he refused to concede. And then
he went to the Socolo in Mexico City and had
a parallel inauguration like his own inaugura. He inaugurated himself
and that's a hundred thousand followers were there and it
(41:00):
camped out in the Socough. I know, this is like
it happened there already end and he and he never like,
he never conceded, and he said, you know, basically fraud,
stolen election, stolen votes. And right now kicking himself that
no one brought him this idea, Yeah, because Alo did,
(41:22):
like he had a whole he did the sash like
that he put another version, his own version of the
presidential sash, like he took the oath of office. So
like Trump, I kind of thought that might happen. Trump
could do like a you know, on the other end
of the mall, he could do a parallel inauguration and
like his followers would have shown up. I mean they
(41:43):
think without the negation, there's still people think he's the president. Yeah,
maybe because he didn't actually have to do it. The
sash is one thing that hasn't quite made it here yet.
Maybe we'll be seeing that the Latin American president always
that's a good research question. Why is that? I feel
like it's a French or a Spanish thing and we don't.
(42:04):
Maybe we're gonna put some people and we'll see that
before too long. Well, professor, we don't want to take
too much of your time. This has been amazing. I
want to leave with the incredible compliment you gave to
our show. And yes, so I think we're all thinking
along the same lines here of trying to figure out
why why it is that we think we're somehow distinct
from these places that are just an imaginary line away. Yeah,
(42:28):
we're we're all we're connected. We're all connected. Amazing. Thank
you for joining us here. Where can people find your
work or if they want to learn more about what
you're working on? UM, I'm not a good self promoter.
I have a Twitter, have a Twitter account that I
use very sporadically. It's a Julia G. Young and you
(42:49):
can google. I've written some off eds and articles and
you can google Julia Young Catholic University and you'll find
those there. So get the Julia Young take it's out there. Well.
Thank you so much, propus. I really appreciate the time.
Thank you so much. Thank you. Take care. For from
the South is hosted by Me, Steve Healey, and Fabrizio Capano.
Robert O'Shaughnessy is our producer. Original theme song by Amy Stolsenbach.
(43:12):
For From the South is a production of Exile Content
Studio in partnership with I Heart Radio is Michael Tour
podcast network. For more podcasts from my Heart, visit the
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