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Historian Answers Latin American History Questions

Historian Alexander Avina joins WIRED to answers the internet's burning questions about the modern history of Latin America. Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey Director of Photography: Ben Dewey Editor: Richard Trammell Expert: Alexander Avina Line Producer: Jamie Rasmussen Associate Producer: Brandon White; Paul Guylas Production Manager: Peter Brunette Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark Casting Producer: Nicole Ford Camera Operator: Caleb Weiss Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen Production Assistant: Ryan Coppola; Shanti Cuizon-Burden Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo Assistant Editor: Billy Ward

Released on 09/30/2025

Transcript

I'm historian, Alex Avina.

Let's answer your questions from the internet.

This is Latin America support.

[upbeat music]

Concerned dad asks, How many Latinos live in the US?

More than 65 million Latinos live in the United States

as of our last Census report.

It is the single largest minority group

in the United States.

@Paulg9483 asks, I'm working on a timeline

of Latin American history for my class.

I'm going to start in 1492 with the Fall of Granada.

What other five events I should include?

Well, I guess Paul's asking me

to do some of his work for him, which I will gladly do.

So let's follow Paul's plan,

because 1492 is important for a variety of reasons.

In addition to the fall of Granada

we have October of 1492

when Christopher Columbus stumbled

onto what is now Latin America.

In the early 1700s the Bourbons take over the Spanish throne

instituting gradually a series of reforms

throughout the 1700s that will eventually trigger

a mass uprising throughout the region.

I would say the third one would be the Haitian Revolution

where a slave revolt led to the creation

of a modern black state in the Americas.

It was an anti-capitalist, anti-racist,

and anti-slavery revolution,

feared by all colonial powers around the world.

So revolutionary Haiti was extremely important

'cause it helped inspire revolutionary efforts

throughout the Americas.

Now this brings us to our fourth event that I would pick,

Latin American Independence.

Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Spain in the early 1800s

and triggered a crisis of rule in Spain's American colonies

where people on the ground did not know

who they were subject to,

this French installed government in Spain,

or if they should start thinking about

independence themselves,

which is what started happening

in some of the major Latin American cities.

So by the mid to late 1820s, most of Latin America

are independent from Spanish colonial power.

Our next event is a Mexican American war,

which is really important for

the country that my parents are from

and the country that we're living in today.

The US invasion of Mexico in 1846

resulted in the continental expansion of the United States

from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean,

because the United States took between a half to a third

of Mexico's national territory.

This was the first time really, that the US invaded

one of its Latin American neighbors.

But you had really strong resistance in the US,

people from Frederick Douglass to Abraham Lincoln.

The final event that I would pick occurred in 1910,

and we're talking about the 1910 Mexican Revolution,

the first great social peasant led revolution

of the 20th century,

a phenomenon that would characterize

the 20th century globally from Mexico to Cuba,

to China, to Nicaragua, to Iran.

And we cannot forget the Russian revolution.

And as we now know, thanks to recent research,

Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

the New Deal in part was largely inspired

by the Mexican revolution

and its ideas of economic nationalism and social democracy.

@ScrapIronLiver asks,

Next door neighbors got all moved out yesterday

and today there are approximately 15 people with jackhammers

ripping up all the tile and Mexican music at volume 11,

and why does it sound exactly like Polka?

The reason Mexican regional music from the North,

banda music, norteno music sounds a lot like polka

is because it has a lot of polka influence,

and that's because you had European immigrants

in the mid to late 19th century arrive in northern Mexico.

Here's an example of banda music.

[banda music]

Now here's an example of polka music.

[polka music]

Sounds similar, right?

The flow, the sound.

Latin America is the crossroads of the world,

and this one very particular musical form

from northern Mexico shows how

European immigrants brought their sound,

brought their instruments, melded with local forms

and produced something new, something popular,

and in my opinion, something really enjoyable.

Escape_Force asks, Where is El Dorado?

El Dorado the supposed city of gold and untold riches

existed in the minds of the Spanish colonizers

and conquistadors.

What fundamentally drove the myth of El Dorado

was how to become wealthy quickly

through the acquisition of rich mineral resources,

which then would allow them to become nobles.

Even though El Dorado was a myth,

it did drive actual expedition

and travels from Spanish conquistadors

from the Caribbean or from what is now Mexico North

into what is now North America to Florida,

to what is now New Mexico.

People like Coronado, like De Soto, like Ponce De Leon,

who had conquistadors experience

and other parts of what is now Latin America,

they went on these searches for cities of gold

and fountains of youth.

They failed to find those things,

but what they did accomplish

was to extend Spanish imperial power

into areas of what is now the United States,

that way precedes the arrival of the pilgrims

and other English colonists.

And this is one of the reasons why the language of Spanish

has existed in the United States longer

than the United States itself.

The next question comes from the subreddit

HistoriansAnswered,

What are the origins of the Day of the Dead

and why did it emerge in Latin America uniquely?

I would say that it didn't develop uniquely

within Latin America,

it developed in certain parts of Western

and Southern Mexico.

There's still a debate between historians

and anthropologists about the sources

and the roots of this holiday

that is celebrated usually on November 1st and November 2nd.

A lot of what we think are Day of the Dead celebrations

that have been long held for centuries

are actually more recent interventions.

Actually, there had never been

a day of the dead celebration in Mexico City

until a James Bond movie called Spectre

was filmed there in 2015,

and they organized that day of the dead parade

for the sake of the movie.

Because it ended up being so popular,

the city government decided to make it a yearly event

that started in 2016.

I'm sure we've all seen the movie Coco,

the symbol of the skeleton,

the symbol [speaking Spanish]

the spirit animals that are supposed to guide the dead

into the realm of the dead.

Again, all these things are facets and symbols

that have been incorporated

into the idea of day of the dead

that may have not existed for centuries,

but are actually been in existence only for decades.

IamTaralee asks,

So Mexicans don't really celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

I wonder why it's so big in America?

That's a really good point.

In Mexico, it's only celebrated

in one really particular city, the city of Puebla,

where this famous battle occurred in the 1860s

between a poorly armed Mexican army that managed to defeat

one of the most powerful armies in the world.

The French under Napoleon III decided to invade Mexico,

partly to get Mexico to pay back

some of the debts that they owed.

On the way to Mexico City,

they stumbled upon this ragtag Mexican army

where on Cinco de Mayo, 1862,

the Mexicans managed to defeat this powerful French army.

The Mexican commanders who led the resistance

at the city of Puebla

were loyal to then President Benito Juarez,

Mexico's first and only indigenous president.

He remained the steadfast leader of Mexico in resisting

both the French invasion and the puppet Habsburg Prince,

Napoleon III had installed as the monarch of Mexico.

In the 1860s, Cinco de Mayo,

becomes a way for Mexicans living in the United States

to affirm their Mexican identity

to the point where some Mexicans

actually traveled back to Mexico

to fight against the French.

In the last 20 to 30 years, US companies in the US

realized that there was a big Mexican American market,

so they started to commodify the idea of Cinco de Mayo

so they could sell things like beer.

This went beyond the confines

of the Mexican American community

to the point where Cinco de Mayo has become

really an American holiday to have a good time.

@BlackCaptain Queeg,

Do you know where the term cowboy came from?

Who were the original cowboys?

The original cowboys were vaqueros

from Spanish-ruled Mexico.

Spain, or the Iberian Peninsula

was ruled by different Islamic kingdoms

for at least seven centuries.

So the idea of a vaquero

that encapsulated also Islamic Arabic traditions.

Alongside actual Spanish conquistadors and colonizers,

we had horses, we had sheep, we had pigs,

we had cattle who accompanied them,

and that's where you get the vaquero emerging

as the prominent livestock handler

in the 16, 17, 1800s.

So by the time we get the American cowboy

in the mid 19th century,

they were building and learning from

long held traditions of Spanish

and Mexican vaqueros who had been around for a long time,

who were drawing from traditions

that went all the way back to Islamic-ruled Spain.

@Normanlite7 asks,

Is Brazil considered a part of Latin America?

'Cause somebody told me it wasn't

because they speak, I think Portuguese.

Brazil is considered part of Latin America

regardless of the linguistic differences.

Now Brazil does follow a very unique historical trajectory.

It gains independence in a way different from

Spain's colonies in the Americas.

It will have a monarchy up until the late 19th century.

It will be the last nation in the Western hemisphere

to abolish slavery in the late 1880s.

It's also useful to remember that at different moments,

the Portuguese throne and the Spanish throne were one,

that's just one more reason to think about why

Brazil is fundamentally part of Latin America.

@adamgrubb15 asks, What do you say to Mexicans who say,

'we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us'?

Historically they're right.

In 1826, this is what Mexico looked like.

It included a huge portion

of what is now the Western United States.

So to really push through this point,

I'll draw the old border on this current map

of the United States and Mexico.

The old border used to start contemporary Oregon,

work its way down all the way to the border between

Texas and Louisiana.

This used to be Mexico

after it achieved independence from Spain.

In 1835, we have the outbreak of a rebellion in Texas

against the central government in Mexico,

this will lead to the battle of the Alamo.

This will lead to Texan independence

from 1836 up until 1845.

What we now recognize as the US-Mexico border

emerges as a consequence of the US Mexico war

from 1846 to 1848.

United States sent a force marching through Texas,

that force eventually becomes

bogged down in a lot of fighting

in what is now the north of Mexico.

Part of the reason why they get bogged down

is because hundreds of mostly immigrants

who are fighting for the US Army

decided to defect over to the Mexican side.

They formed something called the St. Patrick's Battalion

Los San Patricios,

and they formed the light artillery unit of the Mexican army

and they fought against the Americans

and put up pretty stiff resistance.

The United States sent a different force from New Orleans

and they eventually make it to Mexico City

after a series of really important battles.

By September October of 1847,

the American flag will be flying over the Zocalo

of Mexico City.

Here's a question from the AskLatin America subreddit.

How would you group Latin American countries together

into regional cultural groupings?

Latin America is an extremely diverse place.

It includes more than 650 million people,

more than 30 countries, more than a hundred languages,

including European-based languages and indigenous languages.

We can think about Spanish-speaking countries,

Portuguese being spoken in Brazil.

We can talk about French

and English being spoken in some Caribbean basin nations.

Historically, we can think about Latin America before 1492.

We have power centers

in particularly in what is now central Mexico

with the Mexica, or more commonly known as the Aztecs.

We still have groups in Oaxaca,

the Zapotec or the Mixtec.

We have the famous Mayans

that lived in Southern Mexico and Central America.

Mesoamerica was a rich, diverse area.

There were certain cultural traits that shared

spiritual and religious deities.

One interesting thing to think about is the ball game

played by two indigenous teams,

that ball game stretched all the way

from what is now Florida to Central America.

If we work our way down to South America,

we have different Andean civilizations

that had been there for thousands of years.

Before 1492 we have the powerful Inca Empire.

In the Caribbean region we have the Taino peoples as well

who spread throughout different Caribbean islands.

The Amazon basin was also a powerful indigenous center

of cultural and economic practices.

Another way to group this area is to think about

the type of imperial influences

in the 19th and early 20th century

and how that imperial influence

manifested itself culturally.

So for instance, in South America,

soccer is a big national pastime.

In a place like Argentina, it's basically the religion.

Diego Armando Maradona has his own church.

A lot of these soccer teams in Argentina have English names.

Why? Because it was the British who took soccer there

in the 19th century

when Britain was really the commercial imperial power

over South America.

But we work our way North to the Caribbean,

to Northern Mexico there the most popular sport is baseball.

Wherever baseball is the most popular national sport

that reflects a past history of US influence

and intervention in that place, including Cuba,

where Fidel Castro was an avid baseball player and fan.

@Blairwaldorfyan asks, Can someone explain to me

why Frida Kahlo is treated as such a legend

when she was emotionally a slave to an ugly man?

Some might find Diego Rivera handsome, some might not.

Frida did develop a very strong emotional relationship

that they maintained throughout the duration of her life

until she died in the 1950s,

that kept them together despite the Diego Rivera's inability

to remain a monogamous partner.

Frida also maintained her own liaisons

and relationships with people.

One of the alleged liaisons

was with Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky,

who arrived in Mexico in the 1930s

seeking safe haven from the Soviet Union.

I think she's fundamentally a legend

because of her talent as an artist,

because of her honesty and her rawness as an artist

who was able to convey the emotional

and physical pain that she experienced on a daily basis.

Frida Kahlo suffered an accident

when she was a young woman in a streetcar

in which essentially a pole broke and pierced her body.

She had to go through multiple medical treatments,

she was in constant pain.

Beyond her amazing paintings and her artwork,

she was also an ardent committed political activist

in 1920s, 1930s Mexico.

She was a committed Marxist

who supported communist causes around the world.

Diego Rivera also an impressively talented,

influential Mexican muralist.

So they also shared a very strong political connection.

If you've looked at Diego Rivera's murals,

the common theme is that it's the everyday people of Mexico,

the workers and the peasants who have made that country

and made that country's history.

Sometimes when Frida comes up

in more mainstream popular conversations,

she's deprived or drained

of the really radical political commitments

that she believed in and she practiced when she was alive.

I think about how during her funeral

there was a flag placed on top of her coffin,

the flag of the hammer and sickle.

So Frida remained a radical left wing activist and painter

until the moment she died.

So here's a question from Quora.

Who is the coolest historical figure

you never learned about in school?

So many.

So, so many.

Micaela Bastidas, who was a military indigenous leader

during the Tupac Amaru Rebellion in the Andes

in the late 1700s.

She was married to Tupac Amaru II.

She was a very important figure in that movement

that almost managed to overthrow Spanish colonial rule

in what is now Peru and Bolivia.

The coolest figure that folks may have heard about

is Simon Bolivar of South America.

@Livvyonce asks, Who the [beep] is Simon Bolivar?

He's the independence hero of Latin America,

kind of like the George Washington.

He helped liberate South America from Spain in the 1820s.

He did a interesting pincer movement

where he liberated the North and moved his way South.

His compatriot and revolutionary partner,

Jose De San Martin based in Argentina,

liberated the South of South America

and moved their way North.

He is a complicated figure.

He had a grand vision of uniting

at least the North of South America

into one big entity called La Gran Colombia,

which would include the current day, Venezuela,

Colombia, and Ecuador.

It lasted for a few years after independence in the 1820.

One of the tragedies of Simon Bolivar is that

he dies in 1830, embittered, very authoritarian.

You know, one way that he thought

that he could keep La Gran Colombia together

was by demanding that he be made President for life,

which was rejected by people in Venezuela,

Colombia, and Ecuador.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a great Colombian novelist,

has a great novel that captures the end

of Bolivar's life called The General in His Labyrinth

that I highly recommend.

You have countries named after him,

so when we think about Bolivia,

this is a testament to the lasting impact

of someone like Simon Bolivar.

@Cub527 asks, How accurate is the Netflix show 'Narcos'?

I get this question a lot from my students.

It's undeniable that there was a lot of drugs

coming into the United States in the 1970s, in the 1980s.

Cocaine changed the dynamic of the global drug trade

in a variety of different ways.

One of the things that's problematic

about the Colombian Narco series

is that the only perspective we get

is that from DEA agents who were sent into Colombia

to fight the Medellin cartel led by Pablo Escobar,

and that leads to a lot of historical distortions

in terms of Colombian history,

in terms of Colombian political systems.

The Mexico one is more interesting

because the producers and the directors

do try to provide other perspectives.

Now in the Mexican Narcos

when the ruling PRI party was on the brink of losing power

over the President for the first time in seven decades,

they were facing the challenge of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas,

the son of Mexico's most beloved president

of the 20th century.

The day that their votes were being counted,

the computers that were used to tally the votes

mysteriously crashed.

This led to one of the most infamous quotes

in recent Mexican history

were one of the government ministers came out

and said, [speaking Spanish], the system broke down.

At that point, we think, I think we're pretty sure,

that Cuauhtemoc Cardenas,

the opposition candidate was winning,

was ahead in the vote count.

When they restarted the computers

miraculously the PRI candidate,

Carlos Salinas de Gortari wins the election,

wins, and wins the presidency.

@Watercloset, How did the United States come to be

in possession of Guantanamo Bay?

Cuba had fought for its independence against Spain

numerous times over the course of the 19th century,

the last effort began in 1895.

And in 1898 when it seemed to be heading closer

to gaining its independence from Spain,

the US intervened militarily.

When the battleship Maine sailed into Havana Harbor

and mysteriously blew up,

the United States used that as an excuse

to intervene in the Cuban War of Independence,

at which point it became the Spanish American War,

a war between the United States and Spain.

It was a very short war,

one American government official

referred to it as a splendid little war.

The United States after signing a peace treaty with Spain

obtained Puerto Rico as a colony,

the Philippine Islands as a colony, Guam as a colony.

In that same peace treaty,

Cuba was to be granted independence,

but the United States remained.

Part of that negotiation also involved

the perpetual leasing of Guantanamo

for the purposes of creating a US naval station.

Every year to this day,

the US deposits money into an account

that is supposed to be paying for the lease of Guantanamo.

Since at least the early 1960s,

the Cubans refuse to cash the American check for Guantanamo.

Ulteriorkid324 asks,

Why did Cuba become a pain in ass to the United States

for more than half a century?

Now, obviously, this guy is the representation

of Cuba being a pain in the ass in the United States,

Fidel Castro, who outlived

a series of different US presidents.

But we really have to go back all the way back

to the 1898 Spanish American War

in which Cuba was granted independence from Spain.

The reason why I put up air quotes

is because Cuba essentially became a sugar colony

for the United States well into the 1930s.

This created all sorts of political

and socioeconomic consequences in Cuba,

it led to the rise of a dictator Fulgencio Batista

in the early 1950s.

A motley crew of rebels,

of students, of campesinos, of activists,

and one Argentine medic by the name of Che Guevara,

they launched a rebellion against Batista in 1956,

and after a few years of combat,

they managed to ous Batista on January 1st, 1959.

From the very beginning, there was tensions

with the United States,

by the middle to end of 1959,

we have US declassified documents that are talking about,

you know, we don't like what this Fidel Castro guy

is doing in Cuba,

we should think about removing them from power.

This leads to an attempt to invade Cuba,

organized by the United States

but carried out by Cuban exiles

who are opposition to the M26 movement,

this is called the Bay of Pigs, this occurs in 1961.

The revolutionary Cuban government

manages to stave off the invasion,

and in that Cold War era, Cuba is looking for allies,

so they looked for that other big power

in the world at that time, which was the Soviet Union.

That's really the moment when Cuba becomes

a big pain in the ass to the United States.

Fundamentally, it has represented a big middle finger

to what the US tries to do in the region,

and this is one of the reasons why

this blockade embargo that the US has instituted

against the island since the early 1960s

continues in place and actually has been intensified

and worsened in the last 10 years.

MexicanSoda asks, I was told that the Mexican revolution

of 1910 was a unique one in that

as opposed to most other revolutions,

it was actually led by the poor masses.

How true is this?

Well, it's complicated.

It was a unique, authentic social revolution

in that the peasant masses of Mexico

did force it initially

against the three decade long dictatorial rule

of someone named Porfirio Diaz.

He allied himself with landed elites, foreign interests,

who collectively work to take away the communal lands

of different Mexican peasant communities

over the course of two decades.

That's what really triggers the Mexican revolution in 1910.

Led by Francisco Madero, a wealthy landowner

who had been left out of the Mexican political system

who helps launch a revolution in 1910,

they overthrow Porfirio Diaz relatively quickly,

and by 1911 Madero is president of Mexico.

He will then soon come into conflict

with radical peasant leaders like Emiliano Zapata,

the leader of the most radical peasant movement

of the South,

and this is Pancho Villa of the North.

They would take the defeat

of radical peasant leaders like Zapata and Villa

on the battlefield, before middle class revolutionaries

could then incorporate some of these demands

into the 1917 Constitution,

which remains to this day with some modifications,

the constitution of Mexico.

So by the way, the figure of Pancho Villa

ends up becoming extremely important,

not just within Mexico but outside of it.

Now, Pancho Villa was a darling of US media and film.

He had us film crews accompanying him

on his battles 1914, 1915,

but then he became the ultimate villain,

because in 1916,

after having lost militarily on the battleground,

he's left with only a few hundred fighters

so Pancho Villa came up with this idea,

why don't I invade the United States?

And he did.

He invaded Columbus, New Mexico in 1916.

From MoonSpecter, Why did Pancho Villa attack

Columbus, New Mexico?

He wanted to trigger a US invasion of Mexico

to create a quagmire on the one hand for the United States,

but on the other hand,

to make the current revolutionary leaders of Mexico

led by a man named Venustiano Carranza,

look like they were selling out the country,

and thereby allowing him the opportunity to capture

his military and political stature.

Pancho Villa led La Division del Norte,

the Division of the North.

It was a peasant army of more than 40,000 troops.

They had hundreds of railways and trains.

They even had their own air force

with mercenary foreign pilots.

All that ended after his defeats in 1915.

The invasion of Columbus, New Mexico,

he thought would be his opportunity to reclaim the mantle

of anti-imperialist, anti-US leader.

And it almost worked

because the US did invade Mexico in return.

This led to the punitive expedition

led by General Jack Pershing,

where for months he traveled around,

him and his American troops,

including troops from the Buffalo Soldier Regiment,

including the indigenous scouts.

For months, they scoured the Northern Mexican countryside

trying to locate Pancho Villa.

They could never capture him.

Pancho Villa used to put the shoes on his horses

in the wrong way so it looked like

he was going in one direction

when he was actually going in the opposite direction.

There's an anecdote

where supposedly Pancho Villa is up on a hill

watching the Americans withdraw from Mexico,

and he's purported to have said,

They came like eagles and they left like wet hens.

@QueenRoyce15 asks, Why telenovelas

got to be so damn dramatic?

It's like one disastrous decision event after another.

Y'all be really salado AF in life.

Go to a spiritualist para que te lipien.

I love this question.

Telenovelas are Latin American soap operas.

In the late 19th century, early 20th century,

their version of the telenovela was a novel form

that always followed the same kind of plot and guidelines,

that poor, racialized, working class woman strikes it rich

because she managed to fall in love

with a wider, upper class, wealthier man,

and in them coming together and having kids

that representing some form of national unity.

Within these Latin American countries,

this plot is a fantastical one.

In a place like Mexico where you still have racial

and class considerations to take into account,

when we think about class mobility.

In the Mexican soap operas

that I was forced to watch growing up,

there was a phenomenon of mostly

white Mexican actors and actresses

essentially playing brown face, Mexican face,

when they played the role

of the poor working class woman.

So obviously there's a fantasy

and then there's a reality in Mexico

where poverty still looks, let's say,

darker skinned than some of the displays of this

in telenovelas.

YellowLemonBikini asks,

Favorite films to represent Latin American culture?

One notable film would be

the classic three part documentary series

by Patricio Guzman about Chile called [speaking Spanish]

The Battle of Chile,

a documentary that captures

the Chilean attempt to wage a peaceful revolution

in the early 1970s led by President Salvador Allende.

Patricia Guzman filmed this documentary series

during the overthrow of Allende

led by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.

This was the one attempt in Latin America

to achieve socialism through peaceful,

legalistic constitutional methods.

Salvador Allende, a self-declared Marxist doctor

was elected to be president of Chile.

This unleashed ferocious reaction

from the Chilean right wing

that culminated in the coup d'état on September 11th, 1973.

The US didn't play a direct role,

it did play an indirect role

in helping foment the conditions for a civil war in Chile

by essentially launching

an economic blockade of this country for three years.

President Richard Nixon said that he wanted to make

the Chilean economy scream.

Now we have an infamous quote from Henry Kissinger,

then National Security Advisor,

in which he said something to the extent of,

why should we let a country go communist

due to the irresponsibility of its own people?

And that quote captures so much of the relationship

between Latin America and the United States

during the Cold War.

The next question is from Quora,

How did the Che Guevara t-shirt become popular?

Che Guevara had a significant historical role

in Latin America, particularly during the Cold War era.

Che Guevara Came from Argentina.

He studied to be a medical doctor.

He traveled throughout Latin America in the 1940s and '50s

where he discovered and encountered

for the first time really, social, economic

and racial inequality in the region,

it started to radicalize him politically.

That process eventually took him to Mexico,

where he met, one, Fidel Castro,

and he joined the M26 movements

attempt to overthrow a dictator in Cuba,

and this leads us to the Cuban Revolution

where Che Guevara an international symbol

of revolution, of Marxism, of rebellion.

Che Guevara was an internationalist.

He believed in spreading revolution

throughout what we now refer to as the global south.

He attempted to wage revolution in Africa.

After that episode,

he went and tried to start a revolution in South America.

His idea was to spread a revolution from Bolivia

to the rest of South America,

including his own home country of Argentina.

In Bolivia is where he met his end in October of 1967.

The next question is from TheAskLatinAmerica subreddit.

How do you feel about people calling Miami

the capital of Latin America?

Miami is a really interesting case.

It has a very recent Cold War history

that witnesses generation after generation

of Latin American migration to the city

as a consequence of different revolutionary processes

that happen in Latin America during the Cold War.

Populations who saw themselves as losers

of a particular political or revolutionary process

would then go to Miami.

So we have Cubans,

we have Nicaraguans who fled the 1979 Sandinista Revolution.

We had Venezuelans who left during the presidencies

of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro.

You have different Colombian generations

and Brazilian generations as well.

This history of constant migrant and refugee flows to Miami

allow us to think about Miami

as not the capital of Latin America,

but as one capital of Latin America.

So those are all the questions for today.

Thanks for watching Latin America Support.

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