Latin American Revolution

In class, we were given the essential question, "Why is it essential to acknowledge any human regardless of race? How are the events in Latin American revolutions evidence of this social imperative?" , and each group was asked to give an answer. We were separated into groups so that each group could study one revolution and then share what they found to the class. My group used opinions rather than statistics to answer the essential question, since it's such a simple answer: it is essential to acknowledge any human regardless of race because no matter their ethnic background, we are all human. However, throughout time the treatment of people revolves around many things, prominently their race. Using the statistics given in class it's easy to prove that the Europeans were seen as superiors to everyone else in each society of discussion. Though they were all separate societies, they all had very similar social structures, which usually consisted of the Peninsulares making up the top 1%, then the Creoles with 23%, Mestizos with 7%, Mulattoes with 8%, Indian peoples with 50%, and African slaves with the bottom 11% of the population.

The different population sizes between races (there was no timeline photo).

My Group's Timeline:Mexico:

January 1811: Mexican rebellion lead by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla was defeated at Calderón. He was captured and executed.
1820: Liberals took power in Spain and formed a new government that promised reforms to stop Mexican revolutions. Mexican conservatives wanted independence so they could maintain their positions and beliefs.
Early 1821: Agustín de Iturbide, the leader of the Royalist forces, negotiated the plan of Iguala with Victor Guerrero. It made Mexico an independent and constitutional monarchy.  

August 24, 1821: spanish viceroy de o'donoju signed the treaty of Córdoba making Mexico officially an independent constitutional monarchy. 

1822: Iturbide was proclaimed the emperor of Mexico. 

1823: republican leaders Santa Anna and Guadalupe Bictoria turned Mexico into a republic and made Guadaluoe the first president. 

As a part of the assignment, we were asked to find 2 commonalities and 2 differences between all the revolutions. My group's commonalities were that they all wanted independence from another country (Portugal and Spain), and that they were all fighting against European countries (Portugal and Spain in Europe). Our 2 differences were that not all of them were because they wanted independence from another country (Portugal and Spain), and that not all of them were fighting against European countries (Portugal and Spain in Europe). Even though they were all completely different, race had the same amount to do with their successes or failures because more often than not the oppressed race was also the one with the largest population, and the one with all the power and rights had the smallest populations.

Race still has a huge say in the judgement of most modern day people, including authority figures. For example, officer Darren Wilson was not charged for the murder of Michael Brown, but there are people serving prison time for possession of marijuana. I think it is very important to consider the issue of race today because though it's 2014, half of our country is still living in the 1950's, and that just isn't right.