The second writing assignment is due at the beginning of lecture, Monday, May 7, 2001.

Your paper should be double-spaced, printed on standard paper with 1" margins, using a reasonably-sized font. Please number the pages. The late policy, as stated in the syllabus, will be in effect.

Rough drafts are actively encouraged. Do not hesitate to call upon Professor Williams or Yamile for assistance.

In a five-to-seven page, well-argued essay, choose ONE of the following two options:

Option #1: The "Revolution of 1930"

In late 1930, a Brazilian politician named Getúlio Vargas came to power in a military coup that quickly came to be known as the "Revolution of 1930." The "revolutionary" program implemented by Vargas altered fundamentally key dimensions of state powers, political participation, the production and distribution of wealth, and the nature citizenship. Nevertheless, when Vargas committed suicide twenty-five years later, he left a society that exhibited many of the some characteristics that the Revolution of 1930 had supposedly overthrown.

Drawing upon the Robert Levine's Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era, locate the Revolution of 1930 within post-1930 Latin American history.

Your paper should address four main themes:

1. How did Vargas and his allies lay claim to a "revolutionary" change in Brazilian society in 1930?
2. What were the key aspects of the so-called "revolutionary" programs that accompanied Vargas' long and complicated political career?
3. What factors limited revolutionary change during the Vargas era?
4. How does the "Revolution of 1930" compare against other types of reformist and revolutionary projects in modern Latin America?

HINT:

Begin your essay with your working definition of "revolution." That is, by what standard(s) do you measure revolutionary movements and revolutionary change. From there, you should critically assess the ways in which Vargas and his allies pursued, distorted, and/or betrayed a "revolutionary" project in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s.

Your paper should be able to locate the Vargas era within a broader historical context of political rupture, economic reform, social change, and cultural mobilization in Latin American society. An essay that merely summarizes the basic facts of the coup of 1930, the Vargas regime, or Vargas's political career will not fully answer the question.

Option #2: The Historic Program of the FSLN

In the early 1960s, Carlos Fonseca, a Nicaraguan political activist with personal experience in the USSR and post-revolutionary Cuba, helped organize a political movement known as the Frente Sandinista de la Liberación Nacional [Sandinista National Liberation Front; Spanish acronym: FSLN]. By 1969, the Fonseca and the FSLN had established a "Historic Program" to guide the armed struggle against President-Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle. After the overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, the Historic Program became a blueprint for the revolutionary state built by the Sandinistas.

Read carefully through the Historic Program, excerpted in Chasteen and Tulchin Problems in Modern Latin American History, pp. 261-267, and then write a critical analysis of the Program. Your paper should address the following themes:

1. What type of political system is outlined in the Historic Program?
2. How does the Program envision the production and distribution of wealth?
3. Who are the citizens of this imagined revolutionary state?
4. What makes the Historic Program a revolutionary document? [i.e. How/why the Historic Program seek change that is much more extreme than liberal reformers and populists?]

HINT:

It is important that you begin the essay with a clear and convincing thesis about the Historic Program as a revolutionary document. This opening paragraph should not be limited to a descriptive summary of the program. Instead, you should present a thesis that lays out an overarching interpretation of the Program.

You are free to structure your essay around a sequential discussion of these four themes. However, the strongest essays will demonstrate the connections to be made between the various themes. Again, a strong thesis will help you point out the connections. You may want to quote selectively from the Historic Program to illustrate a point. However, long quotations and mere summary, without analysis, should be avoided.