Analysis Of Braford E. Burns The Poverty Of Progress

Braford E. Burns began writing The Poverty of Progress as a historical essay arguing against the “modernization” of nineteenth century Latin America. Burns argues that modernization was preformed against the will of the majority and benefited a small group of Creole Elite, while causing an exponential drop in the quality of life for folk majority. Burns supports his research through a series of dichotomies. Within the first twenty years of the nineteenth century the majority of Latin America gained independence from Spain. Prior to the Latin American countries gaining independence, the Creole elites expressed great displeasure with the crown and readily equated themselves with the American colonists before gaining independence from Britain. With this ideology, many Creole’s became enfranchised with Anglo-European culture and enlightenment, convinced that this culture would solve their perceived problems. The Latin American Creole’s believed in both Charles Darwin and Spencer, to show that the fittest survive through evolution and that those concepts apply to the society they lived in. Spencer reinforced the belief that science, industry and progress were interlinked, and with the evolution of society their nations would bloom. Therefore, if an individual was failing in life, blame

The nineteenth century for Latin America became plagued with repeated violence due to acts of rebellion in attempts for the folk to regain autonomy over their own lives. After gaining independence from the Spanish crown the folk wanted to keep their culture and tribal lands, much as the Spanish had allowed them to. However, the Creole elites planned to force the folk into living to commodity-based existences. With the confiscation of indigenous land large quantities of the folk were forced to move into the cities in search of jobs, despite the Europeanization, folk culture prevailed in the