Latin American history is dramatic and panoramic, making easy access for film makers to capture the contradictions and confrontations of history since the Conquest. Latin American history is the story of the struggle of the common people to acquire and maintain the necessities of life. As defined by the Constitution of the United States these inalienable rights include life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech and religion. International human rights law includes freedom from oppression and access to physical necessities, food, shelter, water. The Latin American struggle has been for the land needed to create these necessities. As I write this curriculum, the people of Chiapas, Mexico, are fighting to regain lands they had held for hundreds of years before cattle ranches annexed them. In Brazil, Chico Mendes died fighting for the rain forests, not for world ecology, but for the rubber tappers whose livelihood was threatened by the destruction of the rain forests. The last tribes of the vast Amazon have at last come into contact with western civilization, and left us a moral dilemma. Should we intervene for the sake of their health and what we consider quality of life, we will surely destroy that culture. Should we leave them alone to live out another generation or two in the tradition of natural life they have lived for thousands of years? It is not an exaggeration that the future of Earth is in the rain forests.
In my school, rain forest ecology and Maya civilization are taught in Social Studies. My sixth, seventh and eighth grade Spanish students bring Familiarity with rain forest habitat and how one civilization adapted to it. I plan to extend this background into an understanding of post Columbian conflicts about the rain forests. This paper comes out of the seminar, “The Use and Abuse of History in Film and Video,” in which we reviewed films about history, with an eye to how much more complex history is than the point of view of any one film maker, or for that matter, book writer. For my curriculum I have selected films about Latin America which represent a variety of historical interpretations, and a variety of artistic successes. Each tells part of the story; each represents a point of view, an historical context, a real or imaginary event. By the end of the curriculum students will have acquired an understanding of Latin American rain forests in history and the impact on current policies.
The historical films I will use are:
Cabeza de Vaca, Aguirre: the Wrath of God, The Mission, One Man’s War, The Burning Season, La Muralla Verde
, and
The Emerald Forest
. The second group,
At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Mosquito Coast,
and
Green Mansions
are complete fiction, two from well known novels, but realistic in nature; that is, the people and events are invented, but the background is historically correct. My purpose in using fiction is to expose students to differences in the perspective of the film makers. These films were made by Spanish, North American, Peruvian, and British film makers between 1957 and 1997. Most are in English; some are subtitled. I will use them in themes, in groups of two to four films, to contrast perceptions and attitudes about issues of the rain forests.
My topics of focus include: Discovery and Conquest, Political Divisions, In the Name of God, The Fate of the Indigenous Peoples, The Haves and the Have Nots, The Burden of Eternal Vigilance.
Unit goals are, first, to create interdisciplinary or across curriculum lessons, to make connections between teaching Spanish language and culture, to teach ecology through understanding how rain forests relate to ozone depletion, to study prehistoric people and the history of the Americas, to distinguish geographical and political boundaries and the conflicts between these, and to promote the responsibility we share as stewards of the Earth.
The lessons presented in this unit are: I What is a hero? villain? II The Geography inclusive of American rain forests as described in selected films: Amazonia, from Peru to the Atlantic, Alto Paraná, the Orinoco, The Mosquito Coast and interior forests, and the Everglades. III Ecology, selected lessons on endangered species as the manatee of the Orinoco and the Quetzal of Mexico; the environmental cost of deforestation, especially the Brazilian rubber forests and the lands along the Mexico-Guatemala border. IV History, to include Spanish Exploration, Conquest, and the Division of the New World, and the 20th Century struggles for Justice.
