Portal:Latin America/Featured history/2006

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[edit] Weeks in 2006

Week 23

The struggle between church and state in Mexico broke out in armed conflict during the Cristero War (also known as the Cristiada) of 1926 to 1929. This was a popular uprising against the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917.

The struggle between church and state in Mexico broke out in armed conflict during the Cristero War (also known as the Cristiada) of 1926 to 1929. This was a popular uprising against the anti-clerical provisions of the Mexican Constitution of 1917.

After a period of peaceful resistance, a number of skirmishes took place in 1926. The formal rebellion began on January 1, 1927 with the rebels calling themselves Cristeros because they felt they were fighting for Christ himself. Just as the Cristeros began to hold their own against the federal forces, the rebellion was ended by diplomatic means, in large part due to the efforts of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow.
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Week 24

Located in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, Puerto Rico was key to the Spanish Empire since the early years of conquest and colonization of the New World. The smallest of the Greater Antilles, Puerto Rico was a major military post during many wars between Spain and other European powers for control of the region during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

In 1898, during the Spanish-American war, Puerto Rico was invaded and subsequently become a possession of the United States of America. The first part of the twentieth century was marked with the struggle to obtain greater democratic rights from the United States. The Foraker Act of 1900, which established a civil government, and the Jones Act of 1917, which granted Puerto Ricans U.S. citizenship, paved the way for the drafting of Puerto Rico's Constitution and the establishment of democratic elections in 1952.
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Week 25

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna commonly known as Che Guevara or el Che, was an Argentine-born physician, Marxist revolutionary, politician, and leader of Cuban and internationalist guerrillas. As a young man studying medicine, Guevara traveled "rough" throughout Latin America, bringing him into direct contact with the poverty in which many people lived. Through these experiences he became convinced that only revolution could remedy the region's economic inequality, leading him to study Marxism and become involved in Guatemala's social revolution under President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán.

Sometime later, Guevara became a member of Fidel Castro's paramilitary 26th of July Movement that seized power in Cuba in 1959. After serving in various important posts in the new government and writing a number of articles and books on the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare, Guevara left Cuba in 1965 with the intention of fomenting revolutions first in the Congo-Kinshasa (later named the Democratic Republic of the Congo) and then in Bolivia, where he was captured in a CIA-organized military operation.

After his death, Guevara became an icon of socialist revolutionary movements worldwide. An Alberto Korda photo of Guevara has received wide distribution and modification.
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Week 26

Sylvanus Griswold Morley (June 7, 1883–September 2, 1948) was an American archaeologist, epigrapher and Mayanist scholar who made significant contributions towards the study of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in the early 20th century. He is particularly noted for his extensive excavations of the Maya site of Chichen Itza. He also published several large compilations and treatises on Maya hieroglyphic writing, and wrote popular accounts on the Maya for a general audience. To his contemporaries he was one of the leading Mesoamerican archaeologists of his day; although more recent developments in the field have resulted in a re-evaluation of his theories and works, his publications (particularly on calendric inscriptions) are still cited. In his directorship of various projects sponsored by the Carnegie Institution he oversaw and encouraged a good many others who would go on to establish notable careers in their own right. Overall, his commitment and enthusiasm for Maya studies would generate the interest and win the necessary sponsorship and backing to finance projects which would ultimately reveal much about the Maya of former times.

His involvement in clandestine espionage activities at the behest of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence was another, surprising, aspect of his career, which came to light only well after his death.
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Week 27
Vulgar Latin, as in this political engraving at Pompeii, was the language of the ordinary people of the Roman Empire, distinct from the Classical Latin of literature.

Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris, "common speech") is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually assigned to about the ninth century. This is not a discussion of Latin profanity.

This spoken Latin differed from the literary language of classical Latin in its pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar. Some features of Vulgar Latin did not appear until the late Empire. Other features are likely to have been in place in spoken Latin, in at least its basilectal forms, much earlier. Most definitions of "vulgar Latin" mean that it is a spoken language, rather than a written language, because the evidence suggests that spoken Latin broke up into divergent dialects during this period. Because no one transcribed phonetically the daily speech of any Latin speakers during the period in question, students of Vulgar Latin must study it through indirect methods.
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Week 28
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frias

The military career of Hugo Chávez spans the seventeen years (1975–1992) that the current President of Venezuela spent in the Venezuelan army. Leader of what he refers to as the "Bolivarian Revolution", Chávez is known for his democratic socialist governance, his promotion of Latin American integration, and his radical critique of neoliberal globalization and United States foreign policy.

Born July 28, 1954 in rural Sabaneta, Chávez entered military service upon his graduation from the Venezuelan Academy of Military Sciences in 1975. Chávez thereafter held a variety of post, command, and staff positions. At the same time, he was increasingly drawn into leftist political movements, eventually becoming involved in electioneering and political conspiracy. Chávez led a violent 1992 civilian-military coup which sought to overthrow what he saw as a corrupt oligarchy. Although the coup ultimately failed—ending Chávez's military career—it also brought Chávez into the national spotlight and set the stage for his future rise to political power.
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Week 29

The military history of Puerto Rico dates back to the 16th century, when Spanish conquistadores battled against the native Tainos. The island was ruled by the Spanish Empire for four centuries, during which the Puerto Ricans defended themselves against invasions from the British, French, and Dutch. The island was invaded by the United States during the Spanish-American War, and Spain officially ceded it under the terms of the 1898 Treaty of Paris which ended the war. It is now a United States territory and Puerto Ricans, as citizens of the United States, have participated in every major conflict involving the United States from World War I onward.

Over 1,225 Puerto Ricans have died while serving for the United States. The names of those who perished in combat are inscribed in "El Monumento de la Recordacion" (Monument of Remembrance), which was unveiled on May 19, 1996 and is situated in front of the Capitol Building in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
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Week 30
Hurricane Nora at peak intensity on September 21, 1997

Hurricane Nora was the fourteenth named tropical cyclone and seventh hurricane of the 1997 Pacific hurricane season. The September storm formed off the Pacific coast of Mexico, and aided by waters warmed by El Niño, eventually peaked at Category 4 intensity on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale.

Nora intensified and weakened quickly before taking an unusual path, which lead it to make landfall twice as a hurricane in Baja California. After landfall, its remnants affected the Southwestern United States with tropical storm-force winds, torrential rain and flooding. Nora is blamed for two direct casualties in Mexico, as well as substantial beach erosion on the Mexican coast, flash flooding in Baja California, and record precipitation in Arizona. Nora persisted far inland, it was only the third known tropical cyclone to reach Arizona while tropical.
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Week 31
The reconstructed frame of Nate Saint's plane, on display at the headquarters of the Mission Aviation Fellowship.

Operation Auca was an attempt by five Evangelical Christian missionaries from the United States to make contact with the Huaorani people of the rainforest of Ecuador. The Huaorani, also known as the Aucas (the Quechua word for "savage"), were an isolated tribe known for their violence, both against their own people and outsiders who entered their territory. With the intention of being the first Protestants to evangelize the Huaorani, the missionaries began making regular flights over Huaorani settlements in September 1955, dropping gifts. After several months of exchanging gifts, on January 2, 1956, the missionaries established a camp at "Palm Beach", a sandbar along the Curaray River, a few miles from Huaorani settlements. Their efforts culminated on January 8, 1956, when all five—Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian—were attacked and speared by a group of Huaorani warriors. The news of their deaths was broadcast around the world, and Life magazine covered the event with a photo essay.
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Week 32
Hurricane Dennis on July 9, 2005 at 2315 UTC

Hurricane Dennis was an early-forming major hurricane in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season. Dennis was the fourth named storm, second hurricane, and first major hurricane of the season. In July, the hurricane set several records for early season hurricane activity, becoming both the earliest formation of a fourth tropical cyclone and the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever to form before August, according to available records.

Dennis hit Cuba twice as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, and made landfall on the Florida Panhandle in the United States as a Category 3 storm less than a year after Hurricane Ivan did so. Dennis caused at least 89 deaths (42 direct) in the U.S. and Caribbean and caused $2.23 billion (2005 US dollars) in damages to the United States, as well as an approximately equal amount of damage in the Caribbean, primarily on Cuba. (image courtesy of UWisc CIMSS.)
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