Curriculum Framework (2016)

Unit:  Nation-Building in the Contemporary World, pp. 360-365

• Students can engage in a comparative analysis of postcolonial developments in Latin America.
• Latin American conflicts have often reflected differences between indigenous people and mestizos, and well as between leftist and conservative ideologies, and socialist and capitalist economies.
• In the 1980s, several Central American states experienced protracted civil wars, but by the 1990s these conflicts had subsided, through the underlying issues remained unresolved.
• Many Latin American nations have often been forced to rely on the export of a few raw materials as the basis of their economies, which can also fluctuate in value drastically on the world market.
• As a result, nations end up deeply in debt to foreign banks or other financial institutions, which then require governments to undertake drastic cuts in social services as a condition for receiving loans.

Content Standard (1998)

10.10 Students analyze instances of nation-building in the contemporary world in at least two of the following regions or countries: the Middle East, Africa, Mexico and other parts of Latin America, and China.

1. Understand the challenges in the regions, including their geopolitical, cultural, military, and economic significance and the international relationships in which they are involved.
2. Describe the recent history of the regions, including political divisions and systems, key leaders, religious issues, natural features, resources, and population patterns.
3.  Discuss the important trends in the regions today and whether they appear to serve the cause of individual freedom and democracy.

Curriculum Framework (2016)

Unit: Contemporary American Society, pp. 426-432

• During President Reagan’s first term in office, Cold War policies toward Latin American and the Soviet Union intensified: conflicts in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama demonstrated Reagan’s willingness to send American support to anti-communists all over the Western Hemisphere.

Content Standard (1998)

11.9.5  Analyze the role of the Reagan administration and other factors in the victory of the West in the Cold War.

Curriculum Framework (2016)

Unit: Comparative Governments and the Challenges of Democracy, pp. 450-454

• Students can review major political and economic systems and how they influence economic policies, social welfare policies, and human rights practices: socialism, communism, capitalism
• Students examine nondemocratic and tyrannical forms of government: control of the media, lack of political and personal freedoms, corruption of public officials, lack of governmental transparency, and the lack of citizens’ access to changing the government
• Students can explore the importance of the rule of law, the need for civilian control of military and police, and the desirability of popular petitions, rallies, and other forms of participation
• Attention also should be given to historical and contemporary movements that overthrew tyrannical governments and/or movements toward democratic government in Guatemala and El Salvador.

Content Standards (1998)

12.9.1  Explain how the different philosophies and structures of feudalism, mercantilism, socialism, fascism, communism, monarchies, parliamentary systems, and constitutional liberal democracies influence economic policies, social welfare policies, and human rights practices.

12.9.5  Identify the forms of illegitimate power that twentieth-century African, Asian, and Latin American dictators used to gain and hold office and the conditions and interests that supported them.

12.9.6  Identify the ideologies, causes, stages, and outcomes of major Mexican, Central American, and South American revolutions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.