Historical Perspectives And Collective Trauma 21

Gentle Reader, I am dizzy and bleary-eyed from reading these last twenty of my blogposts today.  Don't ever think that I have no empathy for what you have to put yourselves through when reading my dear little scrawl.  I had to read everything in this current series in order to think up a half-assed summary to offer you.  Here goes:

First, a lovely and succinct definition for Collective Trauma that I just pulled from Uncle Google:

Collective trauma is trauma that happens to large groups of individuals and can be transmitted transgenerationally and across communities. War, genocide, slavery, terrorism, and natural disasters can cause collective trauma, which can be further defined as historical, ancestral, or cultural.

What does trauma look like?  Here are two more definitions, thanks to Uncle Google:

a deeply distressing or disturbing experience

injury, damage, wound

The formative conditions that Juan and Ilhuitl respectively had to live under could well be called traumatizing.  However, trauma is as trauma does.  Being horrible, frightening and life-threatening conditions does not necessarily mean the same thing as trauma, which is the ongoing impact, or fallout on the individual's or collective's life experience following the trauma-inducing conditions.

At first blush, one might assume that Juan and his compatriot Spaniards escaped rather nicely from the ravages of trauma that might have disabled them in so many ways, given the horrible and violent history of Spain and the daily wretched conditions they were nurtured and raised on.

He was ambitious, courageous and energetic.  He was no slouch, an absolute go-getter, as my parents' generation used to call them. 

On the other hand, he had absolutely no anger-management skills, was chronically inflexible and simply refused to consider change.  Signs of trauma.

Ilhuitl?  Raised on bloodshed and war, even as a high-caste priest in training, he had to accept the many limitations and restrictions of his social status.  He seemed disarmingly gentle and open.  Also, very passive and susceptible to psychological paralysis.  Signs of trauma.

The toxic brew of these two particular manifestations of trauma can only be imagined in their fallout through their particular expressions in succeeding generations.  Mexico has lost through violent death and murder more than one hundred thousand people in the last ten years of the drug war that is not about to go away and seems only to be growing.  My experience of Mexicans is generally very positive, despite their famous passive-aggression: gentle, kind, courteous, warm and hospitable people.  Like a ten peso coin with the face of Juan the Spaniard on one side and Ilhuitl on the other.

This can be said about other Latin American countries and cultures.  All of them different, but in more cases or not, bristling with the effects of collective trauma.  In Central America we have Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras all in the grip of narco-gangs and warfare following the ravages of decades of civil war.  Nicaragua remains very poor.  Panama is on the up and up, but exists basically as an economic colony of the US.  Likewise Costa Rica with a couple of very important exceptions: being the only country in Latin America, and I believe in the world, that has abolished its military (since 1948) and has become the most peaceful and one of the most prosperous and socially progressive countries in Latin America. 

Cuba remains paralysed as a post-Stalinist state that still seems to be going nowhere.  The Domincan Republic is poor with tremendous economic inequality and a bustling tourism industry.  Puerto Rico is an American satellite and has to do everything Uncle Sam says. 

In South America, Uruguay seems to be the most progressive, prosperous and socially equal country.  Chile is doing rather well, despite the ravages of the Pinochet years.  The other countries are not doing so well, particularly Venezuela.

I will be doing much further and more detailed studies over the coming years of these and other countries in Latin America.

I will also, in a future blogpost, explain the Millionth Council.  Maybe, Gentle Reader.  If you're good.