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Posts Tagged ‘Latin America Stamps’

Latin America (Spanish: América Latina or Latinoamérica; Portuguese: América Latina; French: Amérique latine) is the region of the Americas where Romance languages, those derived from Latin, and in particular Spanish and Portuguese, are primarily spoken

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Miniature Messages: The Semiotics and Politics of Latin American Postage Stamps Reviews "GREETINGS & SALUTATIONS!" Those postage stamps with those wonderful political messages tell a story in of themselves! Its a shame our living leaders do not get featured on postage while they are serving in office. Think of the stamps they could have created under Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt or under John F. Kennedy? Exciting! Respectfully yours, Sarge Booker of Tujunga, California This book makes the case for the legitimate study of a medium that receives little academic attention - postage stamps. Child explores these precious objects on several levels. At the most abstract, he looks at these documents through the analytic tool of semiotics - the study of signs and the messages they contain. He then offers a broad philatelic and political history of Latin American stamps, and eventually narrows down to detailed essays on the stamps from the Southern Cone, his region of expertise - Argentina, the Falklands/Malvinas, and territoriality on Antarctica. Childs' expertise in both philately and Latin American history make this book both informative and provocative. Child takes on a geographic region and a call for legitimation that is a significant contribution to this scholarship. Child makes a strong case for greater academic study of these documents by calling on semiotics. Similar consideration has been asked for political posters, their document cousins, and Child's arguments (as well as his academic practice) are a welcome contribution to the broadening of scholarly genre. Child educates the non-philatelist about some of the complex and obscure dynamics in this genre. One major classification of stamps is between "definitive" stamps (the basic, generic, garden-variety stamps for basic postage) and "commemorative" stamps, those issued for a short period of time about topical or historical issues. These are invariably pretty and unusual, and thus attract sales by collectors. The significance of this cannot be underestimated, since stamps sold to the philatelic community will never be used for actual postage and thus constitute a significant income stream for the postal agency. However, Child never gives us a quantitative perspective on this commercial aspect of the stamp economy, and so it is hard to understand it's true impact. Child does explore the tension between the stamp collecting world and the postal agencies regarding the issue of such eye candy; often it's transparently clear that some stamps are generated solely to appeal to the collector market, which is frowned upon by serious philatelists. Although this book is relatively balanced in its treatment of the enormous political range reflected in the stamps, Child singles out postrevolutionary Cuba for critical treatment. These jabs are a bit puzzling, since he offers no examples or data to support them. For example, undermining his own argument about the collector's market, he points out that the U.S. government has made it illegal for citizens to purchase these stamps since 1963 (the only other Latin American country thus embargoed being post-Sandinista Nicaragua). Despite this small blind spot, Child's book is a significant contribution to the argument that academia should expand subject legitimacy to a broader range of materials. It also offers great stories about the complex world of Latin American politics and the role of government propaganda. [...] Average Rating:

In Miniature Messages, Jack Child analyzes Latin American postage stamps, revealing the messages about history, culture, and politics encoded in their design and disseminated throughout the world. While postage stamps are a sanctioned product of official government agencies, Child argues that they accumulate popular cultural value and take on new meanings as they circulate in the public sphere...

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History

The Americas are thought to have been first inhabited by people crossing the Bering Land Bridge, now the Bering strait, from northeast Asia into Alaska more than 10,000 years ago. Over the course of millennia, people spread to all parts of the continents. By the first millennium AD/CE, South America’s vast rainforests, mountains, plains and coasts were the home of tens of millions of people. The earliest settlements in the Americas are of the Las Vegas Culture[citation needed] from about 8000 BC and 4600 BC, a sedentary group from the coast of Ecuador, the forefathers of the more known Valdivia culture, of the same are. Some groups formed more permanent settlements such as the Chibchas (or "Muiscas" or "Muyscas") and the Tairona groups. The Chibchas of Colombia, the Quechuas of Peru, and the Aymaras of Bolivia were the three Indian groups that settled most permanently.

The region was home to many indigenous peoples and advanced civilizations, including the Aztecs, Toltecs, Caribs, Tupi, Maya, and Inca. The golden age of the Maya began about 250, with the last two great civilizations, the Aztecs and Incas, emerging into prominence later on in the early fourteenth century and mid-fifteenth centuries, respectively.

With the arrival of the Europeans following Christopher Columbus's voyages, the indigenous elites, such as the Incans and Aztecs, lost power to the Europeans. Hernán Cortés destroyed the Aztec elite's power with the help of local groups who disliked the Aztec elite, and Francisco Pizarro eliminated the Incan rule in Western South America. European powers, most notably Spain and Portugal, colonized the region, which along with the rest of the uncolonized world was divided into areas of Spanish and Portuguese control by the Line of Demarcation in 1493, which gave Spain all areas to the west, and Portugal all areas to the east (the Portuguese lands in South America subsequently becoming Brazil). By the end of the sixteenth century, Europeans occupied large areas of North, Central and South America, extending all the way into the present southern United States. European culture and government was imposed, with the Roman Catholic Church becoming a major economic and political power, as well as the official religion of the region.

Diseases brought by the Europeans, such as smallpox and measles, wiped out a large proportion of the indigenous population, with epidemics of diseases reducing them sharply from their prior populations. Historians cannot determine the number of natives who died due to European diseases, but some put the figures as high as 85% and as low as 20%. Due to the lack of written records, specific numbers are hard to verify. Many of the survivors were forced to work in European plantations and mines. Intermarriage between the indigenous peoples and the European colonists was very common, and, by the end of the colonial period, people of mixed ancestry (mestizos) formed majorities in several colonies.

By the end of the eighteenth century, Spanish and Portuguese power waned as other European powers took their place, notably Britain and France. Resentment grew over the restrictions imposed by the Spanish government, as well as the dominance of native Spaniards (Iberian-born peninsulares) over the major institutions and the majority population, including the colonial-born Spaniards (criollos, Creoles). Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808 marked the turning point, compelling Creole elites to form juntas that advocated independence. Also, the newly independent Haiti, the second oldest nation in the New World after the United States and the oldest independent nation in Latin America, further fueled the independence movement by inspiring the leaders of the movement, such as Simón Bolívar and José de San Martin, and by providing them with considerable munitions and troops.

Fighting soon broke out between the Juntas and the Spanish colonial authorities, with initial Creole victories, including Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla in Mexico and Francisco de Miranda in Venezuela, crushed by the Spanish troops. Under the leadership of Simón Bolívar, José de San Martin and other Libertadores in South America, the independence movement regained strength, and by 1825, all Spanish Latin America, except for Puerto Rico and Cuba, gained independence from Spain. Brazil achieved independence with a constitutional monarchy established in 1822. During the same year in Mexico, a military officer, Agustín de Iturbide, led conservatives who created a constitutional monarchy, with Iturbide as emperor (followed by a republic, 1823).