Lázaro Cárdenas del Rio Mexico’s Mr. Clean

Là ¡zaro Cà ¡rdenas del Rio (1895-1970) was President of Mexico from 1934 to 1940. Considered one of the most honest and hardworking Presidents in the history of Latin America, he provided strong, clean leadership at a time when his country most needed it. Today he is revered among Mexicans for his zeal in eliminating corruption, and many cities, streets and schools bear his name. He initiated a family dynasty in Mexico, and his son and grandson have both gone into politics. Early Years Là ¡zaro Cà ¡rdenas was born into a humble family in Michoacà ¡n province. Hardworking and responsible from an early age, he became the breadwinner for his large family at the age of 16 when his father passed away. He never made it past sixth grade in school, but he was a tireless worker and educated himself later in life. Like many young men, he became swept up in the passion and chaos of the Mexican Revolution. Crdenas in the Revolution After Porfirio Dà ­az left Mexico in 1911, the government broke down and several rival factions began fighting for control. Young Là ¡zaro joined the group supporting General Guillermo Garcà ­a Aragà ³n in 1913. Garcà ­a and his men were quickly defeated, however, and Cà ¡rdenas joined the staff of General Plutarco Elà ­as Calles, who was a supporter of Alvaro Obregà ³n. This time, his luck was much better: he had joined the eventual winning team. Cà ¡rdenas had a distinguished military career in the Revolution, rising quickly to reach the rank of General by the age of 25. Early Political Career When the dust from the Revolution began to settle by 1920, Obregà ³n was President, Calles was second-in-line, and Cà ¡rdenas was a rising star. Calles succeeded Obregà ³n as President in 1924. Meanwhile, Cà ¡rdenas was serving in a variety of important government roles. He held the posts of Governor of Michoacà ¡n (1928), Minister of the Interior (1930-32), and Minister of War (1932-1934). On more than one occasion, foreign oil companies sought to bribe him, but he always refused, earning a reputation for great honesty that would serve him well as president. Mr. Clean Cleans House Calles had left office in 1928, but still ruled through a series of puppet presidents. Pressure was mounting on him to clean up his administration, however, and he nominated the squeaky clean Cardenas in 1934. Cà ¡rdenas, with his sterling Revolutionary credentials and honest reputation, won easily. Once in office, he quickly turned on Calles and the corrupt remnants of his regime: Calles and some 20 of his most crooked henchmen were deported in 1936. The Cà ¡rdenas administration soon became known for hard work and honesty, and the wounds of the Mexican revolution finally began to heal. After the Revolution The Mexican Revolution had succeeded in overthrowing a corrupt class that had marginalized workers and rural peasants for centuries. It was not organized, however, and by the time Cà ¡rdenas joined it had deteriorated into several of warlords, each with different definitions of social justice, fighting for power. Cardenas’ faction won out, but like the others it was long on ideology and short on specifics. As President, Cà ¡rdenas changed all that, implementing strong yet controlled labor unions, land reform and protection for indigenous populations. He also implemented mandatory secular public education. Nationalization of Oil Reserves Mexico held vast reserves of valuable oil, and several foreign companies had been there for some time, mining it, processing it, selling it and giving the Mexican government a small portion of the profits. In March of 1938, Cà ¡rdenas made the bold move of nationalizing all of Mexico’s oil and appropriating all of the equipment and machinery belonging to the foreign companies. Although this move was very popular with the Mexican people, it had serious economic repercussions, as the US and Britain (whose companies had suffered most) boycotted Mexican oil. Cà ¡rdenas also nationalized the rail system while in office. Personal Life Cà ¡rdenas lived a comfortable but austere life in relation to other Mexican presidents. One of his first moves while in office was to cut his own salary in half. After leaving office, he lived in a simple house near Lake Pà ¡tzcuaro. He donated some land near his home to establish a hospital. Interesting Facts The Cà ¡rdenas administration welcomed leftist refugees from conflicts around the world. Leon Trotsky, one of the architects of the Russian Revolution, found asylum in Mexico, and many Spanish Republicans fled there after their loss to fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Before Cà ¡rdenas, Mexican presidents lived in the opulent Chapultepec Castle, which had been built by a wealthy Spanish Viceroy at the end of the eighteenth century. The humble Cà ¡rdenas refused to live there, preferring more Spartan and efficient accommodations. He made the castle into a museum, and it has been one ever since. After the Presidency and Legacy His risky move of nationalizing oil facilities paid off for Mexico not long after Cà ¡rdenas left office. British and American oil companies, stung by the nationalization and appropriation of their facilities, organized a boycott of Mexican oil, but were forced to abandon it during World War Two, when Allied demand for oil was high. Cà ¡rdenas remained in public service after his presidential term, although unlike some of his predecessors he did not try hard to influence his successors. He served as Minister of War for a few years after leaving office before retiring to his modest home and working on irrigation and education projects. Later in life, he collaborated with the Adolfo Là ³pez Mateos administration (1958-1964). During his later years, he drew some criticism for his support of Fidel Castro. Of all of the Presidents of Mexico, Cà ¡rdenas is a rarity in that he enjoys almost universal admiration among historians. He is often compared to American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and not only because they served at roughly the same time, but because they both were stabilizing influences at a time when their country needed strength and constancy. His sterling reputation launched a political dynasty: his son, Cuauhtà ©moc Cà ¡rdenas Solà ³rzano, is a former mayor of Mexico City who has run for President on three different occasions. Là ¡zaros grandson Là ¡zaro Cà ¡rdenas Batel is also a prominent Mexican politician.

17th Century 16th Century Poetry - 947 Words

How is the poetry of the 17th century different from the poetry of the 16th century? The poetry of the 16th century and the poetry of the 17th century were mainly lyrical. However, this similarity of expressing personal thoughts and feelings did not prevent major differences between both periods whether in themes or in structure. Poetry in Elizabethan time was based on courtly love conventions which included conceits and complements. Themes such as the unattainability of the lady, sleeplessness, constancy in love, cruelty of the beloved, renunciation of love, fine passion of the lover versus icy emotions of the beloved, praise of the beloved’s beauty and eternalizing her as being subject of the poem; these all are†¦show more content†¦The possessions and even one’s life of the royal cause. Carpe Diem is another major theme never found in courtly love poetry, but rather in cavalier. Cavalier poets urge young lovers to â€Å"seize the day†, enjoy the present moment because youth and beauty will fade soon and forever. The theme of brevity of life also serves the carpe diem, since the best in life ends â€Å"Corinna’s Going a Maying† insists on enjoying youth and love and not to be shy, because all pleasures of life come to an end when death comes. [Cavalier poets did not take life seriously, because this life is too short, so one should enjoy it. As to structure, the form of the 16th century’s poems is different from early 17th century’s poems. Elizabethan’s poems were mainly sonnets which present a situation (in the octave or in the first three quatrains) to find a solution (in the sestet or in the couplet) whereas cavalier poets used only short lyrics composed of stanzas which are simple in verse and style to express their feelings and thoughts. 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Is Children’s Development a Universal Staged Process or a Social and Cultural Process Free Essays

There are three main approaches to child development, the scientific, the social constructionist and the applied approach. Each of these approaches look at children’s development from a different stand point. I will go on to explore each approach in turn and how they can help us answer the above question. We will write a custom essay sample on Is Children’s Development a Universal Staged Process or a Social and Cultural Process? or any similar topic only for you Order Now The scientific approach to child development seeks to explain the facts about child development. It does this by devising theories which are then tested through observations and experiments. A classic example of this is Jean Piaget (1896-1890) who was one of the most influential theorists in child development. Piaget built up a theory about how children’s thinking developed; this is usually referred to as his theory on Cognitive development. He proposed that children do not gradually increase their thinking capacity but that they go through a series of stages or transformations in their thinking. Piaget (1932) proposed that there are 4 main stages in a children’s development; sensor-motor (approximately 0-2yrs), pre-operational (approximately 2-6 yrs), concrete operational (approximately 6-12 yrs) and formal operational (12 yrs and over). His approach can be seen today in how the curriculum is sequenced in schools and in the rise of children’s centres across the UK. Piaget used many similar experiments to support his theory. Examples are, children were asked to compare balls of plasticine after one had been rolled into a sausage; another was for children to compare rows of counters where one row had been stretched into a longer line. In each case the younger children appeared to reason that the amount of counters or plasticine had also changed. (Light and Oates, 1990, PP. 101-106). He was trying to show that children aren’t less cognitively developed than adults but they actually think differently. In many of Piaget’s experiments he tried to show how at what stage do children see things from another’s point of view. One very famous experiment was a construction of a model of 3 mountains. The largest gray and snow capped, the middle sized brown with a red cross on it and the smallest was green with a house on top. Children were then asked to sit on one side of the model with a doll at the opposite side. They were asked to arrange three pieces of cardboard shaped like the mountains. They they were asked to chose the doll’s view from 10 pictures and finally what the doll would see from other view points. Children younger than about 7 were unable to see things from another view point. Piaget’s claims were bold and his theories and experiments have been criticized by developmental theorists. Developmental theorists now recognise that a child’s development is far more complex than the 4 stages Piaget supported. Lawrence Kohlberg (1927-1987) used Piaget’s stage of development as a starting point to suppose a theory about children’s moral development. He used moral dilemmas to study how children develop the capacity to make moral judgments. Kholberg (Kholberg 1967) proposed that there are 6 stages or levels to a child’s moral development, these are grouped into 3 levels with 2 stages in each; preconventional, conventional and principled. It is extremely rare to progress back in stages and each stage must be completed to move onto the next as each stage is more complex than the last. In Kholberg’s experiments children were given moral dilemmas about right and wrong to discover at what stage a child reaches different levels of cognitive capacity. Kholberg and his team started testing 75 boys in the US and went back and tested them at intervals as they grew into adulthood. However, this was not a cross section of US children as no girls were tested. The data from these scientific studies can be used to assess when a child knows right from wrong. These and similar techniques are used today to carry out assessments for courts deciding whether a child can be held criminally responsible. The social constructionist view of child development looks at the ways that childhood is experienced in different situations and circumstances. Different cultures, religions and social economic conditions have different expectations and beliefs around childhood. These have also been different throughout history. For example in Victorian Britain, children were expected to work in the home, field, streets or in factories. However in modern Britain we expect our children to spend much of their childhood learning at school. Another example is, Maya’s (U212 Video 1, band 1) experiences of childhood in the poor area Chittagong being different to the twins Yasir and Yamin’s experiences in middle class Chittagong. Each have different expectations of their roles within society according to their social boundaries, gender, family and beliefs. Central to the social constructionist approach is the concept of competing discourses of childhood. A discourse is a particular way of thinking or a particular view point that is influenced by our gender, language, history, beliefs, experiences and social boundaries. There are numerous discourses but a romantic discourse sees children as inherently good; a child would only do terrible things if damaged in some way. Contrary to this is the puritanical discourse which sees the child as inherently evil, doing evil things because they are wicked and need punishing. Using the social constructionist view allows us to recognise that a child who is a killer can be seen through these two very different discourses either needing therapy or needing punishment. Social constructionists are not about applying facts and time frames to child development, neither is it just about there being different ‘realities’ created by the way people think and make sense of children. It goes far deeper by exploring what these different ‘realities mean in terms of our moral consequences, what we expect, what we believe our outcomes can be and more importantly what our outcomes can’t be, what is hidden from our view and what we are prevented from doing by our constructed society. Rex Stainton Rogers (1992) says of a socially constructed world: ‘But what about childhood?†¦ For example. The children of Longwitten have come to understand that they ‘have to go to school’, that the human made ‘thing’ down the road is a school, that certain activities belong in he classroom, and others in the playground, and so on. The social world works because we share common understandings. ’ Stanton Rogers says (1992) that it is taken for granted that children will go to school and that this appears normal and the right thing to do in our socially constructed world, and that sometimes we fail to question or imagine anything els e outside of this. The third approach is the applied approach. This focuses on practical issues of childhood such as how should we parent out children, what support and services might we need in order to protect them. The applied approach relies on both the scientic and social constructionist approaches when applying theory and research to social policy, the law and professional practise. I have already looked at the romantic and puritan discourses. The romantic discourse believes that children are naturally good, therefore children who commit crime should be rehabilitated which Stuart Asquith (1996) describes as the Welfare model and the puritan discourse the ‘Justice’ model. The welfare model looks at children who do wrong as doing so because they have been mistreated / deprived or having been disadvantaged in some way. These children need nurturing and need our care to overcome these disadvantages. The Justice model looks as children as being responsible when they reach an age where they can be held partially accountable for their crimes. These children need to be treated as criminals and punished accordingly. Asquith’s applied approach draws on both the scientific aspects of children’s moral development and the social constructionist view on how culture and society affect us as humans.. In looking at all three approaches it is clear that they are all complex and interplay greatly with each other. The scientific approach concentrates on identifying universal stages of children’s development. These are a series of stages which all children pass through from immaturity to maturity. The danger is that these can result in a picture of a universal child which is mainly based on a western culture. There is scientific research to determine when a child can be morally responsible for a crime and scientific research has produced lots of data on what reformatory regimes appear to work for young offenders. But we must remember that the child is not a passive participant in this research. The outcomes will depend on both the researchers and child’s social constructions of their worlds. In contrast the social constructionists’ view is that immaturity and maturity are complex constructs that we have made for ourselves depending on a whole range of outside influences, these will be different for each one of us. Children do not develop autonomously from culture and society and take many different routes to maturity depending on many things including gender, culture, religion, and their social and economic circumstances in which they find themselves. How to cite Is Children’s Development a Universal Staged Process or a Social and Cultural Process?, Essays