Ethnic Conflict Around the World...

On every inhabited continent, there has been a situation of ethic conflict that has resulted in violence. In the Americas is was the indigenous people, in Australia it was the oppression of the aborigines, in Asia it has been conflict between people of different countries, in Europe religious conflict led to centuries of bloodshed and torture, and Africa's history to those outside of it appears to simply be a congealed mass of war and murder. What are its causes?

There are many explanations for the prevalence of violence between ethnic and religious groups. In "A World on the Sick" by Amy Chua the main argument is that capitalism and the push of democracy on unstable countries is a driving force behind ethnic conflict. This could make sense in certain contexts, as the implementation of these two western institutions does not work out in a country that is already divided, especially since the variants of these western models are not being tailored to the needs of the specific nations. However, I personally think that this argument neglects many considerations that need to be made in order to understand the roots of ethnic conflict. In many nations that have gone through periods of ethnic violence, capitalism has not been either present or important. Somalia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and many other countries have broken out into ethnic violence without the influence of impotent democracy/capitalism. The historical conflicts between ethnic groups must be factored into the reasoning behind violence- many groups have been opposed to each other long before the advent of capitalism. Within the Muslim faith, Shiites and Sunnis have been at arms against each other for centuries, and capitalism has only served to divert some of their efforts against the westernized nations. However, capitalism cannot be blamed as the only reason that some Muslims dislike the US.

Claude Lalumiere's "The Not-So-Comic Question of Ethnic Nationalism" addresses the issue of ethnic cleansing in terms of how it happens, rather than why, as the latter is a much more difficult question to answer and must be considered in each individual case. As he puts it, "when we let hate-mongers tell us that it's okay to limit people's rights because of their ethnic identity, we let it happen." This is a point of view that makes a lot of sense to me- through the inaction of people, the hatred of the few is allowed to fester and spread amongst the general population, and the increasing passion of the hard line group can be influential amongst the dispassionate populace.

Safe Area Gorazde takes a stance similar to that of Lalumiere's, showing that before ethnic violence truly broke out, the Muslims and Serbs lived in relative peace together, but after the strong beliefs of the few Muslim-hating groups were allowed to spread, the cohesive community broke apart as people were not initially taking a strong stand against the extremist groups.

Spanish Dialects and Culture Clash In the US

While different dialects have indeed developed in the various spanish speaking regions of the world, lately I have been reading about the cultural implications of these dialects, the slang, and their importance in terms of the cultural identity of a group.

As the Beijing Review put it, "language reflects the progress of human history", and can often be a symbol for a nation and for an ethnic group. Spanish has the very important role of uniting all spanish speaking people under the group Hispanic, but it also plays a key role in distinguishing the Latinos of one nation from another.

New York City has one of the highest Latino populations of any city in the United States- for decades there has been a significant Hispanic presence and influence in certain areas of the city. However, this influence has been distinctly Caribbean, as Puerto Ricans and Dominicans have been the majority groups of Hispanics in New York for decades. Puerto Ricans especially have carved the identity of the New York Hispanic, as they have been present for the longest and are the largest Hispanic minority. However, when it comes to language, the Puerto Rican influence is not always welcome. Many Hispanics who have relocated to New York from other countries or cities say that they "not only had to learn English, they had to relearn Spanish", simply because the Puerto Rican dialect dominated to the point that it became the universally accepted Spanish dialect in the city. At times this served to infuriate those people of other nationalities, who wanted to preserve their national linguistic traditions. The incorporation of words such as "guagua" and "habichuelas", as well as the loose Caribbean accent that tends towards dropping extra letters, has made people of smaller groups feel uncomfortable, especially when their children "speak Puerto Rican", rather than their own dialects.

The linguistic differences between nations are evident in many things, but one of the greatest is in the literature that has emerged from Latin American countries. The great pieces of Spanish literature document the radical changes that have taken place in languages throughout the Spanish speaking world, due to time, distance, and regional impacts (these include mixing with other languages, such as native Mayan, or with Arabic in Spain itself). The Spanish of Cervantes most certainly is not the language of Sor Juana Inez, and neither of these matches up with the contrasting Spanish dialects in Las Ataduras or Cien Anos de Soledad. Alteration of verb conjugation, the incorporation of slang (which I had a first hand experience with the other day. In a short story we were reading, the word for bug, which in all Spanish speaking countries except Puerto Rico is Bicho, came up. While my classmates immediately knew what this word indicated in the text, all I saw was a swear word that my father had told me to never use), and different word order makes it possible to read a story and tell where and when the author came from.