The Marginalized Historians Floating Feature: A special feature to highlight contributions from historians who identify as members of marginalized groups or minorities

I'm not really a marginalized person, so I don't know if it's appropriate for me to participate. I'm Latin American, living in a third world country, so I guess I would count as a POC in American parlance and I'm definitely less privileged than some people here. Yet I also am more privileged than many others, and it feels rather banal to claim to be marginalized from my gamer laptop while I lay on my warm bed. With that disclaimer, let's begin.

Racial politics in Latin America are much different from those of the United States. Here my group, the mestizos, are the overwhelming majority, and as a light skinned man with green eyes I have never really faced racial discrimination. I don't tend to think of myself in racial terms due to this - I certainly share some kinship with fellow Latin Americans but because we're a geographical group with a common history than because we're a common ethnic group (I disagree with that view btw). My national identity as Ecuadorian has always superseded all of my other identities, which largely conform with the mainstream: cis, straight, mestizo, middle-class.

It's a rather privileged position to not have to think about identity; after all, no one is going to denounce me for being straight or cis, I don't suffer from bitter poverty or the harmful stereotypes that still exist here. The end result is that my identity or my position as a person of color has never had anything to do with my interest in history. Indeed, my greatest interest is the American Civil War, a conflict that does not involve Latin Americans. Gran Colombia does involve Latin America obviously, but my main interest is how my country was born, so again nationalism takes the front here rather than an interest for Latin American history. For example, I know next to nothing about Mexico aside from superficial knowledge of their independence for example, and they are fellow Latinos.

My interest in history comes from seeing it as some kind of an epic. I always disagreed with the notion that history is boring. For me it was awesome! I don't remember what interested me so much about the Civil War. Perhaps some discussions in a forum? Or wikipedia articles? In any case, I decided that I wanted to read a book to understand the war better. I needed to improve my English too, and that would be good practice. I got my hands on a pdf of McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom and I simply loved that book. Learning so much of the causes and the development of the war instead of the oversimplifications of the internet was great. I remember being in class reading this book in my phone, ironically not paying attention to English class (they're very bad anyway). That's where my enormous interest in Civil War history began and now I've read several books and have many others in my to read list.

Full disclosure, and perhaps this is the only way that being "marginalized" has affected my love for history: I have had to rely on pdfs and scans. The only way of obtaining these books in my country would be to order them from the United States. Even if I found someone who sends books to Ecuador, tariffs and the prices of the books are simply unaffordable on a third-world salary. I simply can't justify spending 60 dollars when the monthly wage is 400. There are more important things to spend on than a simple hobby, like food. I simply can't match the accessibility and disposable income of first worlders, and this naturally impacts just how far I can push my love for history. This all started because the Online University of the Left happens to have some free pdfs, and when I cite journal articles it's because jstor is kind enough to allow me free article viewings.

I am not advocating for digital piracy. Whenever possible, I still try to buy digital editions or audiobooks. I guess I'm just trying to say to everyone that things like economic privilege work in many ways, even unexpected ones. Knowledge is universal; access to knowledge is not. It's a sad truth that because I was born in the third world my capacity to learn will always be impaired when compared with the people of the first world who enjoy greater access to books, better universities and big public libraries. My region is also stigmatized when it comes to history dedicated to it, and even then there are many, many books about Ecuador, Gran Colombia, Simon Bolivar, etc. I simply can't imagine what it's like for no one to care for your identity or think you and your people are not worthy of study.