Henry Wiencek, Author at Not Even Past

The War, The Weapon and the Crisis: The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973

By Johana Mata

In October of 1973, members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries—or OPEC—placed an oil embargo against the United States and many of its NATO allies. This dramatic move was retaliation against the West for their military support of Israel in the ongoing Yom Kippur War. The embargo caused the price of crude oil to promptly skyrocket in the United States, creating an economic and political crisis.

For Texas History Day, Johana Mata delved into the history behind OPEC’s provocative act. She argues that the embargo represented a serious turning point for the global economy:

Israeli tanks cross the Suez Canal’s western border into Egypt, 1973 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

“The embargo and its consequences sent shock radiating through the social fabric of the industrial nations. The fear and uncertainty caused by the oil cutbacks had both oil companies and consumers frantically seeking additional supplies not only for current use but as a safeguard for future shortages. Buyers were scrambling desperately to obtain any oil they could find. ‘We weren’t bidding just for oil, we were bidding for our life,’ said an independent refiner who did not have a secure supply. The effects of the embargo on the psyches of the Western Europeans and the Japanese were dramatic. The disruption instantaneously transported them back to the bitter postwar years of deprivation and shortages. In West Germany, for example, the Ministry of Economics took on the task of allocating supply to desperately worried industries. In japan, the embargo came as an even more devastating shock. The confidence built by strong economic growth was suddenly shattered and ignited a series of commodity panics.”

An American gas station experiencing the embargo’s impact (Image courtesy of Vintage Everyday)

“In the United States, the shortfall of oil struck at fundamental beliefs in the endless abundance of resources, convictions rooted so deeply in the American character and experience that a large part of the public did not even know until October of 1973 that the United States imported any oil at all. In a matter of months, however, the public found out just how dependent the country was on Middle Eastern oil. Gasoline prices quadrupled, rising from just 25 cents per gallon to over a dollar in months. Gas lines became common sights as drivers became desperate to fill their tanks before the gas ran out. There was an instant drop in the number of homes built with gas heat and Congress issued a 55 mph speed limit on highways. Daylight savings time was compulsory year-round in an effort to reduce electrical use and one of the biggest long-term effects was the massive change in cars due to the oil embargo. The production of gas guzzling cars was halted and the sale of Japanese cars increased because they met efficiency standards that American cars did not. Americans lost the confidence they had held for the future.”

Johana Mata
Senior Division
Research Paper

Politicizing the Past: Depictions of Indo-Aryans in Indian Textbooks from 1998-2007

By Abhijith Ravinutala

Download “Politicizing the Past”

This Spring, UT-Austin student Abhijith Ravinutala received the John Ferguson Prize for Excellence in the Study of History. In his thesis paper, “Politicizing the Past: Depictions of Indo-Aryans in Indian Textbooks from 1998-2007,” Abhijith links the history lessons in Indian school textbooks to broader political conflicts taking place over the nation’s religious and historical identity. He particularly concentrates on their depictions of the ancient Indo-Aryan people, arguing that these historical narratives reflect very modern political disputes. You can read Abhijith’s thesis abstract below.

Abstract:

Schools across the world strive to instill national pride in students by presenting a shared history of the nation’s development – a common past. Yet, in the case of India, there is no consensus on the common past, leaving students without a clear understanding of Indian history. From 1998-2007, Indian schools employed three different sets of history textbooks, each with radically different ideas on ancient Indian history concerning Indo-Aryans (peoples considered to be the founders of the Hindu faith). This paper endeavors to show that these textbook changes were clearly politicized; different political parties promoted conflicting ideas on Indo-Aryans due to incompatible religious beliefs. To provide context, there is also a discussion of the different historical issues regarding Indo-Aryans, such as the mystery of their origins and their relation to the Indus Valley Civilization. Additionally, this paper attempts to explain how the textbook changes were uniquely important to Indian national identity.

An Elementary School in Chittoor, India (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

To accomplish these ends, I use direct quotes from all three sets of textbooks, as well as newspaper articles from The Times of India. An analysis of the textbook quotes shows that the ruling political party could dictate its own views on the culture, identity, and society of Indo- Aryan peoples. Furthermore, an analysis of newspaper articles reveals the public’s reaction to textbook changes, showing that India is uniquely prone to such changes because its history is so ancient and ambiguous. Indians do not have the knowledge or clarity about the ancient past to pass down stories to future generations. As a result, students learn about their ancestry and identity through the material provided in textbooks, but that material is at the whim of political parties. This project reveals how political parties tamper with history to achieve their own ends, and the effect it has on the public’s conceptions of history and national identity.

The Emergence of Atatürk: A Turning Point in Turkish History

by Ilona Altman

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk is a monumental figure in Turkish history. After leading the successful Turkish War of Independence against the occupying Allied forces, Atatürk entered the realm of politics and initiated a bold agenda of social, political and economic reforms. Known as Kemalism, these reforms sought to transform Turkey into a modern and secular nation-state that would be equal to–and not subject to–European powers. Almost a century after the Republic’s founding, Kemalism remain a cornerstone of Turkey’s government, economy and society. Moreover, Atatürk’s likeness continues to adorn statues, paintings and memorials around the nation he built.

For Texas History Day, Ilona Altman explores the historical significance of Atatürk and his “Kemalist” agenda in the website “The Emergence of Atatürk: A Turning Point in Turkish History.” In the site’s process paper, Ilona talks about her personal and historical interest in this topic:

“We strolled down the streets of Istanbul, walking into teashops, rug stores, and bazaars. Every place we went had a unique aura. Oddly enough, every place had one consistent quality – in all of the shops, a portrait of a man known as “Atatürk” was hanging on a wall. Our family made a game trying to find “the poster” in each shop, and I suddenly came to wonder who exactly “Atatürk” was. What had he done to earn such recognition? I began drowning in questions, so upon our arrival home, I began researching.”

“The emergence of Atatürk as Turkey’s president was an immense turning point in Turkish history, fitting perfectly with the NHD Theme “Turning Points in History: People, Ideas, Events.” Atatürk’s emergence through presidency was a turning point that allowed for the movement toward a modern and successful Turkey to begin. By becoming president, Atatürk had the power to implement reform. Turkey’s successful embrace of Western ideals makes it a role model in the Middle East today, demonstrating that a successful incorporation of Western secularism, principles, ideals, and progressive economy with an Islamic religious consciousness is possible. Turkey demonstrates that western ideas can build a middle class and strong economy. Learning about Ataturk made me realize that individuals matter – one person truly can change the world.”

Photo Credits:

Atatürk speaking before a crowd in Bursa, Turkey, 1924 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Atatürk’s visage carved into rock, Izmir, Turkey (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Portrait of Atatürk, 1923 (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Ilona Altman
Junior Division
Individual Website

Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood (2004)

by Janine Jones

Pakistani anthropologist Saba Mahmood began her field research among Muslim women’s revival (da’wa, Arabic “call”) movements in Cairo in 1995 with a number of admitted preconceptions. An ardent feminist and leftist scholar, Mahmood assumed a certain degree of internalized subordination in women who find solace and meaning in deeply patriarchal traditions. Yet, over the course of two years listening to and learning from several religious revival groups run by da’iyat (female “callers”), she discovered an entirely different understanding of religious devotion. Her innovative ethnography of that time, Politics of Piety, sets out a new vision of feminist theory that re-examines the complicated, underexplored relationship between gender and religion from the perspective of women who participate within – as opposed to fight against – patriarchal systems. In doing so, Piety advances a new and timely approach to the study of ethics, identity, agency, and embodiment in post-colonial cultures.

Popularly accepted da’iyat are historically quite new. Concerns about possible gender-mixing improprieties and the belief that only men are intellectually and spiritually able to lead Muslim communities mean that, generally speaking, Islamic preaching and community leadership have been the prerogative of men alone. Female Islamic preachers arose as part of the resurgence of Islamic devotion that swelled region-wide in the Middle East beginning in the 1970s. They continued to gain popularity and acclaim as modern communications technologies facilitated women’s access to Islamic education. By the 1990s, Muslim women from different social classes and backgrounds, all interested in rediscovering their religious community’s rich traditions and ethical moorings, were regularly attending classes associated with local mosques, learning at the feet of dai’yat known for their moral rectitude and religious wisdom.

Mahmood describes Hajja Samira, a da’iya associated with a working-class mosque, and Hajja Faiza, a quiet, articulate Qur’anic exegete who teaches women from upscale neighborhoods, both of whom are deeply concerned with what they view as the modern abstraction of Islam into a private, personal affair that can be distinguished from other aspects of life. They teach their students to counter this secular division, emphasizing the “old Islamic adage: ‘All life is worship.’” Other da’iyat engage in lively debates with their students and each other about the purpose and function of the hijab, or Islamic headcovering.

“Marching Women,” a mural in Cairo dedicated to the women of the Egytian Revolution (Image courtesy of Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen)

Mahmood meets with students as well, interviewing participants in the mosque movement from all walks of life, educational levels, and philosophies. She notes the complex self-awareness with which many women seek to negotiate the conflicting claims of modern life and Muslim morality, including, for example, women whose work demands require them to participate in practices of dubious piety like transacting business with men or traveling in mixed-sex vehicles. Throughout, Mahmood observes that the wilting, oppressed Muslim woman of popular imagination is nowhere in sight. This is, in part, because the women of the urban women’s mosque movement are not primarily concerned with political equality or the implications of gender hierarchy. Rather than view their lives through a filter of political rights, they orient their understandings of self and role in terms of their obligations to God. Mahmood explores the intersection of that understanding with embodied practices, ethical issues, and personal identity, elaborating a theoretically dense and evocative approach to religion that will be useful to scholars in a variety of fields.

Images used under Fair Use Guidelines

Hollywood’s Brazil: Rio (2011)

It’s no coincidence that Hollywood has a thing for Rio de Janeiro. The city’s breathtaking landscape enlivens the most uninspired camerawork. Its pulsating musical rhythms spice up any soundtrack. Rio’s favelas (slums), with their arresting squalor, stoke movie-goers’ fears and fantasies. And its purported libertinage titillate viewers’ libidos. Masters such as Orson Wells (It’s All True, 1942) and Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious, 1946) chose Rio de Janeiro for their backdrop, while James Bond duked it out with Jaws on the Sugar Loaf cable car in Moonraker (1979). Yet whether the objective was Flying Down to Rio (1933) or to Blame it on Rio (1987), for decades the city has also served as a cinematic protagonist: a place that unbinds social strictures and forgives moral lapses. Much of Hollywood’s romance with Latin America and Latin Americans has played on these stereotypes, and Rio’s sensorial comparative advantage long secured its niche in the tourist and film market.

The 3-D computer-animated film Rio (2011) tells the story of Blu, a Spix’s macaw, smuggled out of tropical Rio de Janeiro as a chick and raised in frigid Minnesota.

A Brazilian ornithologist, seeking to save the endangered species, convinces Blu’s owner that she must allow the bird to be returned to Rio to mate with a female. It is not love at first sight. Blu is awkward, cerebral, and flightless (symptomatic of freedoms stunted and sentiments dulled by years of Americanization).

Jewel, the (Latin) female, is free-spirited, impulsive, fiery, and at-home with nature. As Blu and Jewel struggle, however, to elude the evil Afro-Brazilian favela bird-smugglers who pursue them, their love blossoms. Escaping from captivity, Blu learns to fly, the birds mate, and they live happily ever after with their brood in the lush Brazilian forest.

In some ways Rio reflects changes that have overtaken Hollywood in the last decades. The city’s landscape, favelas, and Carnaval continue to command top billing, yet they are now dazzlingly recast via jaw-dropping computer animation. The movie also demonstrates advances that Latin Americans and Latinos have made in U.S. cinema: Carlos Saldanha, the film’s director and story writer, is Brazilian. Yet the movie’s depictions also illustrate how stereotypes about Brazil continue to thrive in, and because of, the cinema.

No one really seems to work in Rio: they are too busy partying in Carnaval, going to the beach, hang-gliding, or thieving. Afro-Brazilians are cast exclusively as thugs, pranksters, or dancers. Moreover, the film’s fetish for natural landscapes, colonial architecture, and favelas gives a skewed view of a multifaceted, modern metropolis. In the end, nature is so overpowering in the story (and, by extension, Brazilian culture) that the one Brazilian who has a legitimate job—the ornithologist—intermittently is compelled to incarnate birds.

Given Americans’ longstanding penchant for seeing Brazilians (and Latin Americans) as anti-modern and closer to nature, it is unsurprising that Rio has been a commercial and even a critical success in the United States. Perhaps more intriguing is the mixed reception the film has received in Brazil. Although some critics slammed the film’s unfavorable depiction of their compatriots, many Brazilian bloggers hailed the movie. For some, the city’s headlining a major Hollywood film was enough of a nationalistic triumph. Yet those viewers seduced or unfazed by the film’s stereotypes—whether Brazilians’ purportedly carefree, lackadaisical, or sensuous demeanor; the exuberance of tropical nature; or the malevolence of Afro-Brazilian favela dwellers—also underscore how such myths about national character are deeply entrenched in Brazil as well.

Read more about Brazil on Not Even Past, here, here, and here.

George on the Lege, Part 1 – Budget Crises

Interior view of the Texas State Capital Building looking up into the building's dome

By George S. Christian

It’s no secret that the Texas Legislature faces a daunting budget problem, with deficits estimated to be as little as $15 billion or as much as $27 billion or more. Constitutionally speaking, however, the actual deficit is about $4.3 billion. That’s the difference between what was appropriated for the 2010-2011 biennium and the revenue the Comptroller of Public Accounts says is now available to pay for it. According to the Texas Constitution, the Legislature must come up with $4.3 billion by August 31 to balance the budget. The larger numbers reported in the media refer to the difference between the Comptroller’s estimated revenue for the next biennium (2012-13) and interpretations of maintaining a “current” level of services under existing law. In any event, the actual deficit and the anticipated shortfall seem to be a lot bigger than Texans have seen in a long time. Is this really the case?

Yes—and no. The “modern” history of the Texas budget process dates from 1949, when the Legislative Budget Board was created to oversee the legislative appropriations process. Since then Texas has experienced several periods of boom and bust, usually (but not always) at times of national economic slowdowns. The price of oil and gas has historically served as an important indicator of Texas’ budget health. When energy prices are high—the 1970s, much of the 1990s, and again in the mid-2000s—Texas has generally generated budget surpluses. Even while the rest of the country was mired in inflationary and economic malaise in the mid-1970s, Texas was awash in cash from record tax revenues. When energy prices decline, whether as a consequence of slowing demand or oversupply, as they did in the mid-1950s, mid-1980s, the early 2000s, and again two years ago, state tax revenues tend to follow, triggering budget shortfalls.

In fact, a worldwide decline of oil prices triggered the extended fiscal crisis that resulted in the introduction of the Texas sales and use tax in 1961. Throughout the 1960s, the Legislature paid for an expanding state economy by slowly increasing those tax rates, but the last of these rate bumps occurred in 1971, two years prior to the first OPEC oil embargo. That energy crisis was a disaster for the national economy, but a boon for Texas, which rode the wave of high gas prices for more than a decade. The party ended in 1986-87, when changes in passive income provisions of the federal tax code helped crater the banking, savings and loan, and energy sectors of the Texas economy. Ironically, while the rest of the country was emerging from recession in the latter half of the 1980s, Texas was wallowing in red ink. In 1987 Texas faced its largest budget deficit in modern history, and the Legislature responded with a $5.7 billion tax increase—by far the largest tax bill in Texas history up to that time (and since).

The national recession that followed the September 11 attacks created another major headache for Texas legislators. Just prior to the beginning of the 2003 legislative session, the Comptroller dropped her revenue estimate by $10 billion, creating a budget gap estimated at more than 12% of the current spending level at the time, in addition to an almost $2 billion actual deficit (about 3% of general revenue spending). Unlike in 1987, however, the Legislature dealt with the problem largely through accounting measures and budget cuts, without increasing taxes. To put this in perspective, the 2011 picture is considerably worse than 2003: the $4.3 billion actual deficit amounts to almost 5% of current spending, and the estimated shortfall for the 2012-13 budget ranges from 18 to 26%, depending on whether it is measured against current spending (smaller) or current services (larger). On the other hand, 2011 looks only slightly worse than 1987, when the actual budget deficit ($1 billion) likewise exceeded 4% of spending and the shortfall (about $5.7 billion) topped 20 percent.

To say that 2011 presents the most serious budget crisis since the 1940s is probably not inaccurate, but it should be kept in mind that at least twice—in 1987 and 2003—the Legislature faced a problem of similar magnitude. How it will respond this time remains to be seen. State leaders have pledged that they will not raise taxes and there seems to be little appetite in the Legislature or in the electorate for a tax bill. Yet budget cuts may become so unpalatable, as they did in the wake of the 2003 legislative session, that legislators may opt to raise at least some additional revenue. Still, a major tax increase like the one in 1987 is unlikely. The only certainty is that the Legislature must adopt a budget within available revenue by midnight on August 31, 2011, subject to the Governor’s line item veto authority. The clock is ticking.

Sources:

Legislative Budget Board, http://www.lbb.state.tx.us/The_LBB/Agency/History.htm

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, 2012-13 Biennial Revenue Estimate

Texas Taxpayers and Research Association, “Comparing Texas Fiscal Challenges

Want to know more about the Texas Lege?

Texas Legislature Online

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/

And here’s a great novel about Texas politics, published in 1961 and re-issued in 1995

Billy Lee Brammer, The Gay Place
photo: Wing-Chi Poon [CC-BY-SA-2.5] via Wikimedia Commons

The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.

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