my final post

In an earlier post, I asked my group the "independence" question, which essentially is, can our nations ever be truly independent from their previous occupiers? Both Mia and Laura responded respectively here and here. Mia concluded that no, Ireland can never truly be free from all ties with England, while Laura told a story about how it was easy for the French to take hold of Holland soon after they had just gained independence. However, she also concludes that maybe the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands wasn't such a bad thing after all. While I have been able to find connections between Latvia and Ireland (seen here) and even Latvia and the Spanish Netherlands (see here), I believe that Latvia differs greatly from the two other once occupied nations. Latvia still faces the threat of Russian occupation even today, while I believe that both the Netherlands and Ireland are pretty safe from this happening to them again by Spain and England respectively. Mia, in a response post, concludes that, in the present, animosity between Ireland and England has pretty much fizzled with only a small taste of bitterness on the tongues of the older generations. The bitter taste, though, is still very present and very strong on the tongues of many, if not all, Latvians. Even though there was hope towards the end of the soviet occupation over Latvia, which can be seen in the photographs I discuss here, much of that hope has turned into fear since Latvia gained its independence in 1991. We saw how much clout the Russians still had with the oil crisis and citizenship problem, discussed in one of my previous posts (which was already linked to in this post). It is clear that Latvia is no where near fully independent and must always be wary of another possible occupation. Not only is Russia a lot bigger and much more powerful than Latvia, but with the recent and rather large influx of Russian workers immigrating to Latvia to work, Latvia's dependency on such workers (since so many native Latvians have left over the last century), the Russians' tendency to remain very Russian, speaking only Russian and isolating themselves in strictly Russian neighborhoods even while living in Latvia, and the fact that Russians take up about 50% of the population, Latvia has a right to be very scared. These problems are outlined in this article published in the New York Times in 2006 titled Latvia Fears New ‘Occupation’ by Russians but Needs the Labor . From this article and from what we saw happen when Russia wanted Latvia to change its laws, it is obvious that Latvia's "independence" is only a relative term and that the days of Russian occupation could be far from over.