Latin alphabet

In her book, Genealogical Fictions: Limpieza de Sangre, Religion, and Gender in Colonial Mexico, Maria Elena Martinez exposes the relationship between limpieza de sangre and the sistema de castas through its origins in fifthteen-century Spain and its ambiguous implications in Spanish America. Originally containing religious connotations during the Spanish Inquisition over concerns of converted Jews and Muslims to Christianity, Martinez attempts to answer the question of how and why the notion of…

The Amazing Journey to Dominican Republic My trip to Dominican Republic was really exciting, awesome, and an experience that I’ll never forget. When I went to Dominican Republic, or in Spanish, Punta Cana, I got to learn lots of cool and very interesting things. In this personal narrative, I will be telling you all of the great, or crazy experiences that I had at Dominican Republic. If you don’t know where in the world that the country is located, it is on the east coast off of Puerto Rico.…

Camilla Townsend’s Malintzin’s Choices depicts the ways in which one young Indian woman’s bold decision impacted the outcome of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The master narrative is commonly told through the perspective of the conquistadors themselves, rendering the history largely biased and lacking the views of the indigenous communities that were conquered. The inclusion of indigenous experiences challenges white male authority by shedding light on the inaccuracies of the major accounts and…

1491 Essay- Singles 1491 by Charles Mann tackles controversial theories about the Native American population before the arrival of Columbus and other Europeans. His thesis supports the claims that there were more Indians in America than expected by scholars, that they came over at an earlier time, as well as the belief that they were more complex and that the Natives greatly controlled the land around them. Mann provides evidence both before and against his thesis claims. He begins with the…

Meaning of the Title, “When Worlds Collide” In the first chapter of US History, the title, “When Worlds Collide” is given to describe this chapter. This represents that the Europeans and Natives had different cultures, diseases, plants, animals, and technology, as if they were in 2 completely different worlds, then met up with each other once Columbus set foot in the Americas. These worlds collided when Columbus, rather than sailing to India, accidentally sailed to the Americas in 1492,…

Magical Realism Magical realism is a mixture of culture and oral tradition, made to seem a reality. Magical realism is when the story is in a real world setting, but has magical factors and unexplainable events that attempt to make the reader a believer of something. Magical realism is composed of, historical and cultural realities, magical elements, and a metamorphosis occurring with someone. Historical and cultural realities help to convince the reader that there was a real event that took…

The Aztec and Inca civilizations in their prime were both highly developed, sophisticated and intelligent societies, but there were numerous differences in their governments, societies, and economies. Before their conquests by Cortes and Pizarro, respectively, both were very advanced and controlled large amounts of land, but there were fundamental differences in the way the empires were managed. The societies of the Aztec and Inca were similar in some ways, but differences in the ruling bodies…

In the scholarly journal, “The Chief is Dead” by Antonio Curet, the subject of discussion is the tribe of the Taino, which inhabited the island of Hispaniola. Curet examines the Taino in order to determine how the tribal society functioned. According to Curet, the accounts of the Taino are unreliable due to European influences on the succession process. Curet creates an argument explaining that European documents are vague and unreliable in regards to the Taino society due to the lack of…

Blood trickled down people’s faces as they were running out of the intoxicating building. However, did anybody cared to think about the immigrant workers who did not even have a chance of surviving? “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100” by Martín Espada, is a poem in praise of immigrants who worked in the Window on the World restaurant. Throughout Espada’s piece, the author committed himself in representing, and celebrating the lives and stories of those who have dealt with a tragic loss in that…

The document I selected was authored by the Congress of Venezuela at the Federal Palace located in its capital of Caracas in 1811. The documents primary purpose as intended by the Congress was to declare independence from the Spanish Crown as a colony, and become its own state of institution. The question: Why did Venezuela seek independence from Spain? Or more specifically what made the loyal colonists favor this decision along with the rest of society or the lower class. The answer: Spain…