Latin American Boom

I visited the Saint Williams Catholic Community in Shelbyville, TN, on March 5th at the 9:00 bilingual mass. I chose this experience because I have had several Spanish speaking students' in the Pre-K program that I am currently an assistant teacher for. I wanted to better understand the culture of my students, outside of an environment where I am deemed to be dominant. I also wanted to see how different the Catholic church setting is from what I am use to. I have passed this…

Rigoberta Menchu’s book outlines her experience, giving a first hand account of the suppression, exploitation, and death faced by indigenous Guatemalans, at the hands of a militarized government. She describes how the economic disparity between wealthy landowners and indigenous people create this suppression, that not only threatens their land, but their entire culture. This testimonial placed Menchu in the spotlight, and was met with attempts to discredit her account. I will discuss these…

America calling it Spanish America. Spain was interested in wealth and dominance, so they needed money to feed their desires and the resources in America gave them just that. One of the valuable resources Spain sought was silver and they used Native American workers to extract these goods. Spain was tied economically to Spanish America because it needed the resources to finance the homeland since Spain found itself involved in countless wars with neighboring European nations, moreover a…

The meaning of Europeanization is Europeans settling down in an unknown land and enforcing their culture and aspects of life. This is exactly what Europeans did to the Fortunate Islands and the habitants who were living on them, who were called the Guanches. The Guanches were indigenous people who lived on seven different islands with primitive technology, Crosby describes, “The Guanches were infidels without armor, ‘nor any knowledge of warfare, and they can receive no help from their…

Schwartz’s text is both a history and historiography—he provides a history of the Mesoamerican indigenous groups and the Spaniards, while analyzing the various biases present in the many accounts of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. He also sets the scene for his book to be presented as a compilation of various primary sources, each reflecting the different views of the groups involved. He breaks his introductory chapter into six main sections—the indigenous people of Mesoamerica, Tenochtitlan,…

Spaniards, Mexicans, and Latinos are all people of the Hispanic community. According an internet source, the definition for Hispanics is referring to Spain or Spanish-speaking countries, especially those of Latin America. The objective of this paper is to inform and educate the reader of the Hispanic culture and Spanish-speaking countries. The Hispanic culture consists of food, music, and religion of Hispanics. The main meats used by Hispanics are beef, chicken, goat, pork, and sheep. Hispanics…

In the Caribbean, prior to contact, aboriginals implanted certain meanings and values to pearls and pearl fisheries. Oysters provided food for many Caribbean aboriginal peoples. However, the pearls were sought because they were perceived as material items “infused with a spiritual brilliance.” According to Nicholas Saunders, an anthropologist, Amerindians perceived their world as infused with spiritual significance. Natural materials, such as pearls, feathers, shells, and minerals, were…

Voyages, invasion, and a few years to let it all play out. That was essentially all that was needed for the growth of Spain in the Americas. During the time period from 1492 through 1532, Spain had discharged a few notable people with a few expeditions. Aside from the voyages, we still know that with claiming a land you must take it over by force, only if it's occupied of course; therefore, we should also look at the battles it took to conquer the colonies already there. With the demise of the…

1. What is the demography of the language? The Chechen language, or Tsjetsjeens, is a branch of Vainakh of the Northeast Caucasian language family (Nakh-Daghestanian) and has an approximate number of 1.2 – 1.5 million speakers. According to Thompson (2013), the language can be found in the Republic of Chechnya (Russia), Dagestan, Georgia, and can also be found in Central Asian countries like Turkey and Jordan as a result of the Chechen diaspora. 2. What historical events led to the physical…

Amerigo Vespucci was the first to recognize that the land Christopher Columbus claimed to be Asia, was not actually Asia, but in fact, a “New World” later to be named after Amerigo, himself. Born in the fifteenth century, Vespucci was well educated and especially fond of cartography. Although born and raised in Italy, he lived for many years in Spain and held many different jobs before he embarked on his first journey. Vespucci set sail a total of four times, each voyage bringing its unique…