Modern Latin America

I have always been a history or math person when I was growing up. However, I always liked learning about world history, not just the United States. When I saw this class, I registered because it was history about something other than the United States. I am very happy that I choose to take this class. It opened my eyes to new perspectives that I never really thought of. It was quite surprising too, I thought this would just be more history on Latin America. However, I was wrong, it was a new perspective on Latin American and how United States portrayed it. Seeing the new perspective on the things we focused little on in high school was so interesting. The different things like the Spanish Conquest or the different indigenous people were things that were somewhat covered in my history classes, but not the way we talked about those events in this class. It makes me question and wonder about other perspectives around the world. I'm sure every country has their own perspective and out...

Brianne, I really enjoyed your post this week. I totally agree with your idea that there is languages within the different ruins and historical places seen and visited. I enjoyed the poem by Gioconda Belli as well. Comparing it to Pablo Neruda's this last class made me realize how important these ruins are to people and how they mean and say so much. I too have felt a sense of memories through unspoken things, and it as powerful as, maybe even more powerful, things that we have heard and remember through spoken occurrences. Also, its often an unknown language to people who weren't there when the historical places were cities instead of ruins, but not knowing helps us question and try to understand the past which makes it that much more beautiful! Nice relation with Pablo Neruda! Nice post too! Good luck with the rest of the semester!

As the winter semester is coming to an end, we are coming to a conclusion on the making of Latin America. We have learned so many new perspectives and ideas that challenge our knowledge from high school. Learning about the different countries and their perspectives was so fascinating; I am interested on what other things we may learn in the little time we have left in this class. That being said, we have just began learning and talking about the Nicaraguan Revolution and their steps to what and how the country is today. As we began talking about the Somoza in Professor Stark's portion of the class, we begin to see how and why the people of Nicaragua wanted a change in power. We have discussed the change from the Somoza to the Sandinistas. This change in power was pretty difficult. I was difficult mainly because of how Somoza had left the country before the change in power. The biggest disadvantage for the Sandinistas left because of Somoza had to be the little money the government ...

Nice post and video AJ! I too enjoyed the trip to Chicago. I was also really fascinated with how many connections we were able to make with the artwork at the museums. Although, I am not one that usually is able to understand art, being able to relate things that we learned in this class with the artwork made it a whole lot easier to understand it. Understanding the history and story behind the artwork also made it much more beautiful! I also favored the Mexican art museum too! However, I liked a few artworks, so I cannot say I had a favorite. Some of my favorite art pieces were from the Cuban art museum too. I enjoyed reading your post this week and watching your video!

In the last few classes, we have been discussing the Chilean Revolution in Professor Stark's portion of the class, and analyzing poems and stories in Professor Serrata's portion of the class. During Professor Stark's portion of the class, we discussed Chile before and after Allende. It was really interesting how things changed and the different perspectives with Chile when it came to the working class and socialism. How did socialism become an option to them? Why did they choose socialism to try an enforce? I just find it interesting because it was pretty rare to lean towards socialism and communism in the Americas. Especially with the U.S. involvement to protect their economic interests, it just seems interesting to me. We went on to see many changes to the economic and work aspects of Chile. However, in Professor Serrata's portion of the class, we talk about material wealth and what should truly be important to someone. We read a story about a material wealth Balthaza...