SPAN 306: Culture and Civilization of Spanish Latin America
Course Description: Taught in Spanish, presents an historical and cultural overview of Hispanic Latin America from its Pre-Colombian origins to the present through works of literature, art, music, and videos. Taught in Spanish.
Culture and Civilization of Spanish Latin America: This course fulfills MLO 1 & 3. This course gave us an overview of Latin America and we were able to learn about every country in Latin America. It was a lot of information for a semester. In the first part of the class I learned about the unity of Latin America and how it came to be, the historical, economical, political reasons etc… and how the term “Latin America” is problematic. Then we briefly studied the great civilizations, and we moved on to the explorations of the 15th century and the conquest when Christopher Columbus claimed discovering “america,” another incorrect term used. Towards mid semester we started learning about the other Latin american countries. First we learned about the wars of independence in Mexico and its impact, the french revolution and the U.S independence. Then we learned about los países del Río de la Plata which are: Argentina, Uruguay & Paraguay. I learned their history before becoming independent countries and their current demographic. Subsequently, we moved on to los países Meridionales which are: Chile, Bolivia & Peru. We thoroughly looked at their politics which have influenced and affected the country a great deal. An important war we studied was “La Guerra del Pacífico,” in which Chile wanted border claims of Bolivian territory of the Atacama Desert. Bolivia & Peru were allied against Chile but in the end Chile ended with the victory and gained a significant resource rich territory from both countries who now had no access to resources. The history is so vast that I could be writing about it for hours. Something i’d like to mention is that through this course I learned that the United States has intervened multiple times in different countries for reasons of power & control. Overall, this course offered me a different, unique, perspective of Latin american countries. They are part of our history and we should be talking about it.
martinez_d_span306presentation_evidence.pdf | |
File Size: | 540 kb |
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