While I was reading this week’s assignment, I was exposed to having different national independence narratives. Depending on which countries, the perspectives are quite different. Mexican people thinks Miguel Hidalgo, liberal priest is important and Simon Bolivar is considered as a crucial figure in Venezuela and Columbia. In addition, depending on what actors people privilege, the type of independence narratives may vary. For example, from European descended perspective, independence was a story of bravery and sacrifice in the name of achieving national independence. On the other hand, from indigenous point of view, it is merely a exploitation toward them. It was intriguing to read about how Brazil got independence in 19th century because they did not fight as much as other Spanish colonies to achieve independence. Basically, Portuguese Emperor fled to Brazil due to Napoleonic war and declared independence in 1822. Moreover, I noticed the feeling that rebels had toward Europe gradually shifted from labeling as European to people rooted in Americas. It was interesting to observe this emotional change through reading the text.

Although Simon Bolivar is famous, I was never exposed to things about him and his letter. He started started off the letter by stating that “The hatred that the Peninsula has inspired in us is greater than the ocean between us”, which shows much hatred he had toward Spain. He also stated that it is hard to reconcile with them. I learned that people in Latin America did not have any social status and kept on being enslaved. Even though there had been hardships, he hopes for unity in Latin America, but thinks people were not ready for that.

Speech by Hugo Chavez was interesting to read because he directly said about North colonization of South. To explain his points, he had listed out several examples of how neoliberalism can be destructive to the South. He criticizes that neoliberalism is simply a way for North to benefit out of South. He mentioned about North’s attempt to manipulate South through economy and this had to be avoided. Neoliberalism seemed to be a cause of poverty and disparity among North and South. In the end, he claims that in order to fight back the threat, banks may be opened, university could be established, and people can promote economic system that may benefit South.

Through reading these texts, I was able to learn about the content of Simon Bolivar’s letter and the main point of Hugo Chavez’s speech.

This week’s readings were about Casta Paintings and the story of Lieutenant Nun. It was my first time to read the story where a female person had been living like a man, and I found this very interesting. This is because being transgender was a unique thing back in 15th century. Moreover, I was surprised the fact that the Spanish King, Philip IV seemed to accept her and allow her to dress like a man. In addition,  Pope Urban the Eighth said “Instead of chastising her, he gave her a papal dispensation to keep on dressing as a man—provided that she remained a virgin”, which shows that he did not have any problems with her. As the story continued, Catalina went to fight against the Indians in Peru, and I could understand from the text that she seemed to be very brave and took the lost flag back. However, at the end of her journal, I found it a bit sad that she killed her own brother in a dark fight, but overall, I do not think it was not bad reading this journal.

As for Casta Paintings, I did not really know about this until I took this course. I was interesting that the paintings were based on race hierarchy in Spanish colonies and the paintings were usually divided into 16 compartments. In addition, hierarchy based on race was explained by saying that white Spanish are on top and other races such as blacks and mestizo are inferior to white. This enabled me to understand the structure of the society in Spanish colonies which was interesting. From the reading, I could understand that they were popular among people and had lots of demand, but some people like Arce y Miranda did not appreciate them. This is because when he saw them, he felt that Creole were inferior to white Europeans.

Through the readings assigned, I was able to learn about race structure of Spanish colonies by looking at Casta paintings. Although it was popular, the evaluation of Casta paintings differed among English travelers.The English traveler Richard Phillips encouraged people to see them, but Richard Twiss showed skepticism expressing that he does not fully trust the detail of described racial mixture on the paintings. Finally, the journal of Catalina enabled me to understand the story of female person who was dressed like a man and fought bravely in Spanish colonies.

Reading the journal on Christopher Columbus was interesting because it was the first time that I was exposed to a journal written by historically famous person. The journal includes events that occurred to him and his crews from the beginning of sailing to return to Spain. Christopher Columbus is famous for discovering a new place in America, but at the same time he is also famous for murdering a large number of indigenous people. When he met them in the beginning, he stated that they are primitive and do not even possess proper weapons as Spanish. In addition, in the beginning of the journal, I found it surprising that he was communicating with indigenous people and having some respect toward them for helping him sail around that area. Moreover, he stated his journal that indigenous people are calm and pleasant and violence is not preferred to control them and since they are like that, they could easily become a Christian.

There were things that I did not know until I read the second assigned reading. It was surprising to me that there is an advertisement of existence of large amounts of gold. They said that indigenous people walk on gold road and have lots of them in their hands. This seemed to be the reason why people were confused and ended up having huge motivations to go there. I was also able to learn things about a battle against Inca led by Atagualpa. Don Francisco Pizarro and Don Diego de Almagro talked to Atagualpa through their interpreter, Felipe, that he should be their friends. However, Atagualpa refused and later ended up throwing their books down. Immediately after, they got angry and said that these Indians were their enemy and we needed to fight. Spanish troops killed a large number of them and captured Atagualpa as a prisoner. Even though Spanish soldiers justified themselves for killing Indians, it may be considered to be cruel because they did so because Indians had different religions.

Through reading the journal of Christopher Columbus and the second reading assignment, I was able to know more about Columbus’s voyage across the Atlantic, where he got to meet with Indians and had some admiration to an extent, how Inca was destroyed by the Spanish troops for having a different religion and reasons why people really wanted to go explore for gold based on lies that Columbus spread.

For deciding what best and worst videos, I believe that the video on “Towards an Uncertain Future” and “Commerce, Coercion, and America’s Empire” are the best ones. This is because both of these videos used various contents such as pictures, media and words from experts. For instance, the video on “Towards an Uncertain Future” had a slide with words, so that it was easier for everyone to follow what presentors were talking about. In addition, a caption and a explanation using footage on actual news helped me to grab the sense of what they were trying to explain. Later in the video, the presenter explained about a situation of what is occurring by using an animation which helped me to know what was described. In terms of the video on “Commerce, Coercion, and America’s Empire”, I thought this was good because it was using a actual footage and a photograph of a person to explain concepts. Plainly speaking about a topic may be a bit difficult, but with a visual, it makes it easier for people to understand what is going on. In sum, both of these videos had footages and photographs and some animations in order to explain their respective topics.

For deciding which are the worst videos, I thought that “Speaking Truth to the Power” and “Caudillos Versus the Nation state” were not as good as the video that I talked about above. The major differences I noticed between them were that they had no visuals and presenters just kept on talking about certain topics. Introducing topics are great but, in my opinion, it is easier for people to understand if there are photographs or maps to explain certain concepts because videos are made in order to provide information. The videos I talked about above had actual footage and photographs during explanation, so I had easier time understanding the topic and also it did not make me bored watching the video because it had visuals. Therefore, the big difference between good and bad videos were about having a visuals such as actual footage, media and photographs during explanation. The video on “Towards an Uncertain Future” and “Commerce, Coercion, and America’s Empire” had those things, but the video on “Speaking Truth to the Power” and “Caudillos Versus the Nation state”did not have any visuals when presenters were trying to explain the concepts, which is the reason why I thought it was not good.

Hello! My name is Yusuke Sakanashi and I am an exchange student from Japan. I decided to take a course on Latin America because while I was studying Spanish in University, I started to have interest in that region, where they speak Spanish and Portuguese. I have never taken a course on Latin America, so I am a beginner in this course. In addition, people in my country is not too exposed to what kind of events are occurring in Latin America because they are not familiar with Japanese and the media does not report anything about them. In the future, I would like to go to one of Latin American countries to learn its culture and language. Although, I am not exposed to any Latin American contents, I am keen to learn them through this class.