Being at the end of the course, gives me a feeling of new beginnings. New beginnings because we have learned so much but still have so much more to learn. We learned a myriad of historical moments, from the figurative language of Columbus upon first contact with the new world, to the emerging new forms of protest that the Latin community has been experimenting with in the 21st century.
Originally, at the beginning of the semester, I choose Maradona, Machista, and Pride as the first three words that came to my mind. Now, at the end of the semester, the first three words that come to mind are becoming / evolving, pride, and love. As I discussed in class, the feeling of becoming and evolving is strong when I think of the Latin people. The Latin community has as much external influence as it does internal, from the conquest and from it native origins, that there is always going to be a complex dynamic between the state and people, between their historical inheritance to their modern divergence; this is all product of people that have so much potential because they have so much depth to their being, thus, to myself, it seems that Latin America has an element of becoming.
Pride is something that we always be attached to the human condition and in the terms of Latin America, pride is rooted deep and superficially. The deep rooted pride that stems from historical figures that fought for the people, is something of a virtue. The superficial pride that can be seen the machista behaviour, is more of a curse. Pride is definitely apart of the Latin American palette.
Love is also apart of that palette. The thing about love is a phenomenon that is experienced rather not described, so it may be futile that I attempt to describe it but if anything, I think this course has had a lot of love throughout the readings. The love of pursuing happier means. The preserving of love through speaking against the oppression. Love shown through transparency in story telling. Love through resilience. So many examples of love that I had to mention it.
So the question that I would like to ask is, out of all the moments we read about, which one influenced you most and why?
I love your post! Your points about love and pride were very interesting and I complcellty agree! I think out of all the moments we read about the one that influenced me the most was probably the first week where we learned about the crisis of representation and Columbus because that set the tone of the course for me. I knew very little about Latin America going into the course and in that week everything that I thought I knew turned upside down in the best way. The first week was very impactful in the way I viewed Latin America and how that view would continue to change and grow!- madeleine k.
Hello!
To answer your question, I think Week 12: Speaking Truth to Power was the most significant chapter in this course for me. You can see the raw emotion of victims during an era of turmoil. The document about the mothers was absolutely heartbreaking. The video project of my group tied in with that week and it just left me with a bunch of questions and things to say.
Hey! I really liked reading your blog from this week. As for your question, I definitely think our earlier weeks had a big influence on me because of how little I knew. I think one of my favourite classes was Casta Paintings because it’s really interesting (also upsetting) to see just how this history can carry on into the future. I think that also goes for a lot of the other topics we focused on this term. Overall, it was actually quite difficult to pick a favourite week since we did so many interesting topics, I’ve learned so much from this course!