1: A Bit About Me

Hello people! My name is Emma Elsner, and I am a second year student here at UBC. I am from a small town in north central Washington, one I’m sure none of you have heard of, so coming here to big city Vancouver was an adventure in and of itself. I have been fascinated with the Spanish language and Latin American culture in general ever since I can remember, so after stumbling upon this class, I was immediately hooked. I’ve travelled some in Central America, not as much as I’ve hoped, but I am excited to extend the limited reaches of my knowledge through this class and hope to gain a better understanding of the vast cultural diversity in what apparently we mislabel as Latin America.

I am in the Faculty of arts, and have not decided on a major yet (I know, what am I going to do), however I do plan on minoring in Spanish. I love (like rally love) to read, playing music is a nice past time of mine, and I have decided that I live anywhere as long as there’s nature and some good trails for me to run on. I love dogs, but I might love cats just a tiny bit more. Other than that, my only weakness is chocolate and a good cup of coffee.

Some questions I have from the readings and videos this week are:

1. (Mind the vastness of this mostly unanswerable question) What would a history book look like if it were written by the losers? How would, in this case, Latin America’s historical documentation look if the events were told by people in any of those countries, rather than by the conquering white men and all their terrible, brutally awful glory?
2. Looking at the silences in history’s texts, what are some examples of natural silences (where the speaker chose to opt out in a sense) that indicate a sense of resentful power (if that makes any sense)?
3. How can people be so ignorant as to group such a vast majority of diversity one thing? Like Latinos, who are they? Or even English people, Asians, whoever else, who do we think we are that everyone can fit under one stereotyping label?