Nowadays, everyone is used to the huge territory of United Sates, but in the 19th century, everyone blamed the 11 times president Antonio López de Santa Ana; he did many mistakes while his mandate, he lost not only his real leg, but a war, and almost more than half of the Mexican territory back then. Therefore isn’t it ironic what a leg means for one or other country? On the one hand; to the U.S citizens it means the wining territory and their clever strategy to always get what they want, on the other hand; it means defeat for Mexicans, the rooted feeling that the north neighbor is manipulating our country and most importantly: the lack of unity. It is important to remember that even nowadays there are enormous boundaries in México, not only economic ones, but ideological, political and the regionalism is on fire. In that case, we could say that the present Mexico is extremely alike to the old Mexico. Religion remains important to some sectors of the society, such as being part of a political party, and feel identified with your region.

I truly believe that there were real and genuine “caudillos” but Santa wasn’t the accurate description of that concept. This term was very popular not only in Mexico, but in the entire Latin America. They were the idealized heroes: the ones who fought for their ideas, their people and always wanted to solve and improve the “awful situations”. Caudillos might have misled their societies. There’s this abysmal difference between what people were supposed to do and what they actually did. E.g.: “I obey, but do not comply” which describes perfectly the attitude towards the political regime of that time. While I read this part of the “Cause of all national disasters” I reminded the “Casta Painting”, which had a similar “name” for one of the “races” (NoTeEntiendo), the one that means I don’t understand you. So, I just concluded, that somehow, this was a way to keep on resisting the Imperial power, even though many Latin American countries have already achieve their independence, they still had some negative instant response to everything that had to do with the empowerment of the high social classes.

Heading to South America, it is Esteban Echeverría, the Argentinian writer who represents Latin America with his words. “El Matadero” which I consider a revolutionary text that critiques and exposes Juan Manuel Rosas Federalism in Argentina back in that time. It is obvious why this text represents the Latin America people’s unconformities.

When it comes to describe Latin America difficulties are found, not because there are any definitions, but because an explosion of ideas, tastes, colors, people and cultures within one same culture. There’s a song of a Latin-American singer called “Calle 13”, which tries to describe how Latin America is and he just starts to say many opposite concepts that certainly define this region. There’s a fragment that I love of the song and it goes like this: “Soy America Latina, un pueblo sin piernas pero que camina” which literally means: “I’m Latin America, a people without legs but walks; and I think this phrase is extremely related to the introduction and chapter one. This special region has been created by ourselves (latinoamericanos), by our governments, who often shape the school text books so young Mexicans learn what they want us to read. Our professors, who are not to blame; but only follow what they’re supposed to teach us, and in some way blind us with their biased opinion.

On the other hand, I found the author very accurate by establishing that “winners” write the history. We’re often thought about the independence heroes; who turned out to be everything but heroes, actually some of them didn’t even exist. Others were highly dramatized so we wouldn’t forget them easily; the perfect example is “La Malinche” (the indigenous woman who “betrayed” her race to join the Spanish) But, how can we know is this is true anyway? We also have the Spanish villains who “took all our richness and the ones that thought us corruption. And of course there are also all those mystic histories that nowadays have become part of the Latin-American folklore. One way or another, Latin America is the result of a mixture, a contradiction itself, but as the one who wrote the book; Latin America is so vivid, that it doesn’t matter when you’re describing it, as long as you get the sense of a unique place on earth.

I found the noun’s article very interesting and extremely accurate to its time. At that era the women customization to men was very popular, if they wanted to be taken serious or been accepted in “manly” activities they had to customize as men. Even tough the reason is a cultural and sexist one. The Alferez noun was a brave person who figured out the way to achieve her goals. The fact that she had to behave and dress as men was evidently not hard at all for her; actually, she’s famous in Latino America for her sexual preference and for being transgender.

I fully enjoyed her writing; she writes so detailed that you can almost live what she is describing. The first chapter of the beginning of the life as a noun shows how antique was religious education, she was beaten, put in prevue and mostly thought to respect the authority. I think, that as a reasonable person, she left, that action was just the right thing to do (evidently, not in that time). So, risking her life more than anything; she started -really young- her way to follow her dreams. Apparently, she was lucky to find her uncle, and before that, to find people from royalty that gave her a job. It is evident that what opened her mind and encouraged each time more, is all the town she visited, all the people (some royal, some not) she met, and most importantly, that she travelled by herself, at the end of the day that made her more mature than people her age.

I want to emphasize the scene when her brother told her to run from her life, cause, he knew this was just the beginning of the struggle for her, and she did too. Stepping from one church to another, shed stood running away from people who wanted her. The relief is that she could find someone to be with.

Her story is interesting in the sense she ever had something really certain, and the decision of following her dreams was like a rollercoaster- sometimes up, another ones down. She’s to admire, because she never really gave up, even tough she was perused, never had a real home, she step apart from her family, had to fight (literally) for herself. I find her convictions more important than the harm she could have done, the reason is that she stepped for women at that time. She did what it had to be done.

“In Nomine Domini Nostri Jesu Christli” meaning in the name of our Jesus Christ; Christopher Columbus wrote his petition of exploring the “Indias” to the King and Queen of Spain; at this time the whole crown didn’t have enough gold to purchase his journey, but it was simply his religious speech which is very interesting because he just knew that this was the way to get the founds for his journey. And behind all of this Catholic purpose, the Queen and King were extremely interested in probably getting a new colony, which at the time was very popular for the European countries.

(It is rumoured that the Queen sold her jewellery and financed Columbus expedition). He thought he was taking a new route to India, so he started to write down everything. I found very impressive the instruments and objects were used back in those times,, for example: “wind rose” which is the basis of a compass.

Then, the images start to show how was life at India (which is really the American Continent). I think that life in American territory was very different from life in Europe. All the objects show the traditions of the native cultures. And when he writes about the sea, it is a little bit clear that he just wasn’t just “discovering” a new path, but that he was navigating in completely different and estranges waters.

There was so much to discover and explore in that land; I find a pity that Columbus died thinking he went to India and not knowing he just visited an almost unexplored and new land.

I found the second lecture very interesting, because my first language is Spanish so I enjoyed a lot the explanations it had below the document. But also for being one of the documents that survived the European colonization. I’ve studied these events since I was in elementary school and I know that there are only a few vestiges of what indigenous or native people wrote back in those times; I felt very lucky when reading this document. The letter itself is very interesting, because of how it’s written and how the author refers to the pope; with a lot of respect. I found a part of the letter when Guaman speaks of himself and tries to define his origin and simply, who he is at the time, and then, he writes that he’s not even a “latino”. This specific phrase caught my attention; it is true that many indigenous people from the past and this days don’t feel the nationalism with their own country because it is the result of a cultural mixture, and their “roots” are not just unique.

I’m an international relations student at México, (for the moment at UBC; which is an awesome Uni). I’m a woman with hope in the world and in people, so I’m convinced human relations are the base to ”human success”, but sometimes we’re just blinded by material things.

Don’t know yet if I have a political inclination to one or other party but not extremist at all. I enjoy all kind of art except ccontemporary (Think it doesn’t have sense).

I love to read and watch movies. Actually I enjoy art cinema; and I’m really excited because this term we’ll be having the International Film Festival.
I’m a tea & coffee person.
I love and miss for the moment mexican food, but also enjoy arabic, chinese, japanese, thai, indian, italian, french cuisines cause I’m not very picky.
I love yoga and training gym.

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