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.