Latin American HUM

Fig.1. Karla Cornejo Villavicencio and her book "The  Undocumented Americans", Harvard University, Immigration Initiative at Harvard.           Today's blog is based on one of the broadcasts of the LatinoUSA radio station, which was on air on Tuesday, November 3, 2020. I listened to the program a couple days later, on Tuesday, November 17, 2020. The transmission is entitled "The American Dream Daughter: A Conversation With Author Karla Cornejo Villavicencio" and the host who directed it was Maria Hinojosa. The program addressed issues of the life of Karla Cornejo and their presence in her book entitled "The Undocumented Americans." It is a very interesting interview that I really enjoyed listening to.           What I learned from their conversation is that there is a mental condition called survivor guilt, which refers to the fact that a person can feel guilty for having overcome certain adversities in their life, comparing themse...

FRESH FRUIT, BROKEN BODIES by Seth Holmes, 2013 Fig. 1. Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies Book Cover,   Seth Holmes, 2013.           Today's post is a Book Review of the text entitled Fresh Fruits, Broken Bodies by Seth Holmes published in April 2013. The author's objective is to give a perspective of the way an important sector of the country lives, which are farmworkers. They come from other countries, mainly Mexico and Latin America. According to the author, “they are forced to migrate for themselves and their families to survive” (Holmes 17). In the same way, it expresses the inequalities, injustices, and difficulties that these workers must go through. The audience for which this book is directed can be considered young people and adults, who may have more awareness and empathy with the stories told. It is a book that is very well constructed, properly divided into chapters, and that is also written by a physician and anthropologist, making him the idea...

Fig. 1. Parents are adjusting to working from home while  also developing a homeschool program for their children, Getty, 19 Mar. 2020, Insider.com            Today’s blog is going to be about an interesting program called Latino USA, which runs on 90.9 FM Sundays nights from 6:00 - 7:00 p.m. The segment entitled “The Parents Are Not Alright” was live on October 6, 2020, however, I listened to it on October 21, 2020. The hosts of the program were Maria Hinojosa along with Jeanne Montalvo. Jeanne was the one in charge of an interview with three guest speakers. The purpose and topic of the program were to virtually gather with parents from different locations in the U.S. and talk about their experiences during this hard time of the Covid-19.           I learned that each of us is experiencing different hardships depending on our occupations, if we have children, and even vary according to the school year in which they a...

Photo: Popol Vuh (Book, By Allen J. Christenson, 2003.                                                                                     Today's post is about a very important book for the Maya culture and all of us who are interested in knowing as much as possible about them. The book is entitled Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of The Maya , which was translated by Allen J. Christenson. Some of the main characters in this story are: One Hunahpu and Seven Hunahpu, two brothers whose name represents their main activity, in this case using their blowguns. They play an important role because they are involved in a problem since they disturbed the lords of the underworld with their ball game, then they are asked to summon and die in that...

Photo: Replica of an Olmec Colossal head from San Lorenzo, Carol Highsmith, University of  Texas at Austin.                  In this post, we are going to compare two amazing pieces of information about the Olmec culture.One is a  video entitled Lost Kingdoms of Central America presented by Jacob Cooper, an archeologist specialized in the American cultures. The other is an article, La Venta , by Rebecca Gonzalez. Copper's main concepts addressed in the video are an extensive explanation of important facts, discoveries, ideas, rituals, activities, but mainly arts that the Olmecs used to do during their presence in Mesoamerica. As Cooper declares, "to understand how the Olmecs arose, how they ruled 3,000 years ago and why they created that astonishing art is to understand the rise of civilization itself" (Lost 2:28-2:40). It's fascinating how he works hard in order to find the right place for whatever he wants to show his ...

          The radio program Latino USA presented a beautiful story about The Migrant Student Club during their transmission the past August 18 th of the current year 2020. I listened to this program on September 1st 2020, and from this audio I learned that there are thousands of students from immigrant families, whose responsibility is not just going to school, but also helping with their house mortgage, bills, clothes, and grocery at home, because their parents’ salary isn’t enough to pay basic needs. To do so, this program focuses in a group of teenagers who travel to states in the north of the country and spend their summer as farmworkers. This theme relates to the class because basically all of them traveled from Latin American countries when they were very young, and their parents came here looking for opportunities in a developed country. There are differences among cultures in those southern countries, however, they all share the same tough childhoo...

Here is my first post.