Latin American Studies Blog!

I still cannot believe that we are already done with the semester. I have managed to learn so much about Latin America which makes me realise how most developing countries need for incongruence and stability changes. For this blog post I will try and touch on a few of the videos and lectures I had read: This week’s lectures were based on the post effects of the dirty wars which happened in 1970. Most of Latin America if not all had been left in such a bad shape because of all the corruption that had taken place throughout the years not only by people living there at the time but even the political leaders that had taken advantage of Latin America by exploiting all its resources. Poor management, inflation and a huge amount of debt had been the result of what happened after the dirty war. The 1985 earthquake also left Mexico in shambles. After doing my own research I realised the magnitude of this issue, and of the earthquake- it s truck in the early morning of 19 September at

Today when we bring up the idea of Latin America, it is almost always associated to immigrates and drugs.   The drug war is not a stereotype of Latin America, but after watching the lecture videos I realised that it is in fact a part of life, it has happened, it happens even today, and may even continue to happen in future. The military, businesses and people are all trying to extract as much money as they can- and thus causing corruption. Coming from a highly corrupt country Kenya, I know that changing the foundation of this and trying to put an end to drug cartels is extremely difficult and will probably take a while for such measures to be implemented. The War on Drugs is my favourite video so far!   It showed us how drugs are brought into countries and the extent through which people will go through just to bring in these drug- like hiding it in coffee bags, or having people swallow and eat packets of cocaine.   Infamous people like Pablo Escobar had been depicted in the video

Summary of Mey-Yen Moriuchi’s; The Art of Conversation: Eighteenth-Century Mexican Casta Paintings My source for our group presentation is based off Week 3 topic of Colonial Latin America focusing on the hierarchical system of race and classification during the eighteenth century.   These hierarchical systems were portrayed in forms of vivid illustrations called “casta paintings”. The article by Moriuchi explores and examines the art form and the ways that had been used represent Spanish, Black and the Indian population of Latin America at the time. It also gives an interesting view on the other side of the world when it compares these paintings to what had been going on in eighteenth century England, much like the casta paintings, English conversation pictures had been used to express social beliefs about the place of an individual in a society.   In this summary, I explore the main abstractions and ideas discussed in the article with regard to the casta paintings.   Moriuchi