Making of Latin America

I really enjoyed reading I, Rigoberta Menchu this week as it is a part of history we are not told about in the US especially with it being that of a woman. In our discussion for this book, we talked about how there is a sense of community for these people compared to those who live in the united states. While I found this part of the discussion interesting a part that we talked about that really caught my attention was that the pay system that is pretty much slavery still happens today. I find this absolutely infuriating and so disturbing. I hate that there are people who are not being treated as HUMAN BEINGS, instead of as objects that can work. It has me wondering if there is anything that can be done to help or to raise more awareness of this topic as I just learned about this. Overall, I just find it absurd that a system like this is still around today.  

  Hello Illy, I really enjoyed reading about your interpretation of Gullien's poem and how the poem brought out hopefulness for you. I found this poem to be a good break from the sad things we talk about as well. Overall, I found your interpretation to be very beautiful and it made me think about life in general.

          This week I was really interested in the poem "Out of the Game" by Padilla. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of analyzing poems because I am more of a literal person rather than figuring out what other meanings behind what the author is saying. Due to this, I find the discussions we have about the poems to be very helpful, especially with the Padilla poem. When reading the poem, I took it very literally which was, in my mind, not the right way to go about it. But as we talked about it as a class I was able to actually see the double meanings in place. For example, I found the circus setting very interesting because someone pointed out how it brought out the feeling of fear but also forced happiness. But overall, I found the discussion very helpful and allowed me to see the poem in a new light. 

Before this week I actually never heard of Eva Peron and knew nothing about her and found "her story" to be quite interesting but disturbing. I am actually quite surprised that she was never mentioned in any of my Spanish classes, especially with how influential she was. One specific part that I found interesting that was talked about was that it seemed she took to more of a men's role than Peron did. This was very unheard of during this time and I think this is part of why people during this time, especially men, were not a fan of her. Other than that overall I found the book to be quite disturbing at parts especially being a woman myself. 

 Hello, Lillie I really enjoyed reading your thoughts especially when you related them to today's society. Women today are held to such high standards and due to that many women find it so hard to love themselves for who they are. I think that woman like Kahlo is so important because it reminds women that it is okay not to be perfect and that other opinions should not matter. 

     During class, we talked about if we thought that the revolution was a myth, success, or failure. In our learning community, we talked about how it really depended on the viewpoint of who was looking at it. We also talked about how if the revolution was ever really over as well and we thought that it was still an ongoing thing but there were breaks throughout the years. One of these “breaks” we talked about was the Olympics held in Mexico in 1968. We considered this a break because it had all of Mexico focusing on their image for other countries rather than the issues that were happening. I think that by hosting the Olympics Mexico was both helped and hurt. It helped as people of different countries were able to recognize how far Mexico has come and inform them that they are not the third-world country they are thought to be. But about ten days before the Olympics, Mexico had a tragedy known as the Tlatelolco Massacre causing them to whitewash the area because they wanted to uphold