Making of Latin America

     This week I found going through Cortez's, Columbus’s, and Diaz’s different writings very interesting. Columbus’s letter was the first one we read about and his motives were more like a sales pitch. He wrote the letter to convince people to journey to the new world. To do this he talks a lot about the geography, the people, and the economic potentials. The second document that we read was Cortez’s letter. In his letter he talks a lot about how the society of the natives is a lot like Spain’s but isn’t as sophisticated because they don’t believe in god. From there he also talks about how he plans to convert the indiginous to Christianity. He talks about this as a hope to be vindicated from his actions of going against the king.The final document was Diaz’s memoirs. This document talks about the conquest sort of as a whole. He talks about the number of ships they had, Cortez’s role, details of men involved and so much more. His reasoning for writing this was to give inf...

  Hello Linnea, I found your final sentence very intriguing. Throughout history, it seems that everything that a man does is pointed out while the woman’s accomplishments are pushed to the side. I think that nowadays we don’t have as much of it but it is still there. I think this has to do with the fact of how people viewed women in the past and how that has been changing throughout the years.

This week, we talked about analyzing data and I found it very interesting. In the past, I have analyzed pieces of data but never in so much depth and with the need for critical thinking. The analysis has always just been “answer this question” and just by skimming the text, the answer could be found. This class pushes for more critical thinking than any class I have taken in the past. I think this is a good skill to be learning and pushing because it helps prepare you for when you are in the real world and need to think outside of the box.  To go with the critical thinking we have also been learning about how perspectives come into play. Everyone has a different perspective on things. This perspective can cause misunderstanding on things. Also, in a historical document, like the letter Columbus wrote that we read, perspective is important. Other than just perspective there’s the reasoning behind writing it. These two things can cause a big area of just missing information and a m...

    This class has brought multiple new perspectives to light. All throughout my history classes, I have learned about the winner’s point of view and what they wanted us to know. They made it seem like what they were doing was the right thing to do. But now that I have learned a little of the native’s point of view everything that I previously learned was blown way out of proportion. The one thing that stuck with me throughout the past two weeks was how the Europeans described the natives as uncivilized but yet when we talked about everything the Europeans have done it seems that they are more uncivilized. Such as when we were talking about the Aztecs doing human sacrifices our history book makes it seem that thousands were killed this way but yet only 126 skulls were actually found in the area this would happen. But yet the European religion has the same concept as people without the same view were stoned and burned at the stake. In my mind being stoned or burned at the sta...

  Hi Maddie, what made you interested in majoring in music? I also was interested in the study abroad program. Where do you want to study abroad?