Week 3: The Colonial Experience

This week we discussed how the colonization influenced the Latin American identity. During the colonial rule, Latin American demography came to consist of a great diversity of people; Europeans, the Indigenous peoples and Africans. Casta paintings are a visualization of the desire to make sense and control this extensive diversity of population. I had personally never heard about these before, and to be honest, I found their message quite confusing. Each one of them portray a family with the mother and the father being of different races, and their child, which is, naturally, a mixture of the parents. My first impression was surprise. I was mostly surprised that they portrayed mixed raced families, because my initial thought was that the Spaniards wanted to reach homogeneity and avoid the intermingling between the people. However, I came to realize that they didn't portray all families as equals. White people are often painted in fancy clothing and in calm nature in the background. The paintings often include fruits and animals from the New World. On the other hand, black people and the indigenous are often painted in a harsher environment and in less clothing. Sometimes they are even painted in violent scenes. I also noted that the paintings include very few white males. The majority of the men in these paintings are black, indigenous or of some mixture. I think these details matter because they highlight the superiority of the whites. 

The second reading we had was about Catalina de Erauso. First, I was amused of how much it reminded me of the disney movie Mulan. I think seeing Catalina as gender-queer or transgendered is a modern way of interpreting her story. Therefore, if we only read her as a transgendered person we might misinterpret some of her motives. Maybe she fled the monastery because she was abused and disguised as a male because that was probably her only option to avoid getting caught or running into some other problems if she appeared as a woman. Clearly she wasn't fond of her life in the monastery and saw that men had better opportunities in the world. I don't think there is anything that was "ahead of her time", I think she was rather a rebel who in multiple occasions struggled to follow the common norms and rules. I don't see her as politically oriented, trying to enhance women's status or opportunities in the male dominated fields, and thus, I wouldn't call her a "feminist". However, the fact that she decided to remain as a male after revealing herself, illustrates that maybe she (or he) was gender-queer or transgender. Nevertheless, while it is interesting to find these kinds of people in the history, I don't think it adds much to the story if she felt like she was in the wrong body or if she did it for other reasons. I think the story gets a happy ending when her accomplishments are acknowledged and she gets to keep her new identity, as a "he".  



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Week 12: Speaking Truth to Power

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Week 13: Towards an Uncertain Future

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Introduction

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Hello everyone!  My name is Emilia and I'm a 2nd year sociology student at UBC. I was born and raised in Helsinki, Finland, where I'll be spending this winter term. When I started at UBC I had planned to major in cognitive systems, which then turned out to be the wrong program for me. Hence, I changed into sociology and now I'm considering taking Latin American Studies either as another major or as a minor. My interest in Latin America primarily comes from my high school exchange year to Argentina. I spent a year living in Córdoba Capital, went to school there and experienced their day-to-day life. I fell in love with the culture, language and their way of living. I was also able to visit Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and later on (last reading week, hahah) Mexico. I am not sure where a passion like this could lead in the future, but for now I am excited to gain insight of the region from an academic perspective. I look forward to gain a better understanding of the Latin Americ
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