Week Three - The Colonial Experience

I found the videos and readings for this week very interesting, specially the reading on Catalina de Erauso. I find her story and character very fascinating! From the very beginning you get a sense that she doesn't feel like she belongs. I don't believe she would have just left due to the altercation she had with one of the sisters she mentioned. I feel that this pushed her over the edge and left due to a variety of reasons. She even goes on later about how she needs to get as far away as possible from that place! Nevertheless, it must have taken a lot of bravery to run way and try to survive by yourself at such a young age , specially being a girl.

The reading also made me wonder what it must have been like for a Transgender in that time. Did she know who she was? Did she want to become a man because of all the opportunities it presented or did she always feel like she wasn't a woman? She was also able to disguise herself very well. Did she have the characteristics of a man? Back at that time there was no make-up or plastic surgery to transform your gender. All she mentioned was that she cut her hair and voila! She managed to trick everyone in her life that she was a man. She even managed to kill of dozens of men and win back her flag from an army of indians. (I hope this was not exaggerated and biased since she was the one describing it!

Another thing that also fascinated me was the fact that she crossed paths with her brother. Not only had she never met him but they happened to find each other completely on the other side of the world! Throughout her memoir, it always showed that she found herself in trouble and altercations with people. The tone that she presents it in makes it seem like she was the victim and was always the target but I feel like it has to do with who she was as a person. I could be wrong; maybe people picked on her because of the way she looked and even sounded (Girly).

Week 2 Meeting of two worlds

My impression, before reading these two pieces, of Columbus was very good and I admired his feats. Now I see that he was cruel and ignoble in his dealing with the native people of the "New World". Throughout the Journal he speaks of ways to trick the Natives in order to be welcomed in the Future in order to gain from their fortunes.

One of the things that stood out from his Journal is how he could not properly describe the beauty of this world that he found and he tries to explain that he never will be able to explain it with words and that it can only be understood if seen by eye. Also, the fact that he kept on lying to his crew at the beginning of his journal was a bit bizarre. Was he trying to trick them to think that they haven't traveled far? This might make sense in the view that it will stop his crew from giving up and reaching a conclusion that they will never reach their destination of Asia. 

Throughout the Journal you can also sense the tone of superiority Columbus felt he had over these Native people. He seemed to think they were weak and pushovers compared to a Spaniard. He also seemed to be quite confident that converting everyone into Christianity was a simple task and that the Native People did not have a good. He also was confident that the native people saw him and his men as descendants from heaven. For one, the communication between the two parties were limited to hand gestures and I think that this was more of misinterpretation of his liking.

The second reading noted the cruelty of conquistadors and Christianity. All this greed led to the murder of many innocent Indians in order to gain from their fortunes! I might say that 1842 was the brought the beginning of Latin America but it also brought the destruction of all religions and cultures in these regions.

Student Videos - 2014 Response

After watching all of the student videos of 2014 there were two that stood out to me the most: "The Terror" and "Towards an Uncertain Future". I found that both of these videos kept me listening and did not bore me like some of the other videos done by other groups. They did a great job with their visualization and narration of the information at hand and I hope that I'm not being biased for the reasons that most of "The Terror" and parts of "Towards an Uncertain Future" were placed in Peru. Something I also liked about these videos was the background music which set the mood of the setting for the information they were giving us; this is something that I will keep in mind and most likely incorporate in my own project.

There were a few videos that did not really catch my attention but since we have to pick the worst two I chose "The Meeting of Two Worlds" and "Speaking Truth to Power" as the bottom two. The biggest reason for my decision is the lack of visualization that they incorporated in both videos; specially in "Speaking Truth to Power" were visualization was non-existent and it was even hard to understand the second half of the video due to the quality of the audio. Even the narrative of both videos were dull and most parts were clearly read right of a piece of paper with no charisma, pitch, or tone. This is also something that I will keep in mind for my project. Being able to narrate a video with the proper pitch and tone to capture your audience is not as simple as it sounds!

I'm looking forward to all the workshops we will have for creating our videos as my knowledge in that field is very limited. Being able to visually inspire, teach, or demonstrate through a video is a very valuable skill to have and I'm glad I will get to practice it in this class. These student videos from last year are a great bench mark for our projects and I hope I can produce something better this year!

Introduction

Hi there!

My name is Piero and I'm a fourth year commerce student. I was born in Peru but moved to Vancouver at the age of 9. This is the third course I have ever taken outside of commerce and I'm really excited.  I certainly don't feel that I know much about the place that I was born in or its culture and this class seems like the perfect first step; it already got me thinking about what Latin America really is! I am hoping the course covers parts of Peru's history but I'm also very interested of the history of Latin America as a whole. I am looking forward to all the future discussions and learning about the beauty of Latin America.