Imagining Spanish America as Eden and sublime force, colonial environmental aesthetics inaugurated American "disponibilité," figuring environment in the colonial matrix of power as the non-place outside of European time and space. The image of the garden evoked by this aesthetics corresponded to the desired, secular transformation of…

As a graduate student in the Latin American Studies Program, my academic interests have taken me through an interdisciplinary journey mapped by a series of courses on race, class, gender, indigeneity, globalization, transnational migration, and the intersectionality of all these social formations. However, I was struck by the persistent absence of…

In Spanish language curricula, it is essential that we teach about "afrodescendientes" in Latin America and the Caribbean to present an inclusive representation of the diverse people, practices, and cultural products. Their perspectives and cultural products must be integrated in the curricula of Spanish undergraduate programs beyond the…

The poem "Ritmos negros del Perú" by Afro-Peruvian writer Nicomedes Santa Cruz recovers Afro-Peruvian history and agency through the retelling of the journey of a mythical grandmother. Through the retelling of her story, the poet claims blackness and African roots as pillars of Peruvian culture. In so doing, Santa Cruz opens the door not…

In times of crisis when literature and world languages are threatened by economic hardship, they should draw closer to African diaspora studies. The African diaspora is so vast, longstanding, and diverse that it must be studied using a comparative, multilingual, interdisciplinary, and international approach that includes study in French,…

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is always keen on presenting to the people the various facets of their history. His literary language acts as effective means for describing the critical historical aspects of Latin America because the legacy of colonialism had destroyed so many important traces of the native culture of that area. This has led him to search…

Historians have noted that male bureaucrats and natural resource experts tended to dominate early twentieth-century national and hemispheric conservationist movements in Latin America, but a constellation of female activists, notable among them Gabriela Mistral, strengthened conservationism in the cultural sphere. Capitalizing on her leadership in…

The hegemonic ideology of racial democracy and rural cultural norms of racial silence continue to inform racial identities and national racial discourse in Brazil, in this case within the Landless Rural Workers' Movement (MST), a left-wing movement for agrarian reform. In this article I engage in textual analysis of a textbook from the MST's youth…

The first two Peronist governments (1946-1955) introduced extensive social reforms that notably improved working conditions and systematised vocational training. Thereby the foundations of the Argentine welfare state were laid and the working masses were socially included to an unprecedented degree: thus, they also constituted the majority of…

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a group of intellectuals and Spanish scientists found it necessary to resume cultural relations with Latin American countries that had been Spanish colonies in the past. In order to do this, they promoted a school of thought called "Hispano-Americanism", which aimed to create a…

This paper presents the results of a case study that was conducted to investigate the perceived effectiveness of a blended (online and face-to-face) Latin American Civilization Spanish class offered at a mid-sized Midwestern university. Students (N = 23) completed pre and post-course surveys in which they indicated their perceived comfort levels…

The purpose of the article is to introduce and recommend to United States educators a number of films produced during the last two decades which realistically portray social problems of Latin America. These films provide historians with valuable documents from which to study Latin American society. (SM)

This collective biography offers insight into the more famous and infamous women in Mexico's history and weaves the tale of how their ways and deeds have shaped both a culture and a nation. The book starts with the conquest and ends with the twentieth century, outlining the lives of Mexican women and their causes. The women described in the book…

This guide to films suitable for college courses on Latin American civilization discusses the value of film as a tool for teaching, how to order and use films, and films currently available but unsuited to college audiences. Sixty-four educational films are listed by topic and overall evaluation; a more complete description, including location…

In order to provide information missing from elementary and secondary educational materials, briefly reviews the history, geography, and current political, economic, demographic, and social characteristics of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Some information is also given about Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize.