Top products from r/asklatinamerica

I think that Sor Juana's plays in nahuatl are religious. And the music compositions in nahuatl are religious too.

The book I was talking about is the Florentine Codex. It is written in nahuatl and Spanish and it is about the Aztec world (customs, religion, and even animals and way of living). It was written by Indians that were taught to write, under the supervision of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún. If I remember correctly these people that learned arts and writing had been nobles before the conquest. It is hard to find sources on my phone. The book can be read online:

https://tecpaocelotl.livejournal.com/25254.html

I did not know about Tupi, but it sounds interesting. I will take a look at that. The Brazilian empire is a fascinating topic. I have seen some videos online that talk about it. I have never learned Portuguese, but I can get way more than the general idea. Brazilian YouTubers produce a lot of good videos about history!

In Mexico at first friars tried to evangelize in the indigenous languages, but because it is too much work (they did learned the languages, and even wrote grammars sometimes though) they decided to stick to nahuatl, the biggest language. They kept using the language also for some legal affairs until the crown changed the policy hundreds of years later. I read the detailed story in the following book:

https://www.amazon.com/Empires-Word-Language-History-World/dp/0060935723/ref=asc_df_0060935723/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312155960128&hvpos=1o3&hvnetw=g&hvrand=11995308479004741996&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9007733&hvtargid=pla-452502828902&psc=1

What he says makes a lot of sense, but I have never tried to find other sources. I guess there are many sources in Spanish concerning the use of nahuatl after the conquest. This book also talks about the history of Portuguese and other global languages.

I read Vasconcelos' essay not long ago, because I found an article somewhere on the construction of the Mexican identity. It seems that the phenomenon of trying to find elements to be different from Europe at the end of the XIXth century happened all across Latin America then. Ironically nationalism at that time seemed to have been a European idea too.

I do not know of any other works like Vasconcelos', but you should look into what his friends were doing at the time. They might have had similar ideas. This is a TV show he made in the 50s:

https://youtu.be/Hmhq1bcnrKM

He appears in the show and mainly discusses history.

You should also look into Mexican muralism (ca 1920). The painters incorporate indigenous elements in their works (and socialism too):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_muralism

Cambridge History of Latin America gives a pretty great overview of each Latin American country. There are several volumes, and the volume on 20th century history is really fascinating.

I would check your local library for a copy. But here is what the book looks like:

The Cambridge History of Latin America, Volume 2: Colonial Latin America https://www.amazon.com/dp/0521245168/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_QQoKDbAVDNBNZ

I don’t know if this helps any since it’s public knowledge at this point but Fidel Castro’s sister has a very good book about her life. Fidel y Raúl, mis hermanos. It’s basically a view of the Cuban revolution from a woman’s perspective. It touches a lot on family, the story of her mother, sisters, female friends and how they were involved in supporting the revolution and how they later turned against it. Its a very feminine book in the way the story is told. It almost borders on being catty/gossipy when it comes to family issues such as when she talks about Fidel Castro’s ex-wife’s family. I heard the book on audible (got it for free) and it was as if I was hearing the stories my grandmother used to tell me about her life.

I am going to be charitable and assume you are a young person who has not had the opportunity to read much of the science around "race" yet. Almost all biologists, anthropologists, and social scientists agree that there is no such thing as biological race. For an easily accessible overview, I suggest the book Superior: The Return of Race Science by Indian-British author Angela Saini. If you don't want to read a book, here's an article from Harvard explaining the basic concepts. I encourage you to do your own research from reputable sources.

Sidenote: US Americans used to believe that Jews were athletically superior to all other groups. In the 1930s they dominated boxing and basketball. No one thinks that now. Why? Did their genetics change so radically in a few decades? Or did they just shift their focus to academics, business, and other things?

Encourage him to go out for a walk in the midday sun each day for 30 minutes.

This book has a lot of good techniques, you can read it and teach him:

https://www.amazon.com/Depression-Cure-6-Step-Program-without/dp/0738213888/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=depression+cure&qid=1555951660&s=gateway&sr=8-2

African-Americans aren’t “immigrants” in the traditional sense of the word. Most popular forms of American music (Jazz, Rock, Hip-Hop) started out as just an African-American thing. Soul Food is an American thing. You obviously don’t know about the Harlem Renaissance, and have never read the works of Langston Hughs or Zora Neal Hurston. The Nation of Islam, has a very unorthodox interpretation of the Quran that is really only found with black folks in America. I could go on, but you get my point.

Edit: Just read the rest of the thread and realized you were just talking about these white folks. Lol.

I recommend reading the book Better Angels of our Nation by Steven Pinker.

https://www.amazon.com.br/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0143122010

It's the most extensive research on the topic and he goes into very in depth details with massive historical evidence on why most of what you said above is incorrect.

Because the entire east of Bolivia doesn't produce shit for the country while the west produces almost 77% of the national income so he made a political campaign based of the coca industry aka drugs. He allowed his own people to produce as much cocaine as they wanted to without facing any sort of consequence which is why the first thing he did as president was kick the US drug task force out of the country because he knew that they would expose this. And anytime a journalist exposed him he would exile them from Bolivia and in the end his own people in the east ended up turning against him because he sold land regions to China and Russia handing Bolivian resources to them and getting nothing in return.

If you really want to know all the details buy this book https://www.amazon.com/Mito-Enga%C3%B1o-Spanish-Carlos-Valverde/dp/1544138881/ref=sr_1_14?keywords=Evo+Morales&qid=1572199550&sr=8-14

https://www.amazon.com/Fue-Cuba-infiltracion-cubano-sovietica-Latinoamerica/dp/9500749173

His government may not have been publicly pro-Nazi, and he didn't declare Argentina for the Axis, but Peron's Nazi ties and sympathies are very well documented.

Half-Century Later, a New Look at Argentine-Nazi Ties (NYT)

The Real Odessa: How Peron Brought the Nazi War Criminals to Argentina by Uki Goni

I would argue that US narcointervention (or narcoterrorism depending on your view) over the last 50 years is a primary reason for much of the socioeconomic turmoil and violence in modern Honduran society. Found this blurb that sheds some light:

"Honduras's economy was framed by stagnating agricultural production, de-industrialization, deteriorating terms of trade, the continuing problems of the Central American common market, the decline of international financial reserves, salary decline, and increasing unemployment and underemployment. Honduras, like El Salvador, was increasingly dependent on economic assistance from the United States. In Honduras, efforts to establish guerrilla movements foundered on the generally conservative attitude of the population. Nevertheless, fears that the civil wars wracking its neighbors might spread to the country led to the killings and disappearances of leftists, spearheaded by the army's Battalion 316. Relatively stable Honduras became a key base for the Reagan administration's response to the central American 'crisis'. US troops held large military exercises in Honduras during the 1980s, and trained thousands of Salvadorans in the country. The nation also hosted bases for the Nicaraguan Contras."

This book is enlightening on the subject matter.

"This report tells an infuriating story of FBI misconduct leading all the way to the Reagan White House. Gelbspan, a Pulitizer Prize-winning journalist now with the Boston Globe, focuses on Frank Varelli, a Salvadoran-born FBI employee who helped the bureau infiltrate and harass CISPES, a group opposed to Reagan policies in Central America. The administration branded such groups 'terrorist,' the author explains, 'simply because some of their opinions may conform to some positions held by the Soviet Union or another government which is considered hostile to the United States.'"

Specifically you should learn about Operation Condor and how such impacted Central America, including Honduras, over the last 50 years.

Also, though less specific to Honduras, you should also read about COINTELPRO, which is nevertheless related to US narcointervention throughout South and Central America - particularly how anti-leftist CIA and FBI intervention has impacted the societies and civilian populations of those nations even today.

I'm not suggesting these interventions are the sole reason for all the violence in Honduras today; it's a multifaceted issue with many other variables/factors in play, including having those population's basic needs met, corruption of government, low SES, underdeveloped infrastructure, poor quality or consistency in education, among others. But US political and narco interventionism throughout recent history in the Americas has definitely played an influential role.

Ugh, some of these answers grind my gears. Just a heads up, you might get some weird comments, OP, like “we don't have races, we have ethnicities,” or “we're all [insert nationality] here!”

It's because many Latin Americans are convinced that racial divisions either don't exist in their countries (anymore) or that any appearance of racial divide is better explained by more inoffensive abstractions, such as classism or colorism. This always seemed like a sleazy sleight-of-hand to me.

Fuck it, I'm in the mood to write so here's an obnoxious wall of text:

---

We have deeply racial divisions. It was true before the 20th century and it didn't suddenly stop being true on January 1st, 1900. This has always been obvious to me and at the same time totally unfathomable to my fellow Mexicans. If knowing is half the battle then most Mexicans are on the battlefield naked except for a tightly wrapped blindfold around their head.

Mexicans are generally convinced that there's no racism here!—or they accuse me of being too “racially-minded,” a tragic victim of Americanization. Their reaction is typically snarky (though sometimes angry!) at the presumption that Mexicans could possibly be so naive or regressive like those poor gringos up there.

And yet I would see these same people engage in what was clearly racially prejudiced attitudes and biases all the time! It seemed very hypocritical to me and it turns out academics are well aware of this contradiction. In a nutshell: All Latin American countries, at some point, invented for themselves a homogenous, race-neutral national identity. This was usually adopted after a major civil conflict in order to promote social cohesion.

Specifically speaking about Mexico, Macario Shettino writes in his fantastic Cien años de confusión:

> Es propio de los regímenes modernos crear construcciones culturales que permitan esa comunidad imaginaria indispensable, La Nación. Pero cada construcción cultural tiene efectos adicionales: no sólo provee legitimidad al régimen, también refuerza o moldea la cultura política de la sociedad y abre o limita las esferas social y económica.”

... and what would be the basis of this new national identity? Andrés Molina Enríquez proposed in 1909:

> “La base fundamental e indeclinable de todo trabajo encaminado en lo futuro al bien del país, tiene que ser la continuación de los mestizos como elemento étnico preponderante y como clase política directora de la población.”

... and what were the effects of this national fairy-tale? Back to Macario Shettino:

> Los Mexicanos viven un poco mejor, porque todo el planeta vive un poco mejor a fines del siglo XX, pero sólo por eso. En el transcurso del siglo, la distribución del ingreso y la riqueza nunca mejoró significativamente. No se redujeron la discriminación ni el racismo de los mestizos, no cambió la estructura estamental, casi de castas, que arrastramos desde la Colonia.

Emphasis mine.

Mestizos won the civil war and rebuilt society in their image—and theirs only. As Guillermo Bonfil Batalla writes in his brilliant México Profundo (English translation here):

> El criollo ya no contaba como categoría histórica capaz de encarnar la nacionalidad mexicana: desde el triunfo liberal de 1857 ese papel ideológico lo desempeñaba el mestizo, visto siempre como resultado de la confluencia enriquecedora de dos razas y dos culturas. Los que se asumen mestizos no se quieren criollos, pero mucho menos indios; pretenden ser algo nuevo cuyos contenidos nunca se definen satisfactoriamente.

Since then, implicit in being born on Mexican soil was a choice: Are you in or are you out? In to what, exactly? Wiping your D&D character sheet clean of any pre-Civil war racial identity and replacing it (retconning it?) with the default mestizo back story based on Meshica iconography provided by the new political regime.

What do you get in return? The promise of social cohesion! Inclusion! And for the cynic in me: The plausible deniability to say “There's no racism here! We're all Mexican after all!” Except you can't wipe your racial identity clean. Yes, it's a social construct, but society is inescapable. Therefore, because race is written on our face, our skin, our bones, our speech, and our pride, anyone who could not easily submit to this fictional identity was summarily marginalized.

That's how the schizophrenia of Mexican society was born. (See Alan Knight's The Idea of Race in Latin America, 1870-1940.)

What should have happened? A complete dismantling of the Colonial caste system, for starters. But instead what happened was a post-racial fairy-tale band-aid that Mexicans believe to this day. Hence, a supposedly mestiza woman can be called “pinche india” by a supposedly mestizo man to the shock of literally no one. This isn't colorism, by the way! It's not because her skin is merely darker. It's because less than a century ago her heritage, the community she's from, her body-type, her facial features, etc. placed her in a different racial caste than his. The man's comment reveals the underlying schizophrenia caused by the 20th century process of de-indianization.

A lot of this is very Mexico-oriented, but this conflict between criollos, mestizos, and indios is replicated in many Latin American countries. Furthermore, childish comparisons with the U.S. have given Latin Americans a very dim awareness of their own racism.