Group items tagged

This is a blog from Pepito Valenzuela who was my closest friend when I lived in Ecuador. His blog is a combination of all of his life's thoughts in which he includes everything from stories to poems to pictures.

This is a blog written by one of my friends from Argentina. In this particular blog Aniko Villalba is funded by an Argentinean travel company to document her experiences in Guatemala. She is a well trained journalist and her colorful descriptions of everyday life in the places she visits are unmatched.

This blog describes a Pentecostal movement called Charismatic, headed by the bishops in Guatemala. The movement is about deepening the spirituality in the lives of the church members and the priests. The blog also describes the dangers of the movement going beyond the control of the Church, and into "peculiar kinds of prayers, exclusive attitudes... and overemphasis on emotions".

This blog discusses how Evangelicalism works as a frame for civil society in Venezuela due to the restrictions that the church enforces. This particular blog post also happens to be written by David Smilde, the author of the current book we are reading.

Bryan Derballa is from my hometown, and has done a great deal of excellent photojournalism work-recently traveling to Venezuela during the referendum vote Hugo Chávez (the current controversial president of Venezuela) put forth to eliminate the law limiting the amount of years he could run for re-election and remain in office. I frequent his blog, featuring Derballa's work along with other artists from North Carolina, California, and New York. The photos document both the support and protest towards Chávez during the referendum vote last February.

This source talks about the policys thaa are being made to combat the crime in Mexico. It focuses on what the government is working on to deal with the issue.

I read this article a few months ago in the Times and found it to be an interesting look into the lives of what some may call a branch of Latin American counter-culture. One of the reasons this article caught my attention is because of the normalcy of Cumbio. She seems like an ordinary person whose only claim to fame is her photos.

Blog from 2008: Growing acceptance of homosexuals in Latin America

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This website provides an insight into issues that are affecting the Latino community now. It not only contains world news but also entertainment news as well. I thought this would be helpful as we can access articles from it.

The author of this blog uses such examples as international fast-food franchises and the massive memorial to Michael Jackson in Mexico City to declare that Latin American culture is becoming one with American culture. In the author's view, Mexico is losing its "foreignness" to Americans.

Magnum photographer, Christopher Anderson's new book Capitolio explores a poignant visual insight into the degeneration of Caracas, which was once Latin America's most economically advanced cities and is now plagued with chaos and despair. Murders in Caracas have grown so dramatically that they have become accepted as ordinary, and thus looking at the homicide statistics has become mundane. His images of blood and trash serve to highlight their omnipresence in the daily lives of Venezuelans. He opens with action scenes, and then moves to rural areas where the seeds of the infrastructure where set, before submerging into the hysteria of President Chavez. The book's name derives from a metaphor of an old city-center government building that exports revolution while the city itself like the building deteriorates. Anderson traveled into the countries interior to depict the polluted Lake Maracaibo in order to exemplify the interdependence between the United States, the main consumer of Venezuela's oil, and President Chavez. Anderson photographs a sugar harvester in Barinas, the town where Chavez was born into poverty and now transformed into a laboratory for revolutionary projects. When asked about the future of Venezuela, Mr. Anderson said his book is not a source for answers, but an insight for strangers.

This is article is especially relevant to the discussion we had in class earlier today about sex education in Latin America. At the beginning of August, Heath and Education ministers from different Latin American countries, joined together and discussed the notion of sexual education. They concluded that providing comprehensive sexual education courses throughout schools, will actually serve as prevention towards HIV/AIDS.

Mexico, the second most populous country in Latin America, has a critical need for contraception, but is unable to meet the demand due to social and economic factors. Access and education must be improved so that women may live in dignity—and equality with men.

A Worldfocus contributing blogger writes that a zero tolerance policy intended to curb crime in Mexico has forced some street children into prostitution.

This article shows the spread of Evangelical Protestantism through the eyes of a devoted Catholic. His views, although different from what we have read so far in Smilde's ethnography, provide a new look into what could be causing the decreasing of Catholisism in Latin America.

Although the previously bookmarked article seeks to establish an outline of the human or women rights violations that occur within Guatemala, here, author Karim Velasco, sheds light upon newly distinguished laws and explains despite their hopeful goals, why they have ceased to work effectively. She argues that because of the "lack of effective investigation and prevention strategies of the Guatemalan authorities", women continue to be raped, tortured, and murdered at an increasing rate. Because of pressures from the European Parliament to abide by human rights laws, "on April 9, 2008, Guatemalan Congressed passed the 'Law Against Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women Act' to severely punish any kind of gender-based violence..." However, because the violence stems from the power inequality between men and women in the first place, there is little belief or evidence that this Act will be implemented or strongly enforced by the men in power who seek to represent masculinity or display a constant idea of machismo.