LAS 470 Homework and Reflections

In 2016, I had the opportunity to travel to Managua on a trip with my church (it was kind of voluntourism, but kind of a missions trip) and the first day we saw the more scenic parts of the capital. On the way, we passed this: a crazy colorful and weird array of metal statutes with trees and a traffic circle featuring none other than Hugo Chavez. At the time, I didn't who Hugo Chavez was aside from the late-night ramblings of Sean Hannity in middle school through my door (thanks, dad.) I certainly had no idea what these statutes were for and how they were so interconnected to political alliances. So, I wanted to investigate the past, present and future of these odd pieces of art: why they were created, what the public thinks about them and what (if any) plans the city or the country has for them in the future. Here is a disjunct summary of everything I found. There was a blog that are clearly from a tourist recounting the "weirdest places to visit in Managua" and ...

This piece explores an issue that is important but one that I haven't really thought about: tourism for the purposes of sex. I found the most interesting parts of the article to be her discussions on Cuban identities, state sponsorship and control of certain representations, and how her status as a researcher limited her ability to follow "the book" of research methods. On page 15, Daigle provides four roles that Cubans are allowed to play in society: "the black/animalistic man, the white/masculine man, the white/virtuous woman, and the black/sensualized woman. The culture of jineterisma and jinteras  stereotypically, by Daigle's account, fall into the fourth category, but that concept is much more fluid. She does call the division of these social dynamics into quadrants an oversimplification, since the nature of "sexual-affective relationships" is quite hard to categorize. The spectrum could include everything from prostitution to long-lasting romant...

This article focuses on a common metaphorical trope in American rhetoric throughout modern American history: relating immigrants to disease. The article focuses on "three periods of immigration history" 1880-1924 (when the National Origins Act was passed and racially based quotas were enacted, the "era of retrenchment and exclusion from 1924 to 1965 when far fewer immigrants entered" and "1965 to the present, when family reunification laws became the centerpiece of immigration policy" (Markel and Stern 757). During all these periods, immigrants were associated with the invasive destruction of disease, both physically and metaphorically, and this association affected their time in America from the moment they landed. Stories from Ellis Island abound where immigrants "passed through an elaborate set of medical and psychological criteria that were quite real and frightening" (762). All of this happened on a racial basis in line with the stereotypes ...

As I'm trying to make sense of this and its connection to our course, I think of the war metaphor and how it motivates so many facets of our society. War is synonymous with victory, with patriotism and nationalism, and with the struggle against invasive "evil." Sontag's piece brings these associations into question by unpacking the assumptions or pretenses that underlie them. She begins by referencing the Aristotelian definition of metaphor: giving the thing a name that belongs to something else. Are the people of Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, Chavez's Venezuela, or Castro's Cuba evil because of the actions and consequences provoke negative consequences around the world? No, but metaphors like "the Axis of Evil" that associate an entire country of people with a leader with violent tendencies brings unwarranted stigma to all people from that country. Further, the association of disease like HIV, syphilis or COVID-19 with objective evil ignores the f...

We have said in this class that every decision made in film is intentional, from casting, to costumes, to the individual choices actors make, and the ones that their directors and producers impose upon them. Therefore, when a theme is repeated in a film, it should receive extra attention. Let’s explore the casting decisions first, beginning with the infamous protagonist, Tony Montana. First, why cast Al Pacino? He’s an Italian-American, and Tony Montana is Cuban. As far as I’m aware, Al Pacino has no connection to Cubano culture; his main acting shtick is as an Italian mob man, so they likely casted him as Montana to emphasize connection to organized crime, since he is a drug kingpin. This plays right into the contemporary political narratives, such as the war on drugs and the persistent race tensions following the Mariel boat-lift, which brought some of the first non-white Cuban exiles.  However, as O’Brien points out in her analysis, Pacino’s “ridiculous accent” and his “brown...

 The case study of Chile provides interesting analysis of Latin American consumption in media. Historically, media’s influence in the overthrow of Salvador Allende and the coup of Pinochet is undeniable, illuminating the voracious desire for colonial consumption by the US and the willingness of the Chilean elite to welcome it. No newspaper was more influential than El Mercurio . This newspaper, according to the Pinochet file, had direct ties to the exploits of Kissinger and the CIA in its efforts to negatively propagandize Allende and bring about his overthrow. In this way, the consumption of Latin America, by readers of El Mercurio  both domestically and abroad, was skewed and biased toward US interests. The New York Times article chronicles the blatant denial of human rights abuses during the Pinochet regime, which are now widely known and documented. I was surprised by the acknowledgement of the connection of the Edwards family to the NYT, and I appreciated the transparency...

The film The Three Caballeros  provides an interesting take on early 1900s conceptions of Latin America, and Latin Americans. Almost all of the "neighbors" were the idealized conception of Latin Americans from the "American" (meaning United States citizen/resident) point of view. They were attractive, fit, mestizo and dressed in traditional clothes that mainly the wealthy could afford. These conceptions were meant to portray a sense of opulence in Latin America that would make it attractive to United States investment, both economically, culturally, and familially. None of the actresses represented indigenous culture, it was all Spanish roots. Americans consume,, traditionally and currently, only the best of Latin America: from the best land, to the best food, to the best women, to the best culture (best being the most similar and understandable without empathy), etc. Therefore, idealized conceptions of Latin America increase the desire, particularly in white, wealt...

Galeano 156-65: Galeano reflects on the power of petroleum as “a magnet for foreign capital” and a tool for economic exploitation by the global north in Latin America. He notes the power of oil companies to intervene in politics, including but not limited to coups, wars, and controlling the monopoly of violence through financial corruption of the military. Economically, the US enjoys a “ten to one” profit ratio compared to Latin America, such that every “$11 that the derivatives ... sell for, countries exporting ... get a sum total of $1 from taxes and extraction costs.” If this isn’t exploitation, I’m not sure what is. Further, this system wasn’t in place until “the United States became a net importer and the cartel began applying a new policy.” This “odd inversion of the ‘laws of the market’” as Galeano calls it, is a morally indefensible but economically justifiable paradox that disproportionately benefits the United States at the expense of primary product producers in countries...

Fitzcarraldo Reflection **This post was written on 1/26, but I forgot to publish it.** I'll start this post by stating that I'm no film expert or critic, so I don't envision this being the most refined analysis. My impression of Fitzcarraldo is a mix of confusion, frustration and respect for the nature in which dynamics of implicit prejudice on the basis of race, culture, and national origin were considered in depth. Here are some examples for reflection: I saw shots of natives throughout the film with little clothes on. Most of the men didn't wear shirts, the first being the man at the beginning of the film right as they returned home from the initial opera scene. There was another shot of a woman breastfeeding that reminded me of the picture we observed in class of the encounter with the woman in the hammock. This picture floated in and out of my mind as a unit of analysis for the film as a whole, since, in the painting, the Europeans arrived on ships and at firs...

Banana Wars The authors place the regional nature of the banana trade on a spectrum categorized by size. Caribbean farms were by far the smallest; they were the most reliant on “small growers” and “household labor,” and they were the most susceptible to changes in weather, crop production and international market demand. South American farms, particularly in Colombia and Ecuador, lie somewhere in between Caribbean and Central American models of production. There, “domestic capitalists” controlled most of the production rather than multi-national corporations like UFCO, which directly controlled much of the manufacturing in Central America. Due to shipping failures of Minor Keith and other US companies to export bananas to Europe, European powers gained a market share in the Caribbean and began their own production. US production centered in Central America in the early 1900s, but moved to South America in the 1930s and 40s due to battles with “agricultural disease, labor problems, an...

Galeano's historical synopsis of the colonial encounter examines the effects of the desire for wealth and prestige on religious, political, and economic exploits in the New World. These exploits began in 1492 in a world contextualized by anti-Semitic tendencies, increasing religious expansionism and political volatility propagated by the new ideas of the Renaissance. The increase in Spanish exploration at the turn of the 1500s coincided with the desire for domestic religious purity; namely, the hegemony of Catholicism. Galeano notes in 1492 150,000 Jews were expelled from the country. This period also witnessed the expulsion of the Muslim element through war and inquisition. This model of conquest was exported to the New World, and was aided by distinct advantages in technology and religious piety (on the part of the Native tribes) which allowed the conniving Conquistadores to take advantage of foreign traditions and destroy pre-colonial society. The greatest aid, however, was undo...

Lury provides a fresh take on the impact of material goods in developing, perpetuating and changing cultural norms. The increasing culture of consumerism has coincided, she notes, with the development of a decidedly post-modern cultural framework that impacts the way we consume the world around us. The revolutionary idea is that consumption, like matter, in Lury’s definition, isn’t created or destroyed, but it appropriates and transforms it’s environment. Like salt mixing in a bowl of water, it changes the composition of the solution while retaining some recognized qualities. Lury also coins a new phrase, immaterial culture, that accounts for products birthed by physical or intellectual labor. Such products resist consumption in the traditional sense because they are organically produced, and they are not used up. They can also be self-perpetuating. An interesting point about consumer culture is its indirect relationship to poverty. Unlike consumption, which is govern...