Enroute to Chile

Graffiti In Argentina

Journey from the Fall Review

Journey from the Fall-

This film was recommended by my Vietnamese students. If you do not know about the reason why we have so many Vietnamese students, this is the best film to watch.

Directed by a Vietnamese-American director and with a predominantly Vietnamese-American cast, this film tells the true stories of Vietnamese refugees who fled their country after the 1975 fall of the South Vietnamese government, those who were forced to stay behind, and those who were sent to “re-education” camps. Further, it tells the story of what happened to a typical family of boat people, and what the family’s experiences were when they arrived in California.

Book Review: Barrio Boy

Barrio Boy by Ernesto Galarza, University of Notre Dame Press, South Bend, Indiana, 1971

This book sat on my bookshelf for years before I finally took it down to read it for this project.

I wish I had read it years before. While, in some ways, it is outside the timeline of this project (Post World War II), in other ways, it is a perfect book for an ESL audience.

Bariloche Architecture

General Roca of the Conquest of the Desert

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Desert

Roca's statue is a site of numerous protests and has been repeatedly splashed with paint. Underneath the statue, you can make out the word, "Justicia" "Justice." Roca was the general in charge of the genocide against the native Mapuche people, in order to clear them away so that railroads could transport cattle to the port of Buenos Aires.

Bariloche Phone Booth

Patagonian Lakes

Adam in Bariloche

My "Family" in Bariloche (in English)

My Impressions of Argentina

Cynthia Solem

2011-01-21

I learned much in Argentina: about the history, the cultures, the climate, the people, and the language (for Argentina has its own variety of Castellano)

I was only in Buenos Aires for three days. I would very much like to return because Buenos Aires is an amazingly beautiful and exciting city. I would like to learn more about the lives of the porteños and go to the movies, parks, etc. To spend three days in Buenos Aires is like beginning to eat a delicious meal, and then having the plate snatched away from you.

After Buenos Aires, I spent three weeks in San Carlos de Bariloche, where I lived with a family, I will cal the Family H. The man of the family, Adam, is an archeologist. I was able to speak to him (in Spanish!) for many hours, including one night when we were up until 2:00. That is the night that he told me the following story, which I think says something important about the lives of immigrants to Argentina in the period following the Second World War

My "Family" in Bariloche (in Spanish)

Mis Impresiones de Argentina

Cynthia Solem

2011-01-21

He tenido muchas impresiones de Argentina: de la historia, de

las culturas, del clima, de la gente, y del lenguaje.

Fuimos solamente para unos días a Buenos Aires. Me gustaría

regresar porque, para mi, Buenos Aires es una ciudad bella e

interesante. Me gustaría ver los museos y participar en las vidas

de los porteños. Tres días en Buenos Aires era como empezar

a comer un plato rico y salir después de comer muy poco.

Cuando quedarnos a Bariloche, describí la familia con quien

vaya a vivir. Esta familia, la familia de los H..., es muy

interesante. El hombre, Adán, es arqueólogo. He hablado con

el por horas, aprendiendo la historia de Patagonia y de su

familia. Su historia es impresionante y dice algo sobre las vidas de los inmigrantes a Argentina.

Film Review - No Man's Land: The Women of Mexico

Filmmaker Dana Romanoff’s fourteen minute film is the best examination I have seen of the effects of immigration on a small village in Mexico. In this case, as in much of Mexico, the immigrants to the U.S. are the men, who have no other options. This video concerns the small Zapotec indigenous village of San Marcos Tlapazola, in the largely-indigenous state of Oaxaca. A drought has existed in this area for a number of years. That, combined with the effects in Mexico of the passage of NAFTA (The North American Free Trade Act), means that the formerly-subsistence farmers can no longer exist on their traditional lands, where they raised corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, and chiles on their milpa.

Watch the film after the jump.

Film Review: 7 Soles

Mexican film review:

“7 Soles” (“Seven Suns”)

Directed by Mexican writer and journalist, Pedro Ultreras, “7 Soles” is a harrowing tale of crossing the Mexican-U.S. border through the Sonoran Desert. This film, based upon cases that Ultreras investigated and wrote about, humanizes the illegal immigrants who, with the help of coyotes, try to reach family members on the other side. I found it to be an extremely-difficult film to watch, as I knew what was going to happen. In a the video after the jump, Ultreras explains (in Spanish) that he was moved to make this film when he saw that an illegal immigrant had written on a piece of cardboard, “My name is… I am from… The coyotes mistreated us. They cheated us. They abandoned us. They left us here to die.”