Presencia de América Latina (1964-65) by Jorge González Camarena

Meeting Time: MW 1330-1445

Room: Breland 189

Instructor: Dr. Nathan Craig

Graduate Assistant: Zaira Martin

Syllabus Updated: 2021-08-08

Course Description

The course presents an overview of different cultures in Latin America, covering a range of topics including history, environment, race and ethnicity, religion, health, music, food, popular culture, globalization, and violence. In covering these themes, the perspective of cultural anthropology is employed to identify some common patterns shared across Latin America, while at the same time examining cultural diversity. We also examine how different Latin American peoples use aspects of culture, like food, music, and religion as a way of shaping and conserving ethnic identities. The class includes a mixture of lecture, discussion, films, music, and food.

Every NMSU student must take two upper division Viewing a Wider World courses (designated with a “V”) from separate colleges. ANTH 306V satisfies Part III: Viewing the Wider World for students outside the College of Arts and Sciences and for students outside of anthropology but in the College of Arts and Sciences. This class is not cross listed in other departments. As well, this class satisfies requirements for the Latin American Studies Supplementary Major.

Course Schedule

Full bibliographic entries listed under “Readings”

Introduction

Wed Aug 18 Course Introduction: Course Framework

Go over the workload, grades, attendance, and general course policies.

Begin readings for next class.

Week 1

A very general introduction to the region and ethnosphere.

Mon Aug 23 Geography and Language

Readings to complete before class:

  • Course Syllabus
  • Sanabria (2019), Chapter 1 “Anthropology, Latin America, and the Caribbean” (25 pg)

Assignment(s):

  • ✅ Sign the syllabus contract

Wed Aug 25 Practicing Anthropology in Latin America

A very brief introduction to social science in LAC.

Readings to complete before class:

  • Poole (2008b) Introduction to A Companion to Latin American Anthropology (8 pg)
  • Chasteen (2016) A Tour of Latin America (11 pg)

Week 2

Mon Aug 30 Environment: Physical Geography and Climate

Readings to complete before class:

  • Veblen, Young, and Orme (2007), Chapters 16 “Pre-European Human Impacts on Tropical Lowland Environments” (13 pg), Chapter 17 “The Legacy of European Colonialism” (9 pg), Chapter 19 “Impacts of El Niño-Southern Oscillation on Natural and Human Systems” (17 pg)

Wed Aug 1 Environment: Settlement Vegetation

Readings to complete before class:

Week 3

Mon Sep 6 Labor Day NO CLASS

Wed Sep 8 FILM

Assignment:

  • ☀️ Submit Project 1: Indigenous People and Climate Change

Week 4

Mon Sep 13 Archaeology of Latin America

A necessarily incomplete introduction to the archaeology of Latin America

Readings to complete before class:

  • Sanabria (2019), Chapter 2 “Before the Europeans” (33 pg)

Wed Sep 15 European Encounter

Readings to complete before class:

  • Sanabria (2019), Chapter 3 “Conquest, Colonialism, and Resistance” (25 pg)

Assignment:

  • 🔥 Map Quiz

Week 5

Mon Sep 20 Autochthonous Literature

Watch film outside of class:

Readings to complete before class:

Wed Sep 22 Conquest

Readings to complete before class:

Assignment:

  • 🔥 Submit Reflexive Essay 1

Week 6

Mon Sep 27 Shapibo Film

Material to review before class:

Class Activity:

  • Watch last 30 minutes of Feldman and Odland (2011) in class and discuss

  • 🌽 Everyone will read MacCormack (1996), “Introduction” and “Reviewing the Past,” and then each person will also pick a section of MacCormack (1996) to discuss on Wed Sep 29.

    • Brazil and the Guarani
    • The Tupinamba
    • Tawantinsuyu and Its Neighbors
    • Amazon and Venezuela

Wed Sep 29 Colonial Period: South America

Readings to complete before class:

Assignment(s):

Week 7

Mon Oct 4 Colonial Period: Mesoamerica

Readings to complete before class:

  • MacLeod (1996), “Mesoamerica Since the Spanish Invasion: An Overview,” excluding Bibliographic Essay (35 pg)
  • Casas (1992), A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indes

Wed Oct 6 FILM

Assignment:

  • ☀️ Submit Project 2: Early Colonial Texts

Week 8

Mon Oct 11 Independence

Readings to complete before class:

Wed Oct 13 Nation Forming

Readings to complete before class:

  • Sanabria (2019), Chapter 4 “Independence and Nation-Building”

Week 9

Mon Oct 18 Decolonization

Readings to complete before class:

  • Keen and Haynes (2009), Chapter 9 “Decolonization and the Search for National Identities, 1821-1870”

Class activity:

  • 🌽 Select chapter from Poole (2008a) to discuss on Wed Oct 20

Wed Oct 20 Readings in Anthropology

Readings to complete before class:

Class activity:

Assignment:

  • 🔥 Submit Reflexive Essay 2

Week 10

Mon Oct 25 Post-Colonial: Caribbean Voices

Readings to complete before class:

Wed Oct 27 Post-Colonial: South American Voices

Readings to complete before class:

Week 11

Mon Nov 1 Race and Cosmic Race

Readings to complete before class:

Wed Nov 3 Race and Casta Paintings

Readings to complete before class:

Assignment(s):

  • ☀️ Submit Project 3: Race and Afro-Latinos

Event:

  • Indigenous Peoples Day

Week 12

Mon Nov 8 Religion and Church Advocacy

Readings to complete before class:

Wed Nov 10 Cosmovision and Environment

Readings to complete before class:

Week 13

Mon Nov 15 Cumbia

Readings to complete before class:

Assignment(s):

Wed Nov 17 Cumbia’s Spread

Assignment(s):

Week 14 Thanksgiving Holiday

No Class This Week

Week 15

Mon Nov 29 Violence

Wed Nov 1 US Intervention and Migration

Week 16: Finals Week

Mon Dec 6 Final 1:00-3:00 pm

Assignment:

  • 🔥 Final Project Due

Readings

Readings are available in a private Zotero library (anth306v). Readings may be accessed through the group, students are encouraged to use Zotero standalone to incorporate properly styled citations into written work.

Albro, Robert, and Evan Berry. 2018. “Introduction: Religion and Environmental Conflict in Latin America.” In, edited by Evan Berry and Robert Albro, 1–16. Routledge Studies in Religion and Environment. New York: Routledge.
Balée, William L., and Clark L. Erickson. 2006. “Time, Complexity, and Historical Ecology.” In, edited by William L. Balée and Clark L. Erickson, 1–20. The Historical Ecology Series. New York: Columbia University Press.
Carrera, Magali Marie. 2003. Imagining Identity in New Spain: Race, Lineage, and the Colonial Body in Portraiture and Casta Paintings. 1st ed. Joe r. And Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Casas, Bartolomé de las. 1992. A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. 1st ed. Penguin Classics. London, England ; New York, N.Y: Penguin Books.
Césaire, Aimé. 2000. Discourse on Colonialism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Chasteen, John Charles. 2016. “A Tour of Latin America.” In, Fourth edition, M–2:M12. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
D’Amico, Leonardo. 2013. “Cumbia Music in Colombia: Origins, Transformations, and Evolution of a Coastal Music Genre.” In, edited by Héctor D. Fernández l’Hoeste and Pablo Vila, 29–49. Durham: Duke University Press.
Dioses y Hombres de Huarochiri: Narración Quechua Recogida Por Francisco de Avila [¿1589?]. 1966. Fuentes e Investigaciones Para La Historia Del Perú. Lima, Perú: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. https://archive.org/details/ManuscritoDeHuarochiriJMArguedasCompleto/page/n13/mode/2up.
Feldman, Nancy G., and J. Claire Odland. 2011. “Shipibo: The Movie of Our Memories.” https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/shipibo-the-movie-of-our-memories.
Fernández l’Hoeste, Héctor D., and Pablo Vila, eds. 2013a. Cumbia!: Scenes of a Migrant Latin American Music Genre. Durham: Duke University Press.
———. 2013b. “Introduction.” In, edited by Héctor D. Fernández l’Hoeste and Pablo Vila, 1–28. Durham: Duke University Press.
Galeano, Eduardo. 1997. Open veins of Latin America: five centuries of the pillage of a continent. 25th anniversary ed. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Guamán Poma de Ayala, Felipe. 2009. The First New Chronicle and Good Government: On the History of the World and the Incas up to 1615. 1st ed. Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Gudynas, Eduardo. 2018. “Religion and Cosmovisions Within Environmental Conflicts and the Challenge of Ontological Openings.” In, edited by Evan Berry and Robert Albro, 225–49. Routledge Studies in Religion and Environment. New York: Routledge.
José Vasconcelos. 2013. “The Cosmic Race.” In, edited by Elaine O’Brien, 402–12. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Keen, Benjamin, and Keith Haynes. 2009. “The Conquest of America.” In, 52–75. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Kerber, Guillermo. 2018. “Church Advocacy in Latin America: Integrating Environment in the Struggle for Justice and Human Rights.” In, edited by Evan Berry and Robert Albro, 19–36. Routledge Studies in Religion and Environment. New York: Routledge.
MacCormack, Sabine. 1996. “Ethnography in South America: The First Two Hundred Years.” In, edited by Bruce G. Trigger, Wilcomb E. Washburn, and Richard E. W. Adams, 96–187. Cambridge, England ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
MacLeod, Murdo J. 1996. “Mesoamerica Since the Spanish Invasion: An Overview.” In, edited by Bruce G. Trigger, Wilcomb E. Washburn, and Richard E. W. Adams, 1–43. Cambridge, England ; New York: Cambridge University Press.
Palacios, Agustín. 2017. “Multicultural Vasconcelos: The Optimistic, and at Times Willful, Misreading of La Raza Cósmica.” Latino Studies 15 (4): 416–38. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-017-0095-6.
Poole, Deborah, ed. 2008a. A Companion to Latin American Anthropology. Blackwell Companions to Anthropology 6. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
———. 2008b. “Introduction.” In A Companion to Latin American Anthropology, edited by Deborah Poole, 1–8. Blackwell Companions to Anthropology 6. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.
Sanabria, Harry. 2019. The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean. Second edition. London New York: Routledge.
Tedlock, Dennis, ed. 1996. Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life. Rev. ed. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Veblen, Thomas T., Kenneth R. Young, and A. R. Orme, eds. 2007. The Physical Geography of South America. Oxford Regional Environments. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.
Wade, Peter. 2008. “Race in Latin America.” In, edited by Deborah Poole, 177–92. Blackwell Companions to Anthropology 6. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

Grades

Grades are assigned based on points accumulated during course activities. Points can be accrued through the following activities:

Assignment Points Value % Due Date
Attendance Writing 1001 10 Daily
Project 1 100 10 Wed Sep 8
Map Quiz 100 10 Wed Sep 15
Reflexive Essay 1 100 10 Wed Sep 22
Project 2 100 10 Wed Oct 6
Reflexive Essay 2 100 10 Wed Oct 20
Project 3 100 10 Wed Nov 3
Project 4 100 10 Wed Nov 17
Final Project 200 20 Mon Dec 6

Grade assignments:

  • 900-1000: A
  • 800-899: B
  • 700-799: C
  • 600-699: D
  • >600: F

Attendance Writing

Nearly all classes begin with each student handwriting responses to readings. Four points are awarded per class attendance essay up to a total of 100 points.

Map Quiz Resources

Knowing the countries is key to understanding the region’s peoples. Practice tools are found at the following links:

Projects (4)

These are 1200 word submissions around four themes (dates listed above):

  1. Indigenous People and Climate Change
  2. Early Colonial Texts
  3. Race and Afro-Latinos
  4. Latin Music

Reflexive Essays (2)

These are 1200 word submissions in which the student develops some critical ideas about or connections between the course readings. This writing shall be revised, polished, and cited properly to the page. Use of Zotero web is required for reading. Use of Zotero standalone is strongly encouraged for writing.

  1. Attendance is worth 4 points per day. (4 points/day X 28 days = 112 points)↩︎