Hum 260.

My vision of Latin America before this class was of one united culture that did not have any great difference more than their accents or their food.  I have always been conscious of the differences that exist at the political or economic level between the different countries within Latin American.  However, the truth is that because of this class I have come to understand more of my personal identity and the essence of Latin America.

Sometimes I cannot deny that in class I have found that I have feelings of frustration as I feel like a stranger in my own land.  A lot of the time I have felt that the Latin America  where I was born and grew up and thought I knew, isn’t the one that I was learning about or the one that I was discussed about during class.  But as the more the time and semester went on the more I learned how to know more of Latin America and its extensive diversity, and the more I learned of my own diversity.

I believe that this feeling of discovering myself began in the first day of class when we listened to the song about Latin America by Calle Trece.  I remember watching the video and thinking, “ ok, this is going to be another class at BYU where we analyze a Latin America submerged in poverty and the suffering of the social injustices that it is composed of.”  Now that we are getting so close to the end of the semester and now I listen to the song, I feel that it really makes sense and that It really does represents the reality of my own identity. This is not only because he cites Neruda in the lyrics, but he includes in them the essence of the Latin American culture while he talks about its traditions, beliefs, the people and their customs. Many of these traditions, beliefs, and customs were unfamiliar to me before this class, but as I have learned more them it has helped me to recognize the immense cultural variety that Latin America is made up of.