1. The rights of Indigenous peoples in Latin America
2. The prevalence of baseball in Latin America, specifically the Dominican Republic

With the first topic, I look to continue researching what I learned from the article I focused on for my Noticias post. Many groups of indigenous people are being discriminated against, or their rights are being infringed upon. I want to learn more about the different groups of indigenous people who live in Latin America and which Latin American countries do the best job of protecting the rights of indigenous peoples (and alternatively, which countries do the worst jobs). Below this paragraph I’ve included a link to the article I read last week for my Noticias post, as I think it provides a good starting point for this topic.

www.nytimes.com/2017/09/10/world/americas/brazil-amazon-tribe-killings.html?rref

With the second topic I’d like to investigate how baseball (often referred to as “America’s pastime”) came to be such an important part of Dominican culture. This is particularly interesting to me because I’m a big fan of the Cleveland Indians, and we have several Dominican players on our team, such as Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Ramirez, Carlos Santana, and Danny Salazar. I’ve begun researching it already and have several sources that can be used for this topic, and I’ll include a link to one below.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Latin-Americans-in-Major-League-Baseball-910675

 Pictured is Edwin Encarnacion. Roll Tribe

According to the Mexican historian Andrés Reséndez, the four travelers “felt greatly disturbed and saddened that other Christians had already reached these remote lands and were causing so much harm to the natives”(204). Reséndez’s point is that throughout their travels, the four outsiders developed a new perspective on the Native Americans, and though they still felt that the natives would be better off as Christians under Spanish rule, they did not wish to bring harm to the natives. Having lived among the natives in the New World for several years, the four survivors were able to gain a new appreciation for the natives and their culture. They decided they wanted to convert these natives in a humane way. Looking deeper into Reséndez’s words, it is clear that he is arguing that their experiences changed the three Spaniards and the African.

I agree with Reséndez’s arguments about culture and hospitality because each group of natives treated the outsiders differently, based on the circumstances. The outsiders became enslaved by the natives on the island of Malhado, because from the perspective of the natives, the outsiders were useless (they couldn’t hunt or do any of the ‘manly’ jobs). However, as the outsiders made their way south towards Pánuco, they began to develop reputations as healers, and thus each group of natives that they encountered began treating them with great respect. Reséndez did a good job of arguing that sometimes the natives treated them poorly, and other times with great respect. I agree with Reséndez, but I also want to add more details to the explanations as to why each group treated them different.

In terms of hospitality, most groups of natives seemed to be relatively hospitable to the outsiders; the natives often provided them with food, drink, and other resources. Certain groups were not hospitable at all. The Camones killed all the Europeans they saw on sight. Several groups threw rocks, fired arrows, and otherwise harassed and attacked the Europeans. I believe the lack of hospitality from these groups can be attributed to a fear of the unknown. Alternatively, once the last four outsiders became known as healers, the natives went out of their way to be hospitable to them. The four were brought food and drink, as well as the ill of that particular group. It was also said that many native women were attracted to the four. Thus, the hospitality of the natives varied greatly on which group of natives the outsiders encountered and the circumstances in which they encountered them.

Thus, Reséndez’s theory of native hospitality is extremely useful because it sheds light on the difficult problem of creolization. Reséndez argued that the reaction and hospitality of the natives towards the outsiders varied greatly, and this gives us an inside look into the clash of these different peoples. Sometimes, when the natives first saw the outsiders, they were unkind, and other times they were friendly. It shows that when two different cultures collide, there is no telling what may happen. The results could be positive or negative.

The Wikipedia article on Estevanico seemed like it was of decent quality. I would say that everything in the article is relevant. It has four subsections after the main introduction: Estevanico’s Early Life, his North American Explorations, other names he is called, and representations of Estevanico in media. All of these sections are relevant to Estevanico’s life and are thus relevant to the article. Additionally, I could not detect any bias in the article. It covered his enslavement and his achievements from a neutral perspective.

I did think the article needed a bit more. While the “North American explorer” subsection gave a detailed but brief account of Estevanico’s travels in North America, the “Early Life” subsection was merely a few sentences. Thus, I felt that the “Early Life” section was a bit underrepresented. However, one must consider that Estevanico lived a couple hundred years ago, and because he was a slave, historians today may have trouble finding much information about his childhood and specifically his life.

Some citations are good and some are not as good. In the “Early Life” section there is a citation after a sentence saying that Estevanico’s skin color was described as ‘brown’, however there is nothing about his skin being brown in the article that was cited there. Another sentence in the article states that some historians suggest that the Zuni did not believe Estevanico was a representative of a party of white men, and that he was killed for demanding turquoise, but the citation after that statement does not mention turquoise once. Also, that statement doesn’t specify which historians suggest such things. The sources that the article references don’t seem to be too outdated. One source the article draws from was last updated in 2010, which seems pretty outdated but is pretty new when one considers that Estevanico lived and died several hundred years ago.

All things considered, it is a decent article, but it could use a lot of work. I feel like the article should be a lot more detailed and be lot longer, but I’m assuming part of the reason why it isn’t longer is because of a lack of information about Estevanico and his life.  However, there’s no excuse for bad citations.

In the introduction of A Land So Strange, Résendez gives a brief description of Cabeza de Vaca’s journey and its consequences in historical and modern times respectively. Cabeza de Vaca, two other Spaniards, and Estebanico were the among first outsiders to experience and come into contact with the New World. They were able to view America before European diseases, colonization, and slavery changed it permanently. Though at one point Cabeza de Vaca’s story was well known by the general public, in modern times it has gone largely underappreciated. Résendez draws evidence from a few different sources, including the Joint Report, the Narrative, and the research of other scholars. I would argue that Résendez is persuasive, although it depends on what you believe he is arguing. I believe that he is attempting to introduce the reader to Cabeza de Vaca’s story, but he is also asserting that Cabeza de Vaca’s story is one that the general public should be more familiar with, despite the fact that its age makes it a bit difficult to understand.

In the introduction of Creolization in the Americas, Buisseret reports on the significance and effect of creolization during the colonization of the Americas. Other terms, such as “acculturation” and “assimilation,” fail to accurately describe what was actually happening at the time, Buisseret claims. This is because these terms describe a “one-way” process, in which a donor culture gives (however forcefully) its own traits and practices to a recipient culture. In the case of the cultural interactions between the Europeans, Africans, and Native Americans, the transfer of cultural traits was anything but unilateral, which is why Buisseret chooses to use the term “creolization” to refer to said process. Throughout the introduction of Creolization in the Americas, Buisseret briefly describes the many ways that creolization affected each group’s culture. Evidence of this mixing of cultures can be seen in the food, music, clothing, medicine, and religion of each of these cultures. Personally, I found Buisseret to be persuasive, mainly because he draws evidence from multiple different sources.

From my perspective, historian William Cronon’s main argument was, in simple terms, that the goal of a liberal education is ‘only connect’. Throughout the article, he lists a series of ten qualities that he believes every person who is liberally educated should/does embody. Then, at the end of the article, he argues that the ultimate goal of all of these qualities is connection. A liberal education, he argues, gives a person the ability to connect with other people, art, sports, literature, media; essentially, a liberally educated person should be able to connect with the world around them. Not only that, but Cronon goes further to argue that it is impossible for a person to be fully liberally educated. Rather than an accomplishment, to be liberally educated is “a way of life”. Cronon argues we should always strive towards improving ourselves and making more connections with the world around us.

To support his argument, Cronon uses a plethora of evidence and examples. For example, one of the qualities he focuses on is speech. Cronon writes that liberally educated people “can give a speech, ask thoughtful questions, and make people laugh”. Personally, I find his arguments to be incredibly persuasive. I felt like I strongly agreed with a lot of the stuff he was saying about what a liberally educated person should be. I relate it to the idea of a renaissance man or woman. One who studies and is proficient in multiple different practices. Someone who can speak well, who can talk to anyone, who is well read, who deeply appreciates music and art but can also appreciate a great sports play. I almost want to say that I could not have put it better myself. That being said, I don’t think four years in college is enough to create a person like that. Surely, not everyone who goes to a liberal arts college has all ten of the qualities he described. That is why Cronon stresses the importance of making a liberal education a way of life, because you don’t just study for four years and become liberally educated. It is a life long journey.