In many countries, the city dump serves not only as a place for discarded food and material goods, but discarded people as well – in Brazil, it is referred to as a favela, and Carolina was one of several people who called it home.
Category: Latin American Geography
Reviews of materials encountered in the Latin American Geography class. There’s more here about social issues than topography.
Life and Debt
‘Welcome to Jamaica’, the opening line of the documentary Life and Debt. This is followed by a comparison of what tourists see, and what they don’t. One clip shows a group of greeters singing ‘Welcome to Jamaica’, yet the tune carries a haunting resemblance to ‘So this is Christmas‘, a song with two messages. In short, …
Crude
Crude means unrefined, and like many English words, it’s meaning is too broad to be translated without surrounding context. Raw oil, unfancy functional items, primitive people, and crass, inappropriate people. In the documentary ‘Crude’ about oil contamination in the Amazon, all of these applications can be observed.
Charcoal People
Charcoal, used for barbecues and for making pig iron which goes into the manufacture of automobiles, is pre-burnt wood. Those who gather and process this wood are called the Charcoal People, and are the primary subject of a documentary by the same name.
Two Escobars
The documentary The Two Escobars gives new meaning to the phrase ‘related by blood’. Pablo Escobar was a cross between Al Capone and Robin Hood. Andres Escobar was the captain of Colombia’s National Soccer Team. Though they are not blood relatives, in a genealogical sense, these two men with the same last name were indeed related by blood, and soccer.