Week 1

My name is Sabeeha Manji.  I am a second-year student hoping to major in Political Science at the UBC. As a Kenyan, I feel that in school most of the history we learned was focused towards America and Africa as opposed to other parts/countries of the world. I have always been fascinated about Latin America but unfortunately know very little about it, and after recently starting the series “Narcos” I have become very intrigued about Latin America.  I hope that taking this class will show me and give me more of an insight to the history of Latin America.

A few comments about the videos I have recently watched:

Modernity in Latin America:

The content was without a doubt very informative, especially with regard to how women and men would function in the society and their roles as well as the inequality with women at the time.  I do not like how the video was presented however, it lacked creativity and the transitions to different topics relating to modernity in Latin America were not coherent.  The joke they had in the video (about the pause for water) was quite funny.

Caudillos:
The music in the start was engaging and got my attention immediately.   The rest of the video was very monotonous, although it was informative about who the Caudillos were- dictators of Latin America that became greedy because of the power.  His disdain for the rule of law can be compared to Trump which I found interesting, showing that history really does repeat itself- even though it may come in different forms.

War on drugs:
Since I started watching the series I have always been curious about drug cartels in Latin America. This video was extremely detailed and the narrative done was extremely clear.  It shook me as to  how 362 drug dealers were killed in the 1980s. The methods in which drugs were concealed e.g through the bellies of fish was also new to me. Transitions done to show different locations in the video were done effectively and it was easy to follow along. The interview done was also very creative and provided a different insight as to how the local people reacted to drug wars and the cities that were involved. Overall it was extremely interesting and ended off well leaving us to think about certain ideas and perspectives.