Week 2 Post

In the reading "Letter to Charles V", I thought Cortes listed reasons on what would justify his expedition.  I think he took everything to the extreme.  Many things he wrote about were not true, especially when he mentioned that their is an abundance of gold.  Specifically when he talked about the human sacrifice, it felt as if he over exaggerated everything purposely.  In this letter, I felt Cortes was trying to persuade Charles V to have Spain colonize the land and it's people.  

I thought the poem was very sad.  I seemed like life was turned upside down.  I can't imagine something like that happening in this day and age.  

The art work was pretty cool.  I really like figure 19 (the warriors being evaluated).  It is also interesting to see how the some maps were interpreted back in that time.  

I'm not too sure what "Captain and Cousins" was about.  I think it is about life during the colonial times in Mexico.  But I'm not familiar with any of the names mentioned in the reading.

  

Week 1 Post

I thought the article had a wonderful perspective on colonialism and civilization.  The author admits that there is a big difference between colonialism and civilization.   The author states that civilization in contact with other civilizations is a good thing, but I sense the author think negatively about colonialism.  The article mentions that many bad things come along with colonization including "forced labor, tax, rape, theft, and domination".  Overall, I found the article very informative. 

The poem was also quite interesting.  It was quite hard to guess what the author is referring to with his choice of words.  I imagine the author is writing about the Americans colonizing the Philippines.    I think the majority of the poem is criticizing the Americans for putting the people of the Philippines in slavery.  

The video was pretty cool.  Said mentioned that the Middle Eastern people are looked at with a stereotype.  He also said that people assume that all middle eastern people have the same background, and culture.  I like how he tried to explain that it is important to differentiate middle eastern cultures.  I really liked all the art work the video had, especially in the beginning of the movie.