Central America – Fake Flamenco

bilingual, En español, history, Indigenous Peoples, Spanish Culture and Language, The Americas

Honduras: The Courage of Lempira

Every year on July 20, Hondurans celebrate Lempira of the Lenca tribe more than 475 years after his death. Who was this famous man? He was a Native leader who gave his life in an attempt to stop the Spanish conquest. Lempira is a national hero, leader of thousands of soldiers, whose name graces a […]

Afro-Latinos, history, Spanish Culture and Language, The Americas

Celebrating Freedom

Special Friday Edition: Let’s celebrate Juneteenth, which commemorates the abolition of slavery in the United States! How about we look at the timeline of freedom in this hemisphere. We’ll check the history of our neighbors in the Americas. The Spanish and Portuguese speaking countries of Central and South America departed from our model of the […]

history, Spanish Culture and Language, The Americas

8th American Country with Marriage Equality

Happy Pride Month! Want some good news? LBGTQ rights are expanding in this hemisphere. May 26, 2020, Costa Rica became the eighth country in the continent of the Americas to legalize same-sex marriage. The Ticos, as they call themselves, are the first in Central America to provide marriage equality. The change has been in the […]

history, Spanish Culture and Language, The Americas

Who Made the First Banana Split?

No fewer than four US cities claim to be the origin of this famous ice cream dessert. Two were before 1910; soda fountains in Wilmington, Ohio and in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. In 1904, Dave Strickler, a druggist apprentice at Tassell Pharmacy in Latrobe put three scoops of ice cream between two halves of a banana and […]

history, Spanish Culture and Language, The Americas

Driving on the Left or the Right?

In the world, 75 countries drive on the left and 165 on the right. A high number of countries that were in the former British Empire make up those 75, with many exceptions like the United States, Canada and Belize, to name a few. All Spanish speaking countries in the world drive on the right. […]

travel

Guatemalan Fabric

Two of my favorite travelers are in Guatemala this week. Their visit to the northernmost Spanish-speaking country in Central America reminded me of a poem I wrote on the plane home from my time in Antigua. Guatemala I flew into the unknown, to a volcanic land where an agrarian people weave cotton cloth in bright […]