Peru – Fake Flamenco

archeology, history, Indigenous Peoples, Latinas in the News, Life as a Woman, Spanish Culture and Language, The Americas

Who is Ruth Shady Solís?

The BBC named Dr. Shady Solís one of the 100 most influential women in the world in 2020. Her outstanding work conserving an ancient Peruvian archeological site, Caral, caught their notice. Since 1994 she and her team have excavated at Caral. From carbon dating, it was proven that it was the oldest civilization in the […]

history, Spanish Culture and Language

11 Women’s Faces on National Currency

What does the color and content of currency say about a country? What are the symbols we hold most dear? Who are our heroes? If we look at the banknotes of the United States, we see former presidents; Washington and Jefferson and founders like Franklin and Hamilton. All male, all Caucasian, all long gone. By […]

Afro-Latinos, Chile, Spanish Culture and Language

Afro-Chileans Hidden in Plain Sight

The year we lived in Chile, our friends talked about their mestizo heritage; combination of Spanish and Indigenous ethnicities. I’ve read recently about heritage groups like the Afro-Chilean Alliance, Oro Negro, Arica Negro and Lumbanga. I realized I know little about Afro-Chileans. Looking at history, free and enslaved Africans arrived in Chile beginning in 1536, […]

archeology, history, Indigenous Peoples, The Americas

Who Were the Hunters?

Men were the hunters and women were the gatherers; a universally assumed concept about Stone Age societies. Despite this hypothesis, excavations in Perú and the Americas have proved this was untrue. In 2018, at the Wilamaya Patjxa site high in the Andes, six burials from 9000 years ago were found. Two of the six were […]

history, Immigration, Spanish Culture and Language

3 South American Countries with the Most Asian Immigrants

In honor of the month celebrating Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, let’s look at the history of immigrants from the Far East to South America. The story has many facets, the histories of several countries in Asia intertwined with a good number of countries in South America. Countries like Brazil, Peru and Argentina show the […]

history, Spanish Culture and Language

Where in Latin America is Voting Mandatory?

I thought this was an easy question I could find the answer to in an hour, or no more than an afternoon. A week later, I am humbled. I was confused with the range of answers. There were 14, 12, 13, 11 or 8 countries in Central and South America where citizens are required to […]