Tag Archives: hispanic history

Cesar Davila Andrade

“Cesar Davila Andrade: (1918-1967) Ecuadorian poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Davila Andrade published eight books of verse and two collections of short stories before committing suicide in a hotel in Caracas, Venezuela, a victim of prolonged depressions and alcoholism. While his work is known mainly in Ecuador and Venezuela, he was most often compared to Neruda and Vallejo. Of most influence as a poet, he carried certain key obsessions—evil in the form of sickness, passion, or death; sex as annihilation, and love as the absolute ideal—through several poetic incarnations. He began in the tradition of love poetry, as seen in Cancion a Teresita (1946). The second phase, which includes Arco de instantes (1959) and Boletin y elegia de las Mitas (1967), is dedicated to poetic experimentation and the geography and people of his American continent. The final period is complex, personal, and hermetic, best characterized by Conexiones de tierra (1964), which often voices his views of life, literature, and aesthetics. A lover of both the mystical and prosaic, he perhaps never managed a successful reconciliation of these twin currents in either his poetry or his life.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Cultural Literacy: Venezuela

Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Venezuela. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of six sentences and nine comprehension questions. Venezuela is a nation that has been very much in the news the past few years. so this document might have some currency. It is, in the final analysis, a literacy exercise aimed at helping emergent and struggling readers sort out a relatively complicated–if also relatively brief–passage of text.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Jose (Benjamin) Quintero

“Jose (Benjamin) Quintero: (1924-1999 U.S. (Panamanian-born) theatrical director. After studying theater at USC, he directed his first play in 1949. He was a founder of the Broadway theater Circle in the Square, where he directed regularly from 1950, establishing the house as a major center for serious theater. His direction of Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke (1952) confirmed his reputation and made a star of Geraldine Page. He was best known for his productions of 20th-century plays, especially those of Williams and Eugene O’Neill, including The Iceman Cometh (1956), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1956), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1973, Tony Award).”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Alvaro Obregon

“Alvaro Obregon: (1880-1928) President of Mexico (1920-24). A skillful military leader who fought for the moderate presidents Francisco Madero and Venustiano Carranza during the Mexican Revolution, he was largely responsible for the liberal constitution of 1917. In response to Carranza’s increasingly reactionary policies, Obregon took a leading role in the revolt that deposed him, and was elected president in 1920. He managed to impose relative peace and prosperity but was shot and killed before assuming office.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Cultural Literacy: Ecuador

While I rather doubt that most schools at any level in the United States concern themselves with the nation of Ecuador (where I traveled extensively 45 years ago). Nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ecuador. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and seven comprehension questions. A good literacy exercise for emergent and struggling readers.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Miguel de Unamuno (y Jugo)

“Miguel de Unamuno (y Jugo): (1864-1936) Spanish philosopher and writer. He was rector of the University of Salamanca 1901-14 and 1931-36; he was dismissed first for espousing the Allied cause in World War I and later for denouncing Francisco Franco’s Falangists. Though he also wrote poetry and plays, he was most influential as an essayist and a novelist. In The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Peoples (1913), he stressed the role spiritual anxiety plays in driving one to live the fullest possible life. His most famous novel is Abel Sanchez (1917). The Christ of Velazquez (1920) is a superb example of modern Spanish verse.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Cultural Literacy: Conquistadores

While I think their role in Hispanic history is one of pillage, murder, and disgrace, here, nonetheless, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the conquistadores. They are–as below–in Diego Rivera’s mural on the history of Mexico. I hope that’s enough said in justification of this document’s presence here. Whatever the case, this is a half-page worksheet with a reading of of one sentence and one comprehension question.

In other words, perhaps all one needs to know about them.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

Diego Rivera

“Diego Rivera: (1886-1957) Mexican muralist. After study in Mexico City and Spain, he settled in Paris from 1909 to 1919. He briefly espoused Cubism but abandoned it c.1917 for a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of color. Returning to Mexico in 1921, he sought to create a new national art on revolutionary themes in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. He painted many public murals, the most ambitious of which is in the National Palace (1929-57). His mural for New York’s Rockefeller Center aroused a storm of controversy and was ultimately destroyed because it contained the figure of Vladimir Lenin; he later reproduced it at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. With Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, he created a revival of fresco painting that became Mexico’s most significant contribution to 20th-century art. His large scale, didactic murals contain scenes of Mexican history, culture, and industry with Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers drawn as simplified figures in crowded, shallow places. Rivera was married to Frida Kahlo almost uninterruptedly from 1929 to 1954.”

Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.

Ferdie Pacheco on the Ali/Spinks Fight

“They’re selling video cassettes of the Ali-Spinks fight for $89.95. Hell, for that money, Spinks will come to your house.”

Ferdie Pacheco

Excerpted from: Sherrin, Ned, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations. New York: Oxford University Press. 1996.

Cultural Literacy: Christopher Columbus

Following the post below on the nation of Colombia, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Christopher Columbus, the country’s namesake. This is a full-page worksheet with a reading of four sentences and five comprehension question. You might want to take a look at the first and last sentences, which are long, heavily punctuated compounds. If you students are up to it, I would leave them be. But the lists, with all their clauses, might be a bit too much for emergent or struggling readers.

If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.