Here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Francisco Pizarro. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of one sentence and two comprehension questions. In other words, just the basics on this conquistador who trashed the Inca Empire.
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 Martiniano de Alencar: (1829-1877) Brazilian novelist. Probably Brazil’s finest romantic novelist, Alencar is known for his idealized portraits of Indians and for his deep feeling for the Brazilian landscape. His most popular novels are O Guarani (1857) and Iracema (1865; tr Iracema, The Honey Lips: A Legend of Brazile, 1886), both of which deal with love between Indians and whites.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
This Cultural Literacy worksheet on Los Angeles reflects little on Hispanic Heritage Month, alas, on whose educational content this and all other blog posts here seek to address, other than its Spanish name. In any case, this is a full-page worksheet with a reading of five sentences and six comprehension questions. It covers a lot of bases in those five sentences, including the 1965 Watts Uprising, the beating of Rodney King by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, the presence of Hollywood, a center of the American popular entertainment industry, as well as the the poor air quality found in that city.
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.
“Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens: (1908-1973) Socialist president of Chile (1970-73). Of upper-middle-class background, Allende took a degree in medicine and in 1933 helped to found Chile’s Socialist Party. He ran for president unsuccessfully three times before winning narrowly in 1970. He attempted to restructure Chilean society along socialist lines while retaining democracy, civil liberties, and due process of law, but his efforts to redistribute wealth resulted in stagnant production, food shortages, rising inflation, and widespread strikes. His inability to control his radical supporters further alienated the middle class. His policies dried up foreign credit and led to a covert campaign by the United States Central Intelligence Agency to destabilize the government. He was overthrown in a violent military coup, during which he died by gunshot, reportedly self-inflicted. He was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
As you may know (or probably know if you are a regular user of this website), Hispanic Heritage Month is observed annually from 15 September to 15 October in the United States. Therefore, it is also observed here at Mark’s Text Terminal. The problem for the blog–and therefore for me, with which I am currently displeased–is that after this month, whose offerings are arguably at the margins of Hispanic Heritage Month, I will have run out of materials for Weekly Texts for the month.
It’s probably worth mentioning that Latinx students in the school in which I serve, during the local superintendent’s visits, have discussed the fact that they often feel invisible at our school. Demographically, our student body is principally students of Afro-Caribbean descent. We do tend to make a big deal of Black History Month, but not so much of Hispanic Heritage Month.
In fairness to the institution in which I serve (which probably doesn’t deserve it, but that is a subject for a blog entry that I will probably never write), ignorance of Hispanic Heritage Month is not unusual. During the 2018-2019 school year, I worked in a high school in Springfield, Massachusetts. Springfield (and nearby Holyoke) has a longstanding and robust citizenry of Puerto Rican descent. In that school, the students I served had never even heard of Hispanic Heritage Month. That, you won’t be surprised to hear, shocked me. In any event, despite its many shortcomings, at least the majority of the faculty and administration, ergo the student body, at my current school is aware of this month’s celebration of the contributions to this nation from its citizens of Hispanic descent.
A couple of years ago, I was assigned a sociology elective course three days before the school year began. There was no syllabus or curriculum for this course, and I obviously had no time to plan. As I began working on the course, I focused on sociological issues germane to the community in which I live and work. Knowing as I did Latinx students’ feelings of invisibility in my school, I began work on a unit on the infamous “Zoot Suit Riots” in Los Angeles in 1943. The idiocy of standardized testing and pointless, make-work administrative mandates ultimately derailed this project, although I do have a unit outlined, texts chosen, and ancillary material, particularly the PBS documentary on this incident, ready to build into a series of at least a half-dozen solid lessons. I plan to finish this unit at some point (after, at the very least, I read Thomas Sanchez’s novel Zoot Suit Murders, a copy of which I currently possess). I’ll get that material up as soon as I can.
In the meantime, please accept the rather weak tea, where Hispanic history is concerned, of this reading on San Francisco along with its accompanying vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet.
If you find typos in these documents, 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.
“Martha Argerich: (born 1941) Argentine pianist. A prodigy, she began concertizing before she was 10. She went to Europe in 1955, where her teachers included Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995). She won the Busoni and Geneva competitions at 16m and the Chopin competition in 1965. The exceptionally brilliant technique, emotional depth, and elan displayed in the Romantic works in which she specializes have won her perhaps the most enthusiastic international following of any pianist in the world.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Araucanians: South American Indians who are now concentrated in the valleys and basins between the Bio Bio and Tolten rivers in south central Chile. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Chile, they encountered three Araucanian populations: the Picunche, who were accustomed to Inca control; the Huilliche, who were to few and scattered to resist the conquistadors; and the Mapuche, successful farmers and artisans. The first two were soon assimilated, but the Mapuche managed to resist Spanish and Chilean control for 350 years. Finally subdued in the late 19th century, they were settled on reservations, but now live independently.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“Tupian Languages: Family of South American Indian languages with at least seven subgroups, spoken or formerly spoken in scattered areas from south French Guiana south to southernmost Brazil and Paraguay and east to eastern Bolivia. About a third of the estimated 37 known Tupian languages are extinct. The largest subgroup, Tupi-Guarani, includes the extinct language Tupinamba, the source for borrowings of many New World flora and fauna terms into Portuguese and hence other European languages. Another language of the subgroup, Guarani, is spoken as a first or second language by more than 90 percent of Paraguayans, who consider it a token of Paraguayan identity.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Last but not least this morning, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Incas. This is a half-page worksheet with a reading of three sentences and three comprehension questions. A clear, cogent, and symmetrical introduction to a great civilization.
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.
“Reinaldo Arenas: (1943-1990) Cuban novelist. A great innovator with an inexhaustible poetic imagination, Arenas suffered years of repression of his ‘lack of realism’ and supposed decadence, as well as for his political dissent and open homosexuality. He exiled himself to New York in 1980. The novel that launched Arenas was El mundo alucinante (1969; tr Hallucinations, 1971), an allegorical reconstruction of the adventures of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, a Mexican priest of the late 18th century, whose subversive mystical thought paved the way for Mexican independence. Arenas’s central work was ‘pentagony’ of five novels dealing with life in Cuba before and after Castro, consisting of Celestino antes del alba (1967; tr Singing from the Well, 1988); El palacio de las blanquistas mofetas (The Palace of the Very White Skunks, 1980); Otra vez del mar (1982; tr Farewell to the Sea, 1986); El color del verano (The Color of Summer, 1991); and El asalto (1991; tr The Assault, 1993). Other books include La vieja rosa (1980; tr Old Rosa, 1989), depicting a woman’s aging process within a society whose traditional values have been profoundly altered, and Arturo, la Estrella ms brillante (1984; tr Arturo, the Shining Star, 1992), about the traumatic experiences of a homosexual in a concentration camp. Ill with AIDS and no longer able to write, Arenas committed suicide in 1990 after completing his last works. He left two extreme visions of himself, the tender recollections of Adis a Mam (Good-bye to Mama, 1994) and his controversial autobiography, Antes que anochezca (1992; tr Before Night Falls, 1993), which portrays his troubled youth and sexual excesses.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
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