Latineos - Latin America, Caribbean, arts, culture

It is an opinion widely held that mass-consumerism is eradicating difference across the globe in the interests of big business. This is a gross simplification—a closer look at one of the most visible global brands reveals how consumerism brings homogeneity, but also propagates difference in inequality.

Xochimilco was originally a lake, an offshoot of Lago de Texcoco, upon which Mexico City is so precariously situated today. It was home to some of the most fertile gardens in the region, known as chinampas – these were islands artificially constructed out of piles of silt and rotten vegetable matter.

The Latin American Subaltern Studies Group was initiated in 1992 by a small number of scholars mostly from literature and cultural studies backgrounds, prompted by the dismantling of authoritarian regimes in Latin America and subsequent processes of redemocratization.

The celebrations of the Day of the Dead in Mexico, Carnival in Rio, Oruro and Trinidad, San Juan in Venezuela, Christmas anywhere – each with their own style and identity – are some of the major festivities in the Americas.
The Fiesta in Latin America is an institution.  For Xavier Albó, a Bolivian culture researcher, the fiesta is a fundamental time in the lives of individuals and communities due to their diversity, the richness in its symbols, the amounts of people they attract and the power of their climax.