First of all, terrible title for a post, but, I am trying to put some things on my blog that I didn't put on their when I should have. My posts will probably be a little out of order as I try and play catchup with things....kind of like my life. Here is what I wrote about my report with Julie:
I had the opportunity to interview
Julie Leitner about her thoughts on the book Harvest of Empire. During
her reading she found that some of the lows had to be the mass killings. The brutality and the sheer number of
people who lost their lives was amazing.
The high would have to be the history the story provided. “It gives me a better understanding of
what really happened. The history
books touch lightly on these topics, but do not by any means provide the detail
of Harvest of Empire.
Julie
felt that some of the story highlights were the mention of African slaves in
Latin America. Slavery in America
has been discussed and dissected time and time again but the mention of large
amounts of African slaves who did hard labor harvesting gold, sugar, tobacco
and cocoa is not really talked about.
We discussed how the history books we grew up with never mentioned that
the Amerindians were not part of the labor force in the English colonies either.
One
thing that Julie learned that she did not know before was how property
ownership was handled. Per Spanish
tradition, a family’s ownership of land and urban holdings is by far more
different than the English. The
property is handed down from generation to generation but owned by the eldest
son. Other family members could be
assigned partials but they could not own it. Whereas the English, would give ownership to each child.
When
asked what she would like to learn more about, she would like to know more
about how Cuba played a great deal in history. It is mentioned over and over again, that Cuba is a parcel
of land that everyone seems to want.
She would like to know why?
No comments:
Post a Comment