Best hispanic & latino biographies according to redditors
We found 50 Reddit comments discussing the best hispanic & latino biographies. We ranked the 22 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 50 Reddit comments discussing the best hispanic & latino biographies. We ranked the 22 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
Most people have no idea about the history of Venezuela.
Venezuela was basically an average South-American country. It was run a brutal military dictatorship. The military dictatorship was backed an oligarchy of capitalist white families while most of the country was black or mixed-race. They owned almost every single big business. Monopolies were everywhere and inequality was extreme. The poor suffered tremendously. The rich families backed the military junta that raped activist with metal bars and tortured to death screaming people.
Eventually, just like every south american country with extreme inequality, there were extreme political consequences. The military system was overthrowed in a coup d'Etat by a soldier named Hugo Chavez.
He was a christian socialist and an anti-imperialist. He installed regular elections but without checks and balances. He opposed global corporate power, he condemned the invasion of Irak, he shook hands with Ahmadinejad (who was put on the "Axis of Evil" by Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice), he called Tony Blair a war criminal and he said George W. Bush was the devil at the U.N. Assembly.
He massively increased social spending on the poor and medical care on the poor and his friends stole the rest. Child mortality went down, life expectancy went up. In a country where the poor lived a life of suffering and the rich lived life of incredible luxury, it made him tremendously popular. He was praised by Jeremy Corbyn, Jean-Luc Melechon, and a large part of the left around the world. The capitalist class in the United States portrayed him as a monster. Fox News and CNN were bashing him 24/7 as a dangerous socialist.
He was neither a hero nor a monster. He replaced a capitalist thug mafia with a highly corrupt socialist system who helped the poor more than his predecessor. He build no checks and balances and no real hierchical bureaucracy. The rich families got fucked really hard under him. So they put most of their assets offshore (Cayman Islands, Bermuda Islands, London) and all the rich supported the political opposition.
There was real social tensions between the poor and the rich. The private medias were not normal opposition but kept calling for his removal even if he won elections. He was so popular with the extreme poor he won every election no matter how corrupt. He went live on national TV portraying his ennemies as "the ennemies of the people" (remind you one any president recently ?). Some people tried a coup against him at some point with support from the USA. After the coup, he cracked down brutally on what was left of the free media but kept organizing somehow free elections. Then, the guy died and he was replaced by Nicolas Maduro, a former bus driver.
Maduro was a professional thief. He stole as much money as possible. The prices of oil completely collapse and the state could no longer afford the social progress it achieved under Chavez so they started cutting all the help to the poor. Chavez had also replaced the previous corruption system with a secret corruption system. Maduro not only did nothing to stop it, he increased it a lot more.
All help to the poor has been cut, Corruption is now extreme and the country is turning into a dictatorship.
The Oligarch white families have been fucked really hard by Chavez but most of their wealth is now offshore. Many of them have managed to build strong connections to Nicolas Maduro. The new thief, same as the old thief but with even less oil.
Here is a recent description of where Venezuelan wealth now is :
>On a Saturday evening in April, Miami’s Four Seasons Hotel hosted a particularly lavish quinceañera — the party traditionally thrown by Latino parents to celebrate the coming-of-age of 15-year-old girls. Outside, visitors watched luxury cars deliver their charges. Inside, girls in eveningwear teetered on high heels across the lobby, while their consorts wore black tie. Many chattered excitedly in Venezuelan-accented Spanish; Justin Quiles, a reggaeton star, was even rumoured to be playing. Guests said that spirits were high as the teenagers made their way to the Grand Ballroom on the sixth floor.
>Yet the party’s most notable feature was the twin hosts’ father, Mauro Libi. This self-described “visionary” has built a remarkable business empire over the past two decades. As well as food businesses in Venezuela, Mr Libi is an owner, shareholder, director or legal representative of some 30 companies across three continents, according to public records reviewed by the Financial Times, including banks in Panama and Spain, a $7m Manhattan apartment and dozens of Miami-registered companies.
>What makes Mr Libi’s success extraordinary — and provides the context for the multiple corruption allegations on which he has been investigated — is that he built his fortune in a country better known for shortages of basic goods, obscure business dealings and revolutionary confrontation rather than wealth creation. Indeed, as Mr Libi’s twin daughters and guests danced that night, Venezuela ended its 29th day of protests
>Even as three-quarters of Venezuelans lost an average 9kg of body weight last year, according to studies, and 10 per cent of infants suffer malnutrition according to the Catholic charity Caritas, the corporate made this comment on April 19: “Being vegetarian is an excellent way to reduce calorie intake.”
Source : Financial Times
https://www.ft.com/content/25055a2a-6332-11e7-91a7-502f7ee26895
What's happening in this country is a real tragedy.
Source : I became friend with some venezuelian foreign students in my university and I watched a ton of documentaries about this country
If you went to learn more about this fascinating country, I highly recommend your order those two books :
>Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela
https://www.amazon.com/Crude-Nation-Riches-Ruined-Venezuela/dp/1612347703/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1501774049&sr=8-3&keywords=venezuela+history
>Comandante: Hugo Chávez's Venezuela.
https://www.amazon.com/Comandante-Ch%C3%A1vezs-Venezuela-Rory-Carroll-ebook/dp/B008EKONCE
I recently read "Revolt of the Cockroach People" by Oscar Acosta (aka Dr. Gonzo in Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas). Highly recommended for the uninitiated if you're interested in more of this rich history. He took up a lot of the Chicano legal cases in that period. Those seemed like crazy times, politically and culturally.
Read The Devil's Highway, this is not a troll.
My Japanese cars were made in America, you laptop may have been designed in America and made in China. You’re “Mexican” food is American food.
https://www.amazon.com/Taco-USA-Mexican-Conquered-America/dp/1439148627
Mexico doesn't do anything about illegal immigration because it's embarrassing for them. There was one incident a while back where a group of border crossers were found dead in the desert from dehydration. It got some news coverage and Mexico had declared them national heroes and had the bodies flown back for burial. The other is because they gain finically from all the foreign remittance that gets sent back. This isn't just for Mexico but other countries that have a high count of illegal immigration in the US.
For an example of just how lucrative it can be, PEW says that for 2017 that Mexico received over $30 billion dollars sent in remittances. Other countries like El Salvador rely on it and actually makes up a large amount of their GDP. Just over 17% in their case.
Because of how easy the money is for these countries they have no real pressure or reason to act. What needs to be figured out is how to make it where the amount of money coming in isn't worth the cost.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/interactives/remittance-flows-by-country/
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/01/29/remittances-from-abroad-are-major-economic-assets-for-some-developing-countries/
The story about the migrants being called heroes is from this book. https://www.amazon.com/Devils-Highway-True-Story/dp/0316010804
If anyone is interested in a great book about the struggles of immigrants crossing the border, go read The Devil's Highway.
Taco U.S.A.: How Mexican Food Conquered America by Gustavo Arellano is a great read which does cover both the history of food in Mexico from the origins of corn cultivation through the Spanish arrival and then focuses on its deep integration into American culture. The author is a highly respected Mexican-American food writer with a whole lot of unique insights on Mexican food's past, present & future. Essential reading, IMO.
Personally, I read for fun in my spare time and usually learn about other things (which inevitably I manage to relate back). I've also found that audiobooks are awesome for law school. I have to cook, I have to do laundry, I have to clean the house, walk to the grocery store, and all of those things can be done while listening to an audiobook. Some of the below were listened to, others were read traditionally.
That being said, this book on the Warren Court was "recommended" in Con Law and I found it short and revealing about a significant era in SCOTUS history.
I adored Sonia Sotomayor's autobiography, which was more about her youth and early career but felt like listening to a bad ass Aunt talk about her life choices when she was my age.
Gideon's Trumpet (Although if, era of the book be damned, if it described lawyers as "young men" one more time, I swear to god...)
Sisters in Law also felt like a nice preview of Con Law - a lot of the cases we read in Con Law were familiar to me as I'd read that before then.
Pop-crime books that I nevertheless got me thinking about law when I read them include In Cold Blood (which I listened to while in Evidence class and found myself being like - wait, why isn't this a 403 violation or hearsay? and then looking the law up to clarify the rule I hadn't quite started learning yet) and Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town.
I also highly recommend the podcasts Radiolab: More Perfect (spin off); the Radiolab episode The Buried Bodies Case; and the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class, many episodes of which are either explicitly about a court case (they have several on like, Loving v. Virginia, Brown v. Board, the cases about special education) or more related to lesser known policies that didn't really make it to Court (e.g., the Bracero program).
Edit: typo
Edit 2: The More Perfect episode, "The Political Thicket," which came out two weeks after I took my Con Law exam, was pretty much straight up the answer to question #3 on my exam.
que cagada se lanzo la oposicion vale... yo me lei este libro por rory carroll y habla de la presunta paranoia que enveneno a chavez despues de esto y el paro que lo llevaron a acercarse aun mas a fidel castro para profundizar la "revolucion", osea radicalizarse (poco despues nace el slogan "patria socialismo o muerte") y la perdida de confianza. es solo la opinion de este escritor pero yo me pregunto que hubiese pasado si hubiesen dejado a chavez gobernar sin tanta traba y luego el harakiri legislativo en las parlamentarias de 2005.
> the devils highway
This?
Looks interesting
Thanks, but the satisfaction of finding the answer is reward enough for me. :) I couldn't stop looking until I found a source, so here's a book with the picture on the cover: http://www.amazon.com/Frida-Twentieth-Centurys-Influential-Hispanics/dp/1420500198
Sounds like this bitch: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1455540242/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_QteFyb9GGYR8Z
For the UK fish: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blame-Bianca-del-Rio-Everything/dp/0062690876/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1518977864&sr=8-1&keywords=Bianca+Del+Rio
There are some AMAZING resources here, so I'll just throw in a few others:
The Body Remembers
The Body Keeps the Score)
Enrique's Journey
Crossing Over
The Devil's Highway
Random Family
Lost Children of Wilder
Don't know what you like to read so I'm going to go a few ways, but these are good ''stuck in bed'' books. By Author (because thats how i like to read):
Haruki Murakami:
Hunter S Thompson (and related):*
Manuel Puig (these are shorter):
Not by same authors, but would be good together:
Favorites
Feel Better!
Having grown up near Los Angeles, I've come to deeply appreciate the different styles of Mexican cuisine that are present in the city. Over the years, it simply became unfair to lump all food that had semblance to Mexican cuisine into one category, so there was a movement that began a few years ago with acclaimed food writer Bill Esparza and legendary food critic Jonathan Gold to distinguish the various styles from each state in Mexico in the city. There was also a new style of Mexican that emerged over the years in L.A. called Alta California that was a sort of haute cuisine approach to Mexican cuisine. When it comes to "Mexican food chains", I definitely feel they have their place, but it comes back to the notion of lumping these chains into one generic category, which many people unfortunately do. That's my one issue with even mentioning the word "Mexican" to describe the food sold in these spots.
For further research, I recommend a few sources:
Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America by Gustavo Arellano
L.A. Mexicano by Bill Esparza
The Migrant Kitchen, S2, E1: Alta California
Lol, I was trying to find this video and I started reading through the comments. Thought I would elucidate since it wasn't archived. ;)
The book is a great read if you're looking for some offseason fodder.
Course text: Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America by Gustavo Arellano.
Mexican food is the drug more addictive than meth or cocaine.
Gangs in Garden City? The only thing is it was published a few years ago.
What the fuck? Should I even respond seriously if you're going to be such a fuckhead about it?
Mexican food had next to no popularity outside of the southwestern US before taco bell spread.
source: http://www.amazon.com/Taco-USA-Mexican-Conquered-America/dp/1439148619
Read Canseco's first book, Juiced.
It might not be as explosive now as when it was new, but it's a good read about steroids in baseball and the majority of his claims have been vindicated since the book came out.
He is blunt and doesn't pull any punches.
This one?
Right and now in the U.S. we are starting to have people who are questioning the system of Capitalism. 'Trying to organize coups or revolutions, etc is just a try for control. It is a positive action in the big picture'. Who are we in the U.S. to be financing coups and revolutions in other countries we have no control over? Just look up who Flugencio Batista was where he was a U.S. backed dictator. Yes he was a political prisoner just read the book The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. he was arrested for violating the laws of segregation and was labeled a 'communist' on multiple occasions.
Link for those interested: Blame It On Bianca Del Rio: The Expert On Nothing With An Opinion On Everything https://www.amazon.com/dp/0062690876/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_AdBUAbE2Q1BVH
Sonia Nazario, the reporter talked about in that story, wrote a book on illegal immigration called Enrique's Journey, which follows an immigrant as he tries to reach America. It's well worth reading if you're interested on the subject.
A couple of books about major events in 20th-century Mexico:
Villa and Zapata is a good introductory look at the personalities and issues in the Mexican Revolution.
Opening Mexico is a great book about the end of PRI rule.
Wow, you're so wrong that you managed to piss off both Gustavo Arellano and Rick Bayless in one sentence. That's a pretty big feat.
Juiced.
Jose Prosecco.
The author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.
This episode didn't have any recommendations for additional reading on Sonia Sotomayor.
I'd recommend "My Beloved World" by the woman herself.
"The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is short and amazing!
http://www.amazon.com/Shipwrecked-Sailor-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/067972205X
Autogenerated.
IAMA award-winning journalist and author specializing in immigration news! AMA!
You've probably heard a lot of news lately about immigration - terms like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, DACA, the Dream Act, the wall. How did the situation get to this point? I'm a news reporter who has been exploring immigration issues since 2001. I wrote the critically acclaimed, award-winning nonfiction work "The Book of Isaias: A child of Hispanic immigrants seeks his own America," from St. Martin's Press. Here's a link: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Isaias-Hispanic-Immigrants-America/dp/1250083060 I'm happy to answer your questions today. Proof: www.danielconnolly.net
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IamAbot_v01. Alpha version. Under care of /u/oppon.
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> And you aren't aware of the administration drugging kids so they are docile and quiet because you chug Breitbart, T_D, and FOX cock
Why can't you people just be polite when debating something with me? I'll bet you've complained at least once before about Donald Trump "ruining our country's reputation by slinging shit and talking bad about people on twitter" that's what you're doing to me right now. Let's have a discussion with some modicum of respect please. I'm not being mean to you. Maybe snarky, but not mean. Okay?
As to what you said, it sounds like you think we live in some Cyberpunk Dystopia where children are ... held in abandoned walmarts? I'd like to see more on that. Can't wait for it to be "children arrested at a walmart before being taken to a government holding cell"
What is the matter with you? Should these children be allowed to enter our country illegally because they are children? why should it matter if they are children? Are you saying that the adults being imprisoned for crossing illegally is acceptable? That's the only reason I can think for why you would only mention children.
I would recommend you read Enrique's Journey it tells the story of a boy named Enrique from Honduras who comes illegally, attempted several times and being deported I think seven times, to the United States to be with his mother. What he endured on the way to the US was 1,000% more horrendous than anything that happened to him when he got closer to the US border. You should be trying to prevent these children from coming here, and to instead lobby support for increasing their quality of life in their countries. They get abducted and put into sex trafficking. Women are raped. Girls have to wear shirts that say "I have AIDS" on them to scare away rapists. Mexican Police are corrupt. It's very bad stuff, and you aren't helping by virtue signalling on reddit, pal.
Not OP but here's one I read in college that deals with illegal immigration for those who might be interested http://www.amazon.com/Enriques-Journey-Sonia-Nazario/dp/0812971787
Actually when Batista first emerged in Cuban politics (1933), it was through a militray coup that saw him end up as Chief of the Army. Yes, he had strong ties at the time with Communists and Socialists on the island but it was a relationship of convenience. When he makes a run for the Presidency in 40 (40-44), it's the backing of labor and the Cuban left that get's him there. However, when he grows tired of being Cuba's backstage strongman and takes the Presidency without elections in 52, he is a very different man. He has new and more powerful allies, he doesnt need public support (hence no election) - United Fruit and Organized Crime would provie the muscle to keep him in power with no need to pander to anyone beyond the Cuban elite that benefitted from his rule.
Frank Argote-Freyre wrote a pretty good bio years ago but he never wrote a second volume.
I can't recommend any scholarly texts on the subject, but since this is a field that interests you, here's something you might want to read: How I Learned English: 55 Accomplished Latinos Recall Lessons in Language and Life. It's all anecdotal, but I found it very interesting.
Edited to add full title.
If you're interested in Venezuela under Chavez, or even strange politics in general, I highly recommend the following:
https://www.amazon.com/Comandante-Ch%C3%A1vezs-Venezuela-Rory-Carroll-ebook/dp/B008EKONCE
Written by a journalist who was in Venezuela, it is an incredibly good account of Chavez's impact- and is noticably unbiased.
How do you figure?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/0060746416/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all