Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America by Chesa Boudin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked up this book because of the title; I’m a big fan of the word “Gringo.” And for those of you who are about to get offended, know that I am the daughter of a self-proclaimed “gringo” and [...]

Sometimes is seems like all my friends are trying to learn or improve their Spanish, which I love, and encourage as much as I can. So here’s a tool that might help you all!
El Castellano.org is a site that tries to gather web resources that will aid in learning Spanish, both the European and Latin [...]

Argentina made history yesterday by electing their first woman president! Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wife of the current president Nestor Kirchner, and former senator for Buenos Aires won a solid 45% of the vote. She is considered to be center-left, and populist in her politics and is often seen as the new Eva Peron (Evita). [...]

Today is the 40th anniversary of “Che’s” (June 14 1928-Oct 9, 1967) capture and execution (Oct 9th) in the Bolivian mountains. After studying medicine in Argentina, and later traveling throughout Latin America, Ernesto Guevara met his destiny in Mexico and joined a group of young idealist who would come to overthrow the Batista regime in [...]

Several nation leaders in Latin America seem to be waking up to the fact that International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) loans aren’t truly benefiting the majority of people there, so they are joining forces to create Banco del Sur. Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, and Paraguay have become the founding members to Banco [...]

One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization trying to address the lack of resources many Third World Countries struggle with and how these affect education and hinder technological development. Keeping in mind that many countries can only afford to spend $20 per child per year on education (compared to about $7,500 that the [...]

This week I got to meet Dan Hazen, Associate Librarian of Harvard College for collection development, and what a treat it was! I was most interested in learning about his involvement in international programs to promote libraries. We talked about PLALA (Program for Latin American Libraries and Archives), which he co-founded with Norman Fiering from [...]