Latin American Studies in Credo Reference: Culture

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, and journalist, b. Argentina. Dorfman's family moved to the United States shortly after his birth, settling in Chile in 1954. He attended and was later a professor at the Univ. of Chile. Forced into exile following the Chilean military coup of 1973, he has divided his time between Santiago and the United States since the restoration (1990) of democracy in his homeland; since 1985 he has taught at Duke Univ. Dorfman has written powerful fiction often dealing with the horrors of tyranny and, in later works, the trials of exile.

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
A survey of the works of P. F. suggests that his family's exile from Cuba in 1961 has exerted a powerful influence on the author's vision as a writer.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Brazilian anthropologist, statesman, and author. An expert on the indigenous peoples of Brazil, he wrote many books, notably the six-volume 1960s work, Studies of the Anthropology of Civilizations. Ribeiro served briefly in the cabinet of President João Goulart, fled to Uruguay after the 1964 military coup, and returned a decade later. His novel Maíra (1978, tr. 1983) concerns the conflict between the native Amazonian and European components of Brazilian society.

Spanish film director and screenwriter; films include All About My Mother (Todo Sobre Mi Madre, 2003).

From Chambers Film Factfinder
She became a bestselling recording artist and the highest paid Latina actress in the world, noted as much for her diva reputation, shapely derrière and range of perfumes as for her performances.

From Chambers Biographical Dictionary
Her career took off internationally in the 1980s through her collaboration with Pedro Almodóvar, winning the Best Actress Award at the European Film Awards in 1988 for her performance in his Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Of Mexican-Indian and Mexican-Irish parentage, he was tall, swarthy, and powerfully built, and early in his career played dozens of Native American and outlaw roles. Thereafter, he was cast as a rugged ethnic or exotic of varying backgrounds.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Cantinflas, born in Mexico City, was a tent-show entertainer and circus clown before making his Mexican film debut in 1936. He subsequently averaged at least one film a year, creating characterizations based on the notion of the resourceful ‘little man’. He briefly achieved international fame when he played Passepartout, quizzical valet to the globetrotting Phineas Fogg in the lavish 1956 screen version of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Spanish film director and screenwriter. He was a key figure in the New Spanish Cinema movement of the 1960s.

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
These studies had their origins in the student activism, identity politics, and intellectual foment of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Like the other nationalist movements of the era, it emerged as a field of scholarly inquiry that placed special emphasis on linking academic research with the politics of social justice.

From The Dictionary of Human Geography
In conventional usage, the term refers to those countries of the American continent that share a history of Spanish, Portuguese and French colonialism. However, the term also is widely used to denote all countries south of the USA (Lewis and Wigen, 1997, p. 182).

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
Social movements of the civil rights era (1954-68) called attention to the plight of Latinos in the United States, particularly that of Chicanos and Puerto Ricans, the largest Latino subgroups, both of which were incorporated into the United States through conquest.

Colombian novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, born in Aracataca.

Argentine poet, critic, and short-story writer, b. Buenos Aires.

Chilean poet, diplomat, and Communist leader.

Poet, born in Mexico City, Mexico.

Mexican artist. Self-taught after a crippling accident at the age of 15 which left her in agonizing pain for life.

Mexican mural painter, studied as a youth with Posada and other Mexican painters; husband of Frida Kahlo.

Member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages.

Member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages.

Among the more important Romance languages are Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Occitan, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, and Spanish. The spread of some Romance languages to other parts of the world, especially the Western Hemisphere, accompanied the colonizing and empire-building of the mother countries of these languages, notably Spain, Portugal, and France.

Member of the Romance group of the Italic subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages.