Nicolas

A decent read. Was overly Eurocentric though.

Reviewed: 04-12-22

The material itself was very interesting, although it is a very generalized perception of "Latin" America since it covers independence from most of the countries and compares their situations. I did enjoy that this book expands on how history and conflicts in Europe affected life in the Caribbean and "Latin" America because of the colonial system in place. The narrator really took away from this reading experience. It isn't that difficult to find a fluent Spanish-speaker that could read this book smoothly so it was disappointing to have a narrator that clearly struggled with many of the words. Hearing the narrator read particular terms like: cabildo abierto, las cortes, pardos was cringeworthy because he would pronounce it with an emphasis and overpronunciation as if it were some sort of "vocab word" in school. Another issue with this book was the use of the word "Indian", an outdated word used by Euro populations to refer to Indigenous people. It really took away some credibility from this book since the use of this word emphasizes how it was written in a very Western perspective. I personally think there are more accurate books out there that would have a more balanced perception of "Latin" America. Nonetheless, this book does mention interesting random facts about life back then in terms of social norms/structures and power dynamics.

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