Anthropology of Latin America & Caribbean 2021: The Interwoven Americas
“We are more American than all the gringos”—Los Tigres del Norte capture a reality most textbooks miss. Using Harry Sanabria’s comprehensive The Anthropology of Latin America and the Caribbean (2nd edition), this course explores how North and South American destinies have been interwoven for centuries, from Spanish Alaska to the US dollar’s origins in Bolivian silver.
Course Videos
Unit 1: Origins of Latin America & the Caribbean
- LAC Peoples — Why the US has more Spanish speakers than Spain
- Before the Europeans — Indigenous societies that shaped world history
- Conquest, Colonialism, and Resistance — How most of the US was once Latin America
Unit 2: Colonial Legacies, Nationalities, Identities
- Independence and Nation-Building — Creating nations from colonial fragments
- Cultural Politics of Race and Ethnicity — How colonial categories persist
- Gender, Sexuality, and Reproduction — Challenging binaries across cultures
- Religion and Everyday Life — From Catholic colonialism to Protestant expansion
- Neoliberalism, NAFTA, and Immigration — Why walls can’t stop $1 trillion in trade
Explore Further
Visit The Americas Hub for broader perspectives on how the Americas shaped—and continue to shape—world history. For more intensive treatments using different texts, see Latin America & Caribbean 2023 (Restall, Lane, Mintz, Bonilla) and Colonial Latin America 2024.