Transcript Presentation

Over 30 years of travel research in three hours of lectures.
Latin America
300-900 AD
The Roman Empire was already declining.
About 50 percent of Guatemala's 11 million people are Indians,
who speak 24 indigenous languages.
1.5% of farmers owns 63% of
farmland. 20% of White men own
cars; only 5% of Indian men do.
99 percent of the population owns
20 percent of the land.
Copal, resin collected
from pine trees in the
surrounding mountains,
is burned in the Roman
Catholic church.
1 Pepsi = 1 peso OR 1 peso = 20 kg. of corn for a family for a week.
The Cathedral in Mexico City is the largest in Latin America. It took 300
years to build. The Zocalo (plaza) in front of it is the largest in the world.
Lumberjacks
averaged $10-15
per week;
food for a family
of six cost $6 per
week.
In the 19th century the Yucatan was an informal colony of Chicago’s
International Harvester, which turned the sisal into bailer twine for
Midwestern farmers. The planters built wedding-cake mansions in
Merida and sent their children to schools in New Orleans and Havana.
West Africa
350 years of slave trade here -- 9.5 million slaves
Dutch Fort 1637
Portuguese Fort 1482
South Asia
Galle, Sri Lanka
Portuguese 1580-1640
Dutch 1640-1796
British 1796-1948
Independence 1948
Tea is grown in the Hill Country, above 1,220 meters.
British colonials brought the Tamil Hindu (from India) minority to pick tea.
The British established coffee (until 1870s), and later, tea plantations; in
1948 the socialist government nationalized most of these private estates.
3 billion people in the world depend on rice for their food!
Sinhalese Buddhist are the majority in Sri Lanka.
What food is being sold at this roadside shop?
The bounty of the tropics. Why would people being hungry?
Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka's first capital in the 4th century BC.
A Buddhist statute
The rock fortress of Sigiriya, the
Lion Rock was built by King
Kashyapa, in the last quarter of the
5th Century to fend off the
persistent South Indian invaders.
People climb up
the 200-meter
precarious metal
steps to see the
temple dancers
painted in the
caves 1,500 years
ago.
And you think studying is hard work?