During this program with the Latino Student Union, we were engaged in guessing which country the presenters were discussing after giving some notable facts about a certain country we try to guess. For every country we guessed, they mentioned the current events and fun facts about those countries afterwards. Some countries that we’ve successfully guessed were: Chile, Columbia, Nicaragua, Argentina, El Salvador, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Bolivia, Honduras and Brazil. Some facts ranged from their national sports to their spoken languages. Current events that were mentioned are that Nicaragua is trying to build a canal although they have a concern over environmental effects, El Salvador sends children to the United States to keep them from the gangs and warfare in their nation, and much more.
This program relates to many national events going on throughout Latin America. A current event from Panama would be that they have the best telecommunication system in Latin America. Argentina has their congress recently passing a measure to prevent itself from going into their second default after 13 years. Venezuela being one of the best oil exporting countries in the world. Also Chile has a separation between two groups of people who were a former dictator’s supporters and detractors which creates tensions between them. These current events inform us more about important things we may find interesting about a nation. With this information, we can understand more about how a different country operates.
I gained a lot of new information from this program pertaining to the fun facts and current events mentioned about other countries I don’t quite think about. I was able to learn more about countries other than the ones I’m from: Ecuador and Dominican Republic which they haven’t mentioned. I learned about Honduras being more of a gang controlled country where it’s more of a murder capital with murders at a ratio of 90 to 100,000. I learned that Brazil had imagined their economy getting better after hosting the World Cup, however the GDP only increased by 0.2% indicating that, still, the inflation rate is expected to rise. I learned that Cuba made Christmas an official holiday on 1997, and they nickname their country a crocodile since their island is shaped like a crocodile’s head.