Peruvian Cultural Perspectives

The young male I chose for this interview is from Lima Peru. He is a student and an athlete here at SIUe. He came to SIUe to play sports, more specifically football or as we call it here in the United States, soccer. He is enjoying it quite a lot. This student came to the United States in 2013 and feels that each country has something different to offer.

What is culture? Culture includes languages, ideas, beliefs, customs, institutions, inventions, technology, and values. One may ask what do the people of the society wear? How do they prepare their food? What type of foods to the eat? What kind of work do they do? We are not born with any knowledge of a culture. This is something we learn throughout time and it makes up who and what you are as a person. There are many different cultures in the world today. But that is what makes our society unique. Culture is based on long standing traditions that have been passed on from one generation to another. The purpose of this paper is to compare language, health, and education of a Peruvian culture to the American lifestyle.

Spiritual connection with the dead is also one of the important elements of Latino culture, which is demonstrated by frequent gravesite visits and praying to spirits. Death is always associated with separation, which leads to sorrow, and grief; however cultural perceptions and beliefs help to look at death from a different perspective and perceive death as a natural state that can be approached with love, respect, dignity, and tremendous family support. Latino culture supports their dying people during the last journey, and believes in afterlife, which gives them hope and helps to overcome unbearable grief of permanent loss.

In Latin American countries, they have a very unique culture. With their holidays, music, celebrations, and art, the countries in Latin America never cease to bring joy in people’s lives. Latin American culture is vastly different than other cultures in many ways. In Latin America, the languages of Spanish and Portuguese are dominant and most people speak them. However there are people who speak other languages as well. Latin America includes nineteen countries and several territories. There are a variety of different ethnicities in Latin America including Mexicans, Europeans, and Asians. Education inside the Latin American culture still struggles. Only a little more than half of kids ages 13-17 advance into secondary school. Because of this, the crime and violence rates in Latin America are at an all time high. These countries have been rated as one of the most dangerous regions in the world because of how high the rates of crime and violence are.

Peru is located in western South America and it shares borders with Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia and Ecuador and the South Pacific Ocean. Peru is about 1.28 million square kilometers. There are three major regions in Peru: a narrow coastal belt, the wide Andean mountains and the Amazon Basin. The coast is mostly a desert, but contains Peru's major cities. The Andes has two main ranges - Cordillera Occidental and Oriental. Oriental includes Peru's highest mountain called Huascaran, it a peaks out at 22,200ft. On the east side is the Amazon Basin, a region of tropical lowland, the water there is carried out by the Maranon and Ucayali rivers.

It can be argued that Mexican and Peruvian heritage have been influenced by African traditions and genealogy. During the 17th and 18th century, slaves were transported to Latin America. Within Latin America, slaves were expensive and viewed as a luxury, rather than a commodity. As a result of the high price of slaves; slaves would be treated with slight dignity within Mexican culture.

The Colombian culture is formed from the inheritance of the indigenous peoples present in the territory since ancient times, the Spanish traditions adopted during the colonial period and the African Customs incorporated by the slaves that led the conquistadors. This mixture of cultures constitutes a society with traits common to the rest of Latin American countries but, at the same time, very different also. Indeed, even within Colombia's own territory there are many differences between regions and others. Geographic diversity-can be found from tropical beaches to mountains of more than 5,000 meters in height with perpetual snows-and the natural isolation of some areas has led to this diversity. Some of the most important cultural groups according to their location are the so-called cops, located in the Altiplano Cundiboyacense; the countries, settled in Antioquia; The foresters, Settlers of the eastern plains; the Vallunos, settled in the area of Valle del Cauca; the coastal, inhabitants of the Caribbean coast, and the Santander, residents of the departments of Santander and Norte de Santander. All these groups are characterized by showing great cultural differences among themselves, which makes Colombia a fascinating country to know and enter into the day to day of its inhabitants.

Steven J. Stern’s text, Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest, highlights from beginning to end Spain’s conquest of the Andean people while articulating the transformation of the relationship between these two peoples. He illustrates how Spain’s efforts toward colonialism of the Andes, transformed the natives from a self-sufficient group of people into an oppressed caste system known as “Indians.” Additionally, he introduces the idea that the Spanish needed to break the indigenous and gain their favor in order successfully establish dominance over them and their land. While arguing this, he offers several facts, which contradict the black legend associated with the Spanish and their means of conquest.

To Maria, Mexican culture revolves all around your family, morals, and traditions and religion. “You have to be proud of where you come from, Mexican culture is about being proud of who you are” said Maria. “My Father taught all of my brothers and sisters to look out for one another because with out family you have nothing.” Ever since Maria born her family has been very religious. She was baptized in a church is Guadalajara, but she

There are twenty Spanish speaking counties worldwide. Out of those twenty countries there are about 475 million Spanish speaking people. People often believe most Hispanics are very similar in these countries, but in fact they are very diverse. Some the differences are the foods, music, and history of the people. The two countries that show this are Peru and Mexico. These countries are from two distinct cultures and two different continents.

In this Ethnographic paper, I will be interviewing and discussing the differences between my culture and that of another. My culture consists of two-parts, one being Puerto Rican and the other being Caucasian. I will be interviewing my best friend’s mother Cristina Carlesso Dager, who is from Venezuela. South American culture consists of many influences due to the arrival of the Europeans; Europeans cultures brought a mix of Spanish, Portuguese, and French creating what we know today as Latin America. This paper will highlight key topics discussed in class like kinship, political and social organization, food, clothing, religion, etc. From this interview, I want to gain a new-found knowledge of what is like to be from a different culture then my own. I will interview Mrs. Dager with no bias and will cover every subject to my capability. I am interested in discovering the differences between our cultures, so that I can be aware of this diverse world that I live in.

In order to better understand traditional Mexican-American viewpoints on end of life care and death practices, I conducted an interview with Jaime, a forty year old, Mexican-American male living in the United States. He has lived in the United States for almost twenty years. From my discussion with him, he said that the overwhelming emotion that surrounds how death is perceived in his cultural and religion was sadness; he acknowledged that death is a part of life, but that there should be a sad, outward emotional response (Jaime Zuniga, personal communication, April 17, 2016). He is Catholic and believes that after a person dies, he or she goes to Heaven. The order of events after someone dies is

Culture is the aquired knowledge that people use to interpret, experience, and generate social behavior.

In Peruvian culture premarital sexual relations are unacceptable and parents enforce this very strictly. Catholicism has heavy bearing on this culture because of no contraceptives and the culture belief in marriage sexual relations are to be with only one person and be strictly private. Allison says even her parents in the United States still are very strict when it comes to boyfriends and they remind her about the importance of celibacy. Allison's even talked about how in her family the bride should be where white to symbolize her purity upon being married at the wedding. According to Forrest & Porturas, J (2006),”Children out of wedlock are common but are concealed by a rushed marriage before the baby is born.” This shows how even when it

For a well-educated, successful man from the United States, the switch to Peruvian jungle culture jarred him. Nothing that Todd had accomplished in his studies could scrape a bit of respect out of the natives.