Media Literacy In Latin America

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Latin America is a term that has developed and changed over time. The main thing that made Latin America what it is today is the ongoing battle against colonialism that tries to change the Ideology to benefit its people instead of just profit. The media serves a battle stage for contenders to change the ideology of the culture itself and the world. This battle impacts Latin America on many levels such as Race, Individualism, and Democracy, and it will probably go on for many more years. In the beginning it started with the Spanish came and took over making the dominate language Spanish and soon started the name Latin America. When they came over they brought a lot of stuff with them like smallpox and measles which wiped out a large part of…show more content…
Today the battle is still the same the only thing that change is the arena. Media is the new arena for the ongoing struggle to get represented in the right way. The Media is the main way we all get our information whether it’s thru TV, phone, magazine, etc. This powerful medium is the way to get your ideas, thoughts, and individuality out to a mass audience. It is also important to be able to properly access, analyze, evaluate, and create these media which falls under the category of Media Literacy. Media Literacy is important so we can interoperate the complex messages the media is telling us so we can control what we believe instead of the media controlling what we believe. In Latin America this is critical because that aren’t being represented correctly in the media. “Latinos are among the least represented speaking roles in film and TV, even though they make up about 17.4 percent of the U.S. population”. (Latimer 1) Whenever a Latino or Latina is represented in a movie in Hollywood or the majority of TV it will be a traditional stereotype. It’s like they don’t have anything else to their culture besides these stereotypes and this is bad when the media is going to condition the way the majority thinks. Even in the magazines the people on the covers aren’t even native to Latin America, it’s just a giant slap in the face for the…show more content…
They are the decadents of African Slaves that were brought over to Latin America. The slaves were forced to work on the sugar cane plantations because it was considered one of the most important crops to have but, they also worked in other places where physical labor was needed such as cotton fields, carpenters, and blacksmiths. Today even if they consider themselves Latin American or Afro-Latin Americans people don’t except them as that and only consider them black. This is offensive and just ignoring what that person’s background is just so you can label them in a box that’s easier. It’s already started but, if more Afro-Latin Americans get represented in the media on a large scale they will start to finally get the representation they deserve. Representation is not only for individuals to feel good about themselves it’s also so that the represented can actually feel like they’re

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