What do our language and symbols mean?
Octavio Paz's prefatory study to the universality and ethnic isolation of human existence.
El Laberinto de la Soledad
The Labyrinth of Solitude or the maze of isolation
language is a significant, if not defining part of our culture
and
symbols are the means we have to tie images and ideas to concepts.
What do these mean in relation to our history?
Take for example the meaning of Creole: (a Portuguese word originally)
1. European born in the Americas
2. Mixed ethnicity
mulatto: African and European
mestizo: Indigenes and European
mustee: African and Indigenes
Myths
Events
People
Landscape
Emergence of a cultural story to explain our identity
We are what our parents were:
List your parents ethnic mixture, based on their parent's nationality and ethnological heritage.
Grand Parents relation: MGMa MGPa PGMa PGPa relation: MGMa MGPa PGMa PGPa ethnicity Country Country Mother Father Ethnic Identity: nationality usually distinct language, religion, diet, and customs.
Crosby argued "We are what inadvertant effects and fortune have left us ."
Mintz argued " We are what our appetites make us and we are the procucts of the extent to which we go to satisfy that hunger.