Being In a Foreign Land

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Marlene Garcia REL 291 Prof. Memo Reflection Paper on “We Drink from Our Wells” May 11, 2011 Being in a Foreign Land In the novel We Drink from Our Own Wells, the author mentions how people in Latin America are seen as strangers within their own land. For many years, Latin America countries have been dependent upon foreign powers. There have been many false promises of progress that U.S and Europe have made to the Latinos/Hispanics. Latin America is depended upon foreign powers, yet the U.S has set up policies that mostly benefit the U.S, and marginalizes Latin America. This is nothing new, is history that goes back for centuries, Latin American countries have been facing poverty. As Gutierrez mentions that poverty is death (Gutierrez 9). I enjoyed how the author elaborated into this issue. At first I was not so sure what Gutierrez meant with the idea of poverty being death. Then, I found myself agreeing with his argument because death means hunger and sickness. Poverty is an issue, that we can have different perspectives on the way we elaborate this idea. “The exploited and marginalized are today becoming increasingly conscious of living in a foreign land that is hostile to them, a land of death, a land that has no concern for their most legitimate interests and serves only as a tool for their oppressors, a land that is alien to their hopes and is owned by those who seek to terrorize them” (Gutierrez 11). This experience is being carried out by historical roots, from our indigenous roots we carry. A concrete example that the author provides is the one that took place on the Sixteenth- century with the Ameri-Indians of Peru, whose land had become a foreign territory, a world turned inside out by European conquerors. In this novel, the author refers to the poor within Latin America; therefore the poor struggle is part of a journey to a
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