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Introduction to Latin American Literature: Crash Course Latin American Literature #1

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MLA Full: "Introduction to Latin American Literature: Crash Course Latin American Literature #1." YouTube, uploaded by CrashCourse, 30 October 2025, www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX6lzkQBmhc.
MLA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
APA Full: CrashCourse. (2025, October 30). Introduction to Latin American Literature: Crash Course Latin American Literature #1 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=hX6lzkQBmhc
APA Inline: (CrashCourse, 2025)
Chicago Full: CrashCourse, "Introduction to Latin American Literature: Crash Course Latin American Literature #1.", October 30, 2025, YouTube, 12:05,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=hX6lzkQBmhc.
Latin America is a vastly diverse region shaped by a blend of influences. In this episode of Crash Course Latin American Literature, we’ll explore how Latin American authors navigate one big question: Who are we?













Introduction: Where is Latin America? 00:00






The History of "Latin America" 0:53






Latino vs. Hispanic 2:41






Varying Identities & Languages 3:28






Paz & Identity 5:05






"Terra Nostra" 7:30






Borges & Andrade 9:17






Review & Credits 11:09













Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eE7g4-k6PD7C6wNBzeJIO8GCDHpoJl8ldDjKyq_2yYg/edit?tab=t.0













To learn more, check out these videos:













Geopolitical history of Latin America: Latin American Revolutions: Crash Course World History #31 https://youtu.be/ZBw35Ze3bg8?si=8z_ra4m4cXUMnLdT , War and Nation Building in Latin America: Crash Course World History 225 https://youtu.be/v6xi8_7Fy6Y?si=uDevoPt88Q6wBBXB






Imperialism:






Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Zheng He - 15th Century Mariners: Crash Course World History #21 https://youtu.be/NjEGncridoQ?si=hzKIJz7J5yy3MoOB , The Spanish Empire, Silver, & Runaway Inflation: Crash Course World History #25 https://youtu.be/rjhIzemLdos?si=EDypIu1uOW0nQZuW , Imperialism: Crash Course World History #35 https://youtu.be/alJaltUmrGo?si=PhOQlrhHDnndZndM













Check out our CC Latin America Extra Curricular Playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8dPuuaLjXtPTzMxnHVWhrV8dUZM0qL34&si=To8-VCKQv51bH9dP













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CC Kids: http://www.youtube.com/crashcoursekids
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 (00:00) to (02:00)


Curly Velasquez: Where is Latin America?

Well, just like the question who's the most iconic Spice Girl, it depends on who you ask. 

Some people say Latin America is anywhere south of the US. Others say it's anywhere south of the US where romance languages are commonly spoken. 

So, we're talking about anywhere from 20 to 52 countries and territories where hundreds of languages are spoken across millions of square miles. 

As I scrolled through these debates in a few scholarly tomes and read it, I couldn't help but wonder why lump so many distinct countries into one identity. What makes a Latin American Latin American?

Hi, I'm Curly Velasquez, and thos is Crash Course Latin American Literature. 

[Theme music]

Do we have to agree on what Latin America is before talking about Latin American literature?

How much time do you have? It turns out the Latin American label is surprisingly new.

Some historians say the term began with the French in the 1830s. In an attempt to seize power over Mexico, Napoleon III — no, not that Napoleon, the one with the bigote. Yes, yes — wanted to emphasise that both France and Mexico shared Latin roots in their languages, hence Latin America. 

This was an example of imperialism, where one country takes power over another, and it's a critical part of Latin American history. But so is resistance to imperialism.

Others credit the name Latin America to Chilean politician Francisco Bilbao, who called for dozens of countries to unite under this shared identity and the fight against global imperial powers.

Today, there's disagreement about why the term has stuck around too. Is Latin America still in use because outsiders flatten other cultures into falsely uniform identities?

 (02:00) to (04:00)


Or because people from the region feel a shared sense of community despite national differences? 

In this series, we'll use Latin America to mean countries with a shared history of colonisation by Spain and Portugal between the 15th and 18th centuries, followed by independence in the early 19th century. 

But to get a bigger picture, we'll also explore indigenous literature, and Latin American authors in the US who write in English. 

One thing you'll learn about me is I don't do anything small. 

And all these questions about what unites and divides a region, about where its boundaries fall, about who we are in relationship to each other, they're not simply hurdles we have to clear. 

They're some of the central questions at the heart of so much of Latin American literature. 

Now, because Latin Americans are diverse, it's challenging to choose one label to describe us.

Like in the USA, you may hear the terms Latino or Latina to refer to immigrants from Latin America and their descendants, or gender neutral alternatives like Latinx or Latine.

You guys, it is one letter change. We will all survive. I promise. 

Meanwhile, the term Hispanic refers to people of Spanish speaking descent or origin.

So, someone from Spain would be Hispanic but not Latino. And a Portuguese speaking Brazilian might consider themselves Latino but not Hispanic.

And there are a lot of other community specific terms out there, like Chicano for people of Mexican descent living in the US, or Afro-Latino for those in Latin America with African ancestry, or even Nuyorican for Puerto Ricans living in New York. 

So yeah, Latin America includes lots of different communities across lots of different countries and languages, which means in literature we find lots of different answers to the question, who are we?

Some Latin American authors, like Mexican-Canadian author, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, write mostly in English. Others write both in Spanish and English. And some flip between languages, even within the same text, like Los ríos profundos — Deep Rivers — by José María Arguedas.

 (04:00) to (06:00)


This uses both Spanish and the indigenous language Ketwa. 

Sometimes, you'll find Spanglish — a mixture of Spanish and English — like in Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street.

You'll also find Portuno — a blend of Portuguese and Spanish — like in Fabián Severo's novel Noite nu norte — Nights in the North. 

And language plays a big role in the international availability of Latin American literature too. Well, language, power, and you know, capitalism. 

Like, US publishers have been more interested in books from Argentina and Mexico for at least the last decade. So, these are the books that tend to get translated into English, and that influences what can make its way into English language classes and crash courses.

In this series, we'll span diverse genres and take a broad view of what literature means — or lich-ra-chure, if you're Oprah. 

We'll cover the usual suspects, poetry, novels, and short stories, but also dive into historical accounts, political essays, and other texts.

Do my ex's text messages count too, or not so much? Oh, you're saying no. Okay. 

Often, you'll encounter authors with ties to multiple countries, like Clarence Lispector was born in Ukraine but spent much of her life in Brazil, and the Cuban writer José Martí wrote for an Argentine newspaper while in exile in New York. 

So, it's no surprise that Latin American literature often wrestles with big questions about identity, like what's our relationship to Europe and the rest of the world for that matter after being colonised and gaining independence? And what's our relationship to our indigenous ancestors and our African ancestors, too?

Given the blend of indigenous, African, and European influences, who even are we? Anyone? Anyone? 

Okay, how about we hash this out with Mexican writer Octavio Paz. Here are the Curly notes on Paz's 1950 essay, Los hijos de la Malinche — the sons of Malinche. 

[Title card: Curly Notes]

Malinche wasn't your average señora.

 (06:00) to (08:00)


She was a multilingual indigenous woman who, after being enslaved and handed over to the Spanish as a teenager, interpreted for Hernán Cortés during his conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521. 

She and Cortez also had a son who's seen as one of the first mestizos, meaning people of mixed indigenous and Spanish ancestry, which describes most of Mexico's population today. 

Paz writes that Malinche is often remembered as a traitor who gave herself voluntarily to the conquistador and that the Mexican people have not forgiven La Malinche for her betrayal. 

He points out that the word Malinchista became a popular insult to "denounce all those who have been corrupted by foreign influences".

Am I tripping, or is Cortez the real villain here? 

Paz argues that the reason Mexicans condemn Malinche is to try to distance themselves from a painful part of their past and transcended. 

"The Mexican does not want to be either an Indian or a Spaniard. Nor does he want to be descended from them. He denies them. And he does not affirm himself as a mixture, but rather as an abstraction: His beginnings are in his own self."

I'm going to need some cafecito to process this one.

[Title card: cafecito break]

[Takes a drink] Much better. 

When your national identity is a mix of cultures and has been shaped by violent colonisation, how do you begin to answer a question like who are we? How far back should we go for answers? And how close to home should we stay?

Another Mexican writer, Carlos Fuentes, explores those questions in his 1975 novel, Terra nostra. 

Rather than analyse a single historical figure like Malinche, Fuentes prowls for answers across history, zooming between ancient Rome, pre-colonial Mexico, 16th century Spain, and 1999 Paris. 

But Fuentes doesn't stop there. He links Spain's colonisation of the Americas to a much bigger story. A New York Times review described Terra Nostra as a panoramic espano American creation myth, and the scholar Lucille Kerr says that it explores Mexican identity in terms of universal myth and history. 

 (08:00) to (10:00)


"In the world of Terra nostra, the mystery of Mexican identity is the same mystery 'of civilization on which civilization itself is founded.'"
 

Meaning like we're all products of violent histories of borders that shifted over time. All of civilization is a story of different peoples clashing and melding and becoming something new. 

 

In this way, the Latin American story or stories really shed light on all of our stories. 

Much of Terra Nostra focuses on a fictionalised account of the real life Spanish king Felipe II, who was a true nepo baby. He inherited his entire kingdom from his dad. 

Must be nice. All I got from my dad was a used Honda. 

Felipe obsessively constructed a massive palace/mausoleum called the Escoreal, and Fuentes portrays it in a real "the Emperor has no clothes" kind of way. 

Even though Spain colonised and held power in the Americas for centuries, Felipe's single-minded focus on what amounts to an extremely elaborate coffin reflects the emptiness of the whole colonial project as "based on death... on nada."

And Fuentes wasn't the only writer to explore Latin American identity by thinking globally. 

Before him in Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges wrestled with these issues in his work.

He was of Spanish, Portuguese, and English descent, educated in Switzerland, and travelled off into Europe. His whole life and work was at the crossroads of these identity intersections. 

And in his 1951 essay, El escritor argentino y la tradición — the Argentine writer and tradition — Borges encourages others to work at these crossroads, too. 

He resists the idea that to be an Argentine writer means only dabbling in your own backyard. "We must believe that the universe is our birthright and try out every subject." 

 (10:00) to (12:00)


Bourges is capturing a tension between the local and the global that can be found in a lot of Latin American literature in communities living with the legacy of colonisation. 

You can't asking a question like who are we, without searching the world for answers.

So what do you do with that? The Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade suggests cannibalism — cultural cannibalism, that is. 

He does it himself in his 1928 essay, Manifesto antripófago — Cannibalist Manifesto — with this line: "Tupi or not tupi, that is the question." 

Sound familiar? He's reappropriating Shakespeare's famous line from Hamlet using the similar sounding name of an indigenous people in Brazil. 

Like why not devour and Brazilify one of most famous lines in English literature?

Andrade calls for Brazilians to do the same. Take in the influences, blend them up, and pour them out as something totally new.

[Handed bottle] Oh, thank you. It's my post-colonial protein smoothie. [Sips drink] I think it needs some work. [Hands it back]

In a vastly diverse region, you're not going to find one single answer to the question, who are we?

Latin American literature is produced across many different communities in many different languages from a blend of influences. And when Latin American writers explore identity, they're often navigating the tension between influences from their own neighbourhood and the other side of the world. 

To which I say, no loss. Why not both?

Next time, we'll talk about how stories, history, and politics collide. See you then. 

Thanks for watching Crash Course Latin American Literature, which was filmed at the Carlos Hernandez studio in Indianapolis, and was made with the help of all these nice people. If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.

Oh, and if you're interested in learning about some of the topics covered in this episode, we pulled together a playlist 

 (12:00) to (12:05)


you can dig into.
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