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The Exile Narrative and Latin American Culture

The following was written for a Chicano History class I'm taking right now through my local community college.             The “Indigenous Problem” of Porfirio Diaz’s regime fascinated me in that dark way history’s ugly sides often do. That lesson functioned as a cautionary tale of the real, tangible impact, to all sides and parties, of systematic discrimination and its targeted destruction of a group’s narrative agency. However, the unintended consequences of Diaz’s move to replace the Mexican working population provide another lesson, a pragmatically optimistic trust in the resilience of humanity and our innate tendency toward agency and self-determination, the very tendencies that, once the many layers of prejudices, of injustices, and of imperialist vices are stripped away, form the core of the original American experiment.               Porfirio Diaz, dictator of Mexico for thirty-four years, created a “technocracy,” ruling with a group known as the Científicos. His g
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Religion and the Narrative

                Narratives, the fundamental stories that define and shape a belief system, make religion accessible and relatable. They are the practice and the practical of theology. They show relatable situations with realistic characters whose actions and responses are either examples of what to do or what not to do. In this way, stories are our means of reflecting on the fundamental questions of religion: Why are we here? What happens after we die? What constitutes good? What defines evil? These are complex questions, and narratives frame them in terms we can understand. A child can understand the moral of “The Tortoise and the Hare” long before they can discuss stamina and perseverance. Narratives are catchy, attractive, and memorable. Nearly every influential religious figure excelled as a storyteller. The parables of Jesus are among the most recognizable passages in the New Testament. Later thinkers, from Rumi to Dr. King to Billy Graham, are remembered for the eloquence of the

What Has Made Me Who I Am Does Not Have to Be What I Become

What Has Made Me Who I Am Does Not Have to Be What I Become   I’m a high school senior from a small town in Central Washington. Since I was thirteen years old, I’ve known exactly what I want to do “when I grew up”: I want to become a professor of linguistics at a major research university. I want to research and write papers and teach. Because I have had this answer ready for so long, people started to ask me what I want to specialize in. I’d say that I wasn’t sure, but perhaps an indigenous language family in Central America, because I already spoke Spanish and had studied the culture and politics of the region. Then it struck me: what has made me who I am does not have to be what I become. This was a shocking, indeed liberating idea for me. It seemed so obvious, that I was going to college to learn new things and have new experiences, and yet it seemed contrary to everything I had learned. Suddenly, this simple idea permeated every aspect of my life. It became a mantr

Welcome

I don’t know how to begin this, but I suppose that’s fitting, as this is largely a blog about what I don’t know. I subtitled this “Mixed-up Musings,” because I’m hoping to puzzle out some of the many questions I have, and maybe contribute to the greater dialogue along the way. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m beginning this blog as part of my high school senior project. My first love, what I intend to pursue for my career, is linguistics (hence the name of this blog), but at this stage in my life, on the verge of so much change, what I need to write about is religion and faith. I write to figure out things I don’t understand, and much of my writing lately, both fiction and nonfiction, deals with religion. I started Babel Scattered as a way to organize these thoughts and writings and see what comes of it.   What am I trying to get out of this experiment? Not wisdom or enlightenment or fame or fortune. Nothing spectacular. I have no agenda, no thesis. Only a search. I’m