The life of Elizabeth I, going beyond…

Hello everyone!

This time I want to express my point of view about the biography of Elizabeth I had and what has that to do with her role as a leader of the England Empire.

Maybe you don’t know more deeply the story of her life, maybe no one will ever know it “that well”, because the history changes every time and every time you may find different versions. But what I will try to do is to deduce some facts of the “history” that we all now know about this Queen and what I think could be consequences of the way of govern that represented her.  

The history about Elizabeth that we all know was, in my opinion, very complicated; first of all, we can see all the family conflicts that she went through;  that her father Henry VIII married many women, one of them Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother, died by decapitation, because her husband Henry accused her of adultery and high treason. Why?
History tells us that he made that, because she birth Elizabeth, a woman child, and he wanted a boy to be the next King and also he wanted to marry another woman.  Then the King declared Elizabeth illegitimate.
Anne Boleyn died when Elizabeth was only 2 years old.

The bad news of the hard life of Elizabeth continues, but I want to stop here and make a reflection with this part that refers to the childhood of Elizabeth.
The thing of losing your mother in a very early age is very difficult and also to know that your father made that happened, is the double difficult.
She was also raised by someone that wasn’t her mother.
So in my opinion, to have to go through all this complicated moments makes you grow up very quickly and to learn about the reality, to know how some situations works; and here we can find a piece of what form Elizabeth.

Other circumstances that “construct” the Elizabeth’s personality  was that she became queen, when she was only 25 years old, and govern the whole Empire of England by herself. Moreover, in that moment England was in a kind of “crisis”, because of the religious discord, the bankrupt of the nation and also the people considered Elizabeth illegitimate. So it was a complex beginning.
Nevertheless, Elizabeth passed through all that troubles alone and could govern with relative stability and guide England to the “golden age”.

In conclusion I can say that the tough life that had lived Elizabeth made her the women that we studied as glorified, powerful, leader, and as a model to follow.
She lived lots of complicated moments in her life that made her grew up and to be a strongly and powerful women, who turn into the greatest monarch in English history.
Maybe all that problems made her to be the model Queen, which we are learning about now.

Are you agree with me of looking backward the life of the Queen Elizabeth I?

Is logical or do you believe that her character or the way of govern that she has was just a consequence of what she had to do in that moment as a queen?

I would like to know your opinion about this.

Here I post two websites where you may find more info about the biography of Elizabeth I (first one has also a video that explains better everything):

http://www.biography.com/people/queen-elizabeth-i-9286133#awesm=~oDl94yMomznvQP

http://englishhistory.net/tudor/monarchs/eliz1.html

Hope you liked it!

Cultural diversity closer to us...

      Hi again! This time, I would like to show you a short documentary film about some indigenous peoples in Chile. We often speak about cutural diversity and its big importance in our lives. But, do you know how many indigenous peoples dwelt Chile a long time ago? 

       Here you have the choice to see some aspects of four of them at present. "Lenguas Indigenas de Chile" was produced by Visualarte, in collaboration with UNESCO Santiago and USACH. Its purpose is to create awareness of the importance of the indigenous heritage in our society.

          Some people relate important aspects of its culture while we see a lot images of nature, landscapes which are simply beautiful. The music is also very different from what we hear daily, it seems to take part of the harmony that nature gives us. 

            Through the six segments, we can see some activities they realize daily and they explain the troubles their cultures face, too, because of the presumable loss of their heritage.

We see how, indigenous people, ligated to some art, constantly make efforts to keep alive the knowledge that has been spreading during years. Some cases are very alarming, like the last Yaghan-Speaker woman. 

              Here is shown a beautiful life, but we don’t see in any video something about the Mapuche conflict. We only see them in conferences about how important is saving their heritage. Maybe someone who doesn’t know about the conflicts could think that here in Chile, there’s a perfect harmony with Indigenous peoples. 

              Since hundreds of years ago, this conflict has been marked by peaceful times, but also, hard times. Sadly, we can’t see the whole dimension because it is limited to show the prettiest face of this situation. 

              I think integration goes further than showing us the different lifestyles in our country. I have the impression they are just showing a postcard to export. Our country has some commitments with these peoples, but there's still some differences between what the Government and the peoples want. We can take these videos as a starting point, but we can't stay there for ever. I hope someday these languages will be teached at schools. Not for being a succesful businessman, no. Just to keep safe a legacy that makes some people to feel ashamed, just to keep safe a legacy that makes to other people feel proud. 

 Do you think this kind of strategies is effective to create awareness about the importance of cultural diversity?

The Virgin Queen Elizabeth and her great spirit.

Hi everyone


 I will talk to you about what I do think about "The Great Empire of Queen Elizabeth I".
Definitely I believe that Queen Elizabeth I was an amazing woman in terms of governor in a male-chovinism society in her day. She was an intelligent and determined woman. It surprised me and many of my classmates that she proved everyone how perfectly a woman could have keep a nation and its relationships such as trading.
Having her as the Head of English Empire, it emerged until becoming one of the strongest ones.
Personally, I think she showed her love for her kingdom.
 
She dedicated his nation completely
because the most important thing for her was her nation. And is that Elizabeth decided to refuse any type of relationship and she wanted nothing that influence their decisions. 

 I think what most appreciable and admirable of her was that she was a sweet, romantic, independent  and godly woman Queen. But at the same time possessed a rigid and intimidating character. A Queen that governed and came to dominate a nation of men around her, as it was a visionary woman, had in mind very promising and risky ideas.


  In my opinion in what was most important  his Empire is that contributed to its rapid fortification and be what it is England today.

 For end my entry I invite you to watch this BBC documentary about Queen Elizabeth I

I hope to enjoy.  

 

Immigraniada!

    

    Gogol Bordello is a Gipsy punk band from the Lower East Side of New York and formed in 1999. One of most known features of this band are their theatrical and frenetic presentations. Each members is from a different country, but the most of them are immigrants from the Eastern Europe.

   This video was created as a manifestation to promove immigrant's rights and caught my attention because it show us people from different countries living in the same place and working in jobs with low remunerations per their condition of immigrants. Also we can see how these people can live in communion despite their own manners and culture, which reveal us a good example of tolerance and diversity.

   To be honest, I love this song and for this reason I chose it, but I'd never considered the message which this video was trying to send to the audience until now. As members of society that we are, I think respect to others is really important for living together in community. Therefore I believe this initiative is a call to protect immigrant's rights, but not only of them, also rights of all minorities in any society.

    I hope you enjoy this great song!

"Discrimination" . Kangaroo court , an amazing video.

I would like to share with you an interesting video that I found on the web, I say that I found it, because I didn't  know the group who did it , its name  is" capital cities", it is a North American group that was awarded at the MTV awards.

I will not address the biography of the group, nor the quality of the video, I think the most important is the message, the way that this video make to feel the people,   may be you see something different, any way as far as I'm concerned, this is an incredible video, it creates a powerful sense, it confronts us with the lowest of society, i.e. “the discrimination”. Perhaps the song’s lyrics is not very clear, however this video transmits something without precedent.

When I saw the video I thought in people living trying to fit into a society that is usually a closed society, then these people will ever fit and they haven't choices, so they must to remain what they have always been, or fight for a change towards acceptance, even if they die in the attempt, because sooner or later masks fall and   society don't forget it.

It is sad... but i think that people usually support this kind of behaviors; maybe they don't see it, so …

Can we do something about?  …Are we doomed to adapt ourselves all the time? Or… are we doomed to die like the sad zebra?.

Do not judge based on first impressions

After many days of thinking and trying to decide which of the many songs that I love I would use, I chose this song called "Stand by me" by the british band Oasis, mostly because of its video. I believe that gives us a really important message about prejudice and first impressions, which I think really fits the topics that we've seen so far in classes. 

This song was written by Noel Gallagher, and the video uses a serie of adverts called "The Whole Picture" in which we can see situations that lead you to think that people are doing bad things but as the video progresses you can see what was really going on. 

The message is really powerful: you can't judge someone just by the first impression that you get from them, you can't think bad of people because of the stereotypes that society has taught you, you can't discriminate based on overgeneralized opinions. 

This video shocked me the first time I saw it, because I thought bad of all those people, I judged them without really knowing. And at the end I felt awful because I realized that maybe I had been guilty of doing that to someone in real life, and on the contrary I also I felt glad because of the important lesson that I got from it: to stop judging and discriminating. 

So now I really hope you enjoy the video and I really want to know what did you think as you were watching it (or what did you think the first time you saw it if you had watched it previously). 

And I'll leave here my favourite verse from the song: Times are hard when things have got no meaning. (a verse that I usually use as a motto because I’m trying my best to give my life a meaning). 

Wind of Change...or I think so.

This song was written by Klaus Meine the vocalist of the group Scorpions one of the most importantly bands of hard rock and heavy metal of Germany, this song was made on september of 1989 and publication on march of 1991.

This video caught my attention because it takes many pictures of the Cold War and the Berlin Wall and this conflict was one of the most important in the world, because it marks a stage of separation of a nation so much politically like physically and this generate family and friends separations.

Also shows many images of social unrest and the fall of the Berlin Wall, along with images that are important icons like Mandela, Pope John Paul II and Gorbachev.

The people can understand this video of different form because, these images are not foreign to them and often there re-live events that they do not want to remember.

Some of the values that can be represented in this video can be the personal freedom as freedom of expression, and it delivers a point of view of which we can evolve to a world where the political separations do not limit our relations with different persons.

This song and video it was created because in this time (1989) there were lived many important changes, the abolition of the USSR, the unification of Germany and the most important fact the fall of the wall of Berlin and the group wanted to send a message of which the future could much better and which all these discords of the past were leaving themselves behind as recollections and to look towards at the future with eyes of change, of acceptance and pardon.

This video generates the following doubt:
 Is it possible to forget and leave behind so many years of repression and separation to give step to a future of unit and of conviviality as sibling?