With no disregard for the violent greed for wealth of the Spanish conquistadores in the New World during its colonization, the destruction of the indigenous culture and the tragic ethnic cleansing and enslavement of native communities,... more
With no disregard for the violent greed for wealth of the Spanish conquistadores in the New World during its colonization, the destruction of the indigenous culture and the tragic ethnic cleansing and enslavement of native communities, the focus of this paper is on the more complex ideology behind the Spanish conquest: the crusading thought that motivated those expeditions. A great deal of historiography in the last thirty years points to a more revisionist approach to the Spaniards’ main ideology behind the conquest of America. A number of historians argue that there was another purpose, quite as important as the search for fortune, which motivated the royal leaders and main actors of the expeditions and colonization. Columbus’ writings and one important manuscript, which only recently has been translated and made available for further analysis, reinforce this contemporary understanding of the Spanish conquest. The quest to expand the realms of the Catholic Church by bringing the Gospel to foreign lands and to infidels was Columbus and the Spanish Catholic monarchs’ one main driving force.
Psychoneuroimmunology is a relatively new field that studies the influence of psychological factors over the immune function by measuring chemicals that participate in the immune response in order to see how emotions and thoughts have a... more
Psychoneuroimmunology is a relatively new field that studies the influence of psychological factors over the immune function by measuring chemicals that participate in the immune response in order to see how emotions and thoughts have a direct impact on our health. Every day studies bring to light overwhelming evidence that not only undermine the Descartes’ mind-body separation but rather suggests what it was known by ancient cultures and healers. Body and mind are not just two separate pieces of a person but rather intrinsically connected, and experiencing positive or negative emotions has a measurable interrelationship with the immune function and health in the long term. Emotions have a measurable impact on our health, whether positive or negative it depends on how we perceive our reality. During a stressful event, emotions influence the kind of coping model we choose to deal with the stressor, which in turn will impact the immune response positively or negatively. Our own perception of the stressful event will determine which emotions we will experience during that particular situation. Being aware that the complexity of our emotions is created by our perception of reality is crucial to understanding the nature of our thoughts and how our mind can choose positive thoughts and discard negative ones when we need it the most, during stressful times. In other words, we can use our mind to control our thoughts instead of being controlled by them. A peaceful mind is essential to our well being, to our proper body functioning and a strong immune system.
After 2001, a sector of the Argentine population, “la clase obrera” (the working class) reacted to the country’s economic collapse in an extremely paradoxical way. The implementation of the market economic policies, global free trade,... more
After 2001, a sector of the Argentine population, “la clase obrera” (the working class) reacted to the country’s economic collapse in an extremely paradoxical way. The implementation of the market economic policies, global free trade, helped provoke an economic crisis of such catastrophic magnitude in the history of Argentina, that working class ¬¬people had to develop their own alternative economy in order to subsist. The free market model of capitalist principles of the last 20 years pushed the population to establish organizations not seen since the 1800s, paradoxically on the other extreme of the socio-economic spectrum, a kind of socialism.
