1. Daniel Lozano
12/11/2008
Humanities 213
What I’ve Learned This Semester
Throughout this semester there were various that I have learned that I think that I
would have not learned if not taking this class along with my classmates who also taught me
various things. One of these things that I learned was about looking at stories and books in a
different perspective. While in this class I originally just read because I had to but after awhile
the selections that we were reading really made me want to go more into depth about what
was the story behind the story.
One of these selections was Lazarillo de Tormes. This selection was about a young boy
named Lazarillo who had different masters. Throughout this whole book we see that Lazarillo
really learns how to survive and to become a better person. Though he had a tough lifestyle
growing up he still found a way to look past that and try to live a better lifestyle. I found this
book very interesting because it gives us a new perspective at life and how corrupt society is
then and still is now. It really shows life in a perspective of a young boy who just wants to live
a normal life. This book really makes us look at ourselves and makes us take a second look at
our life and about taking things for granted.
Another selection that I found interesting was Fuente Ovejuna. This selection was
about a village and how they banded together. It was about how there was a commander,

2. Fernan Gomez de Guzman, and how he mistreated the villagers. Eventually they kill him and
they all take the blame for his death. This selection really shows that everyone no matter
where they’re from can still ban together to rightfully get their freedom. One part that stood
out to me was the scene where the king was investigating who killed Fernan Gomez de
Guzman and everyone responds “Fuente Ovejuna killed him”. It went to a point where the
kids were even being tortured and when asked who killed him even the kids, who they
thought were the weaker ones still responded by saying “Fuente Ovejuna killed him”. This
shows overall that it doesn’t matter if people are different but if they fight for the same cause
they can work together.
Besides from the selections we also learned some things outside the class. This was
during our service learning project where we sold food to gain money to donate it for the
organization Mujeres Latinas en Accion. What we did for this fundraiser was that we brought
food from different places around the world. You can say that we were bringing all of our
cultures together for a good cause. In our service learning project we learned so much about
other people and we learned so much about ourselves. We realized that we didn’t need to
know each other’s names or even know each other at all to work together. Since we all felt
the same way about what we were doing we felt that that’s all we needed to bond. We
banded for a good cause and we actually in a way became closer with one another without
making communication.
Near the end of the year we started learning about various indigenous tribes. These
tribes included the Incas, Mayas, the Aztecs and various other tribes. We learned about all

3. the things that they have invented and what they thought about. This section was talked in a
big section we had as a final project which had all of us talk about various sections in Latin
America and their importance or significance to our modern day. My topic was about the
Virreinato (Vice-royalty) of Peru. This topic went into detail about what happened in Peru
involving the conquistadores and various important time periods in Peruvian history.
Overall this class really went into details about how past history involving Latin
America and South America really made what are now these countries. I feel that this class
really helped us realize our heritages we have in our native countries and how we should
embrace our culture. Aside from the culture of Latin America we also became better at
analyzing literature in ways we probably would have never have looked at. We were able to
do research and see how the area was at that time and how that affected how early writers
wrote about simple things in life like love.