American Contemporary Issues Best Practices Report

1. Best Practices Report
Jorge Cruz 200857
American Contemporary
Issues

2.  During the semester in American Contemporary Issues ,
we learned about different subjects and their implications in
todays society, some of them are the following:

3. Important Subjects covered during
the semester
 Latin American Democracies
 Inequalities and Poverty
 Minorities Rights and Social Inclusion
 Immigration and Multiculturalism
 U.S. and Latin America
 Canada in the Americas
 Brazil as an Emergent Power
 Making the Inter-American System
 Multidimensional Security
 Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding, and State Building
 South-South Cooperation

4. Latin American Democracies
 Inside this topic of the course what I found really interesting
was the notion of the Transition Paradigm, since it’s the first
time I’ve heard about it.
The transition paradigm is defined by Five core assumptions
The first, which is an umbrella for all the others, is that any
country moving away from dictatorial rule can be considered
a country in transition toward democracy.
 Another topic covered during this session was the influence
of Authoritarianism. In brief, it covered how the new electoral
authoritarian regimes of the post–Cold War era have formally
adopted the full display of liberal-democratic institutions.
Rather than rejecting or repressing these institutions, they
manipulate them.

5. Inequalities and Poverty
 During this topic I learned about the inequalities that
are present in today’s society, and how they have an
effect on a global scale. In brief, inequalities happen
when resources in a given society are distributed
unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that
engender specific patterns along lines of socially-defined
categories of persons.
 Another topic covered during this session was the
problem of poverty in Latin-America, and how that
affects the development of nations with potential to
become economic powers. In brief, poverty is what
happens when assets, wealth, or income are
distributed unequally among individuals in a group,
among groups in a population, or among countries.

6. Case Studies
 In the class we investigated two important cases where the
main purpose was to find viable solutions by identifying
different elements such as principal problems, objectives,
risks, and benefits among others, which would lead us to
achieve the goal of understanding the study.
 This activity helped us understand this kind of situations
more in depth, in order to develop the best solutions or
alternatives to the problem presented.
 The cases investigated were the Honduras Coup de etat, and
the Merida Initiative.

7. Honduras Coup d'état
 Objective: restoration of the democratic order, human rights
protection
 Obstacles: Principle of self-determination
 Resources: norms, legitimacy
 Risks: legal contradictions
 Benefits: protection of human rights, restoration of the
democratic order

8. The Merida Initiative
 Objective: Assure National security
 Problem: economic vulnerability, drugs flow in the US
 Resources: soft power, public and private alliances
 Risks: Inefficiency, lack of cooperation, lack of trusts
 Benefits: greater governance, credibility, diminution of
economic vulnerability and drugs flow

9. Final activity: Research Protocol
 as a final project activity for the course, we were asked to
make a research protocol investigation. The topic I chose for
my investigation was “Ethnic Inequalities in the Health Care
and Criminal Justice System in the United States”

10.  My points of investigation for my paper where the following:
 Are inequalities present in American institutions towards
minority groups? Racism and ethnic discrimination in the
United States has been a major issue since the colonial era
and the slave era.
 Legally sanctioned racism sanctioned privileges and rights
for White Americans not granted to minorities, which include
Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and
Latin Americans.

11. Conclusion
 I learned a lot of important things in this course, which
will help me in my University studies down the road.
American studies are important to be aware of, since
these are the topics happening in our home continent.
Every one of us can make a difference, if we are
informed enough about the problems that happen
around us.