...Juan Marcos Romero ENG 108 Armory Kaiser 27 February 2012 A Better Life Movie Analysis In the movie A Better Life, the Main Character Carlos Galindo is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico who started working as a day labor worker when he first arrived in the country, however he has had steady work from Blasco Martinez who owns a gardening business which he tries to convince Carlos to buy from him as he says he is moving. The idea of being self employed is very appealing to Carlos but he knows he can never afford to do so and the risk of getting caught and deported is very high. Carlos has a son Luis who is reluctant to go to school on a daily basis and gets into trouble as he is influenced by his friends who are part of the South Central gang life style. Carlos and his wife came from Jalisco which is a state in Mexico which is primarily made up of several small villages where "Charros" or Mexican cowboys would get married and head north to start a new life in America. Carlos believed that life in America would be simple in which if you worked hard opportunities would present themselves and you could be happy, that unfortunately was not the case and Carlos's wife ended up leaving him alone with their young son Luis. The main difficulties that Carlos and Luis face are that they live in a rough neighborhood in south central Los Angeles and even though Carlos has what seems to be a steady job with Blasco, Carlos is unable to save up the money needed to move to a better...
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... México on on April 4, is a former Mexican drug lord who headed the Sinaloa Cartel, a criminal organization named after the Mexican Pacific coast state of Sinaloa where it was formed. El Chapo was born into a poor rural family and lived six hours away from the closest city. Educated only to the 3rd grade and began selling marijuana with his father at a young age. At 15 he started selling it on his own and quickly made enough money to support his entire family. He built his mother a sprawling home in their rural hometown. She's a devout Catholic and "the only one who can change one of his decisions with a word." In 1993 he was arrested in Guatemala, but eight years later escaped from the maximum security prison in the Mexican state of Jalisco. In November 1995, he managed to win a transfer to the Puente Grande prison, near Guadalajara, where he remained as he faced trial for 10 different charges, including drug-trafficking and homicide. Then, on January 19, 2001, Guzmán managed to escape -- according to the Mexican government’s official record, by hiding in a dirty-laundry cart which guards eventually led to the gate of the penitentiary. But an ex-accomplice, Noé “El Gato” Hernández, has told journalists that El Chapo’s escape wasn’t nearly as daring as the Mexican Justice Department has made it seem, saying his old boss “walked out dressed as a policeman” and “through the front gate without firing a single shot”. Just how he escaped from prison is debated, but the most interesting...
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...JOSÉ LUIS MACHINEA Executive Secretary ALICIA BÁRCENA Deputy Executive Secretary Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean economic commission for latin america and the caribbean C E P A L Review NUMBER 85 APRIL 2005 SANTIAGO, CHILE OSCAR ALTIMIR Director REYNALDO BAJRAJ Deputy Director The CEPAL Review was founded in 1976 and is published three times a year by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, which has its headquarters in Santiago, Chile. The Review, however, has full editorial independence and follows the usual academic procedures and criteria, including the review of articles by independent external referees. The Review is distributed to universities, research institutes and other international organizations, as well as to individual subscribers, and is also consulted extensively on the Internet. The purpose of the Review is to contribute to the discussion of socio-economic development issues in the region by offering analytical and policy approaches and articles by economists and other social scientists working both within and outside the United Nations. Accordingly, the editorial board of the Review extends its readers an open invitation to submit for publication articles analysing various aspects of economic and social development in Latin America and the Caribbean. The opinions expressed in the signed articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the...
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...Acclaim for Yann Martel's Life of Pi "Life of Pi is not just a readable and engaging novel, it's a finely twisted length of yarn— yarn implying a far-fetched story you can't quite swallow whole, but can't dismiss outright. Life of Pi is in this tradition—a story of uncertain veracity, made credible by the art of the yarn-spinner. Like its noteworthy ancestors, among which I take to be Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, the Ancient Mariner, Moby Dick and Pincher Martin, it's a tale of disaster at sea coupled with miraculous survival—a boys' adventure for grownups." —Margaret Atwood, The Sunday Times (London) "A fabulous romp through an imagination by turns ecstatic, cunning, despairing and resilient, this novel is an impressive achievement. . . . Martel displays the clever voice and tremendous storytelling skills of an emerging master." —Publisher's Weekly (starred review) "[Life of Pi] has a buoyant, exotic, insistence reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe's most Gothic fiction. . . . Oddities abound and the storytelling is first-rate. Yann Martel has written a novel full of grisly reality, outlandish plot, inventive setting and thought-provoking questions about the value and purpose of fiction." —The Edmonton journal "Martel's ceaselessly clever writing . . . [and] artful, occasionally hilarious, internal dialogue . . . make a fine argument for the divinity of good art." —The Gazette "Astounding and beautiful. . . . The book is a pleasure not only for the subtleties of its philosophy...
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...Yann Martel: Life of Pi life of pi A NOVEL author's note This book was born as I was hungry. Let me explain. In the spring of 1996, my second book, a novel, came out in Canada. It didn't fare well. Reviewers were puzzled, or damned it with faint praise. Then readers ignored it. Despite my best efforts at playing the clown or the trapeze artist, the media circus made no difference. The book did not move. Books lined the shelves of bookstores like kids standing in a row to play baseball or soccer, and mine was the gangly, unathletic kid that no one wanted on their team. It vanished quickly and quietly. The fiasco did not affect me too much. I had already moved on to another story, a novel set in Portugal in 1939. Only I was feeling restless. And I had a little money. So I flew to Bombay. This is not so illogical if you realize three things: that a stint in India will beat the restlessness out of any living creature; that a little money can go a long way there; and that a novel set in Portugal in 1939 may have very little to do with Portugal in 1939. I had been to India before, in the north, for five months. On that first trip I had come to the subcontinent completely unprepared. Actually, I had a preparation of one word. When I told a friend who knew the country well of my travel plans, he said casually, "They speak a funny English in India. They like words like bamboozle." I remembered his words as my plane started its descent towards Delhi, so the word bamboozle ...
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