Ironically, Latin American countries, in their instability, give writers and intellectuals the hope that they are needed.”

— Manuel Puig.

There are some insensitive people who would answer this question with a simple “There really is no big deal, it’s just another place with some more people.” I personally don’t know why someone would think that but I see a lot of reasons behind why it’s important to study these places of unique beauty that you (quite literally) won’t find anywhere else. On the more statistical side, in Tucson, Arizona, they have a program in a few schools that is specifically meant for Latin American and Caribbean studies but is opened to anyone who wanted to join. We see that before this program came about the nationwide dropout rate for Mexican-Americans was an astonishing 50%, half of these students were dropping out, and not because the work was “too hard” or they “didn’t want to be there”, these students were dropping out because of the constant hatred towards them by both students and faculty(Precious Knowledge, 2011). Over the years, this program came about, not only in Arizona but in many other states as well, it was seen that these classes have boosted student attendance, GPA’s, and high school credits for a key student group- this being one of the most pivotal findings that brings hard evidence to the dispute over adding these courses to public schools(Franklin, 2016). Now I’m positive of the fact that if I was the one who was getting better attendance, increase in GPA, and more high school credits, I’d most definitely want this program to stick around so it makes no sense for anyone to want to outlaw these classes. Nevertheless, that is the reason for why Latin American and Caribbean studies are such a “big deal” and that’s the reason for why I, as an individual, have chosen to engage in them.