Themes
PEOPLE AND PLACES
The region known as Latin America is home to more than 500 million people from a wide variety of cultural, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds. We highlight here some of the people and places that are featured in the SFU Museum's Latin American collection. Ancient customs and beliefs of the people of the Andes and Mesoamerica are explored in the Featured Site and Featured Artifact sections. Traditional people of Ecuador and Paraguay are the focus of two segments of archival video footage taken in the early 1970s. From a more modern perspective, the video on the Day of the Dead celebrations in Vancouver, British Columbia highlights the ways in which Latin American cultural celebrations have become an integral part of modern Canadian culture. Our Archival Image database includes many images taken during the 1960s and 1970s of people at work and at play in Mexico and Guatemala. Search the Archival Images database (Subject: People) to view these images.You can test your puzzle-solving abilities with our Mayan Sudoku activity. Our version of this puzzle uses the ancient system of numbers that was developed by the Mayan people as early as the 4th century AD.
Lessonplan
- Endangered Indigenous Languages
- The Changing face of the Earth
- Day of the Dead: Halloween
- Day of the Dead - Sugar skulls
- Stone Objects Game
- Day of the Dead - Make a Remembrance
Video
- The Tsachilas of Ecuador
- The Ayoreo of Paraguay
- Life on the Altiplano
- Day of the Dead
- Bloodletting in Mesoamerica
Activity
Featured Artifacts
- Beauty, Body Adorning and Physical Modifications in the Ancient Andes
- Cubeo Mask
- Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Andes
- Bloodletting in Mesoamerica