U.S. Military Intervention in Bolivia essays

U.S. Military Intervention in Bolivia essays Thirty years ago, on October 8, 1967, gunfire echoed through a steep ravine of the Andes Mountains in southern Bolivia. The guerrilla band led by Ernesto "Che" Guevara a chief lieutenant in the Sierra Maestra, author of a book on guerilla tactics, one-time president of Cubas National Bank and later Minister of Industries under Castro, and who renounced his Cuban citizenship and set off to devote his services to the revolutionary cause in other lands was pinned down and surrounded by U.S.-trained Bolivian Army Rangers. Less than a year earlier, Guevara and a team of cadres had secretly traveled from Cuba to Bolivia to launch a guerrilla war, hoping to topple Bolivia's pro-U.S. military government. Guevara had gone up into the mountains with about 50 supporters. Within months they were discovered by Bolivian troops and an intense pursuit started. Trying to escape the government forces, Guevara divided his supporters into two groups, and was never able to reunite them. His diary recor ds that, by late August, his group was exhausted, demoralized and down to 22 men. On August 31 the other group was ambushed and wiped out crossing a river. On September 26, Bolivian army units ambushed Che's remaining forces near the isolated mountain huts of La Higuera. The guerrillas found no way out of the encirclement. Several died in the shooting. Guevara himself was wounded in the leg. He and two other fighters were captured on October 8 and taken to an old one-room schoolhouse in La Higuera. The next day, October 9, a helicopter flew in a man called "Felix Ramos" who wore the uniform of a Bolivian officer. "Ramos" took charge of the prisoner. Two hours later, Che Guevara and both other guerrillas were executed. The weapons and equipment of the killers were American-made. The Bolivian officer who took Guevara prisoner had been trained at Fort Bragg at a U.S. school for army coups, murder and counterinsurgency. And the man...

CREATING A NARRATED BOOK TRAILER

CREATING A NARRATED BOOK TRAILER I wanted a book trailer to promote my third picture book, Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie, illustrated There were two books I consulted before undertaking the creation of the trailer: Katie Daviss ebook, â€Å"How to Promote Your Children’s Book† and Darcy Pattison’s ebook, â€Å"The Book Trailer Manual†. My goal wasn’t to replicate the text of the story in the trailer, but to give viewers a feel for the characters and the plot in a very short space of time- an oral summary. The publisher’s blurb for the book was a helpful starting point but it was directed to adults. My script needed to be more child friendly and shorter. Both Davis and Pattison recommend keeping trailers to a minute or less; Pattison says images should not be on screen for more than five seconds. The final (I thought) version of the script read like a mini-movie- for each â€Å"scene† was a visual image (one of Anne Jewett’s fabulous illustrations), followed For those who are technologically challenged, like me, the website lynda.com is a good source for tutorials on using iMovie and Garage Band- a month of lessons was well worth the twenty-five dollar fee. Recording voiceovers in GarageBand is relatively simple- follow a few steps and controls will appear with record, play and rewind functions that operate like any standard recording device. Though the editing options on GarageBand are much more detailed, even a non-techie like me could easily shorten or remove sections of audio clips. The greater challenge was getting my voice right. Writing each line of script on a notecard and taping the notecard to the top of my screen was helpful, as were underlining the words I wanted to emphasize and indicating whether my voice should rise or lower at the end of a line (professional voice artists definitely deserve respect). Despite all this work, when the audio was incorporated into iMovie, there was a major problem- my audio still took up too much space. I eliminated some sound effects and some spoken lines. To more easily match the length of the narration with the corresponding image, I recorded the voiceovers directly in iMovie. This again was simple to do- select the microphone image and click on the record button. There is a three second delay until the recording begins. Repeating the first word of my line several times during this delay helped eliminate awkward pauses and throat clearing noises when I began speaking. The process of creating a narrated book trailer for the first time took many hours, but it was well worth the effort. I learned how to make podcasts, how to edit video clips, how to combine images and sound. Trust me, if I can do it, you can too! You can view the trailer on my website at www.laurieajacobs.com