Historical Context

For all of its brutality, and the tragedy of the obliteration of thriving civilizations, the story of the Spanish conquests in the Americas is one of the most compelling true tales that has ever been told.  After the fury of the conquest, the Spanish colonies in the Americas fell into a two-century-long period of little change.   Spain deliberately pursued a policy of isolating its colonies from contacts with any outside influences except for the Mother Country (La Madre Patria).  Despite efforts on the part of some Catholic churchmen, and a few Spanish officials, this was a period of almost unmitigated exploitation and suppression of the indigenous population.   The infamous encomienda system left many of them in a state of peonage bordering on slavery --although it had originally been ostensibly intended for the protection of the Indians.  This period did see, however, the beginning of mestizaje (race mixing), which has become the dominant factor both racially and culturally in many Latin American countries, including Mexico.

Once again, don't be put off by the technical language in the course description. It's not as complicated as it looks. Level III leads off with the second of the two Spanish past tenses, called the imperfect. In almost every case in Spanish, you can use either of the two past tenses, and what you say will be both grammatically correct and make perfectly good sense--but the meaning may differ slightly depending on which tense you use. You'll get a lot of practice, enabling you to select the proper tense quickly and without having to mentally review a bunch of "rules". Level III also introduces the reflexive and impersonal constructions, which exist in English, but are used much more in Spanish. The same learning method will help you to use the reflexive and impersonal constructions naturally.  Of course, there's a lot more in Level III, as you can see below.

Unit 18.   Past II (imperfect) tense forms of regular verbs, past II tense forms of irregular verbs, question intonation patterns in negative confirmation questions, review of word order in information questions.

Unit 19.   Past I (preterit) and II (imperfect) in the same construction, question intonation patterns in "echo" questions, review of Spanish simple tense for English verb construction in interrogatories.

Unit 20.   Direct and indirect clitics in the same construction, exclamatory qué, cómo; question intonation patterns in choice questions, review of postposed full-form possessives.  Direct and indirect clitics in the same construction, exclamatory qué, cómo; question intonation patterns in choice questions, review of postposed full-form possessives.

Unit 21.   Irregular preterit verb forms [verbs with extended stems, or verbs taking regular er or ir endings, verbs with modified stems, verbs with suppleted stems], statement intonation intonation patterns in deliberate statements, review of theme class in imperfect tense forms.

Unit 22.   Present tense irregular verbs with stem vowel changing, statement intonation patterns, sentence modifiers, review of theme class in preterit tense forms.

Unit 23.   Present tense irregular verbs [velar stem extensions and mixed stem-vowel changing], present tense of miscellaneous irregular verbs (caer, traer, oir, hacer, decir, saber), statement intonation patterns in saying goodbye, review of the obligatory clause relator que. 

Unit 24.  Reflexive clitic pronouns, reflexive clitic pronouns with progressive and periphrastic future verb constructions, expressions for time of day, review of gender class assignment of certain nouns.

The capture of Tupac Amaru.  The revolt of Tupac Amaru, a claimant to the Inca throne in the 16th century marked the end of organized resistence in Peru. In 1996, a terrorist group calling itself El Movimiento Revolucionario Tupac Amaru (MRTA) gained transitory fame by seizing the Japanese Embassy in Lima, together with a large group of foreign diplomats.   Illustration from Platiquemos Level III

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