http://www.tropicalamerica.com/

OnRamp Arts, a community digital arts organization in central Los Angeles, recently launched "Tropical America," a free online Flash-animated game that explores 500 years of Latin American history.

Twenty-five students from LA's Belmont High School spent two years working with teachers, professional writers, artists, and designers to create a bilingual video game that teaches lessons of "culture whitewashing," or the erasing of history and identity. As the students (most of whom were migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador) worked through the game production, they created characters, developed symbolic icons, and wrote narratives. In the process, they mastered Flash animation and Photoshop image-processing skills and learned about digital video and audio production. And almost without knowing it, they developed a better understanding of themselves and their cultural roots.

The final product is a creative Flash-animated game. As a player, the visitor assumes the role of the sole survivor of the El Mazote massacre in El Salvador in 1981. During the game, the player explores historic encounters between the Americas, meets historical and mythical characters, conducts conversations using word balloons, and collects various objects -- all of which help achieve the ultimate goal: to find four pieces of evidence to bring to light the memory of the massacred village. Once the player "wins," an angel returns with one of the victims' names. Players thus contribute to an online memorial of victims' names -- and can also have their own names entered in the "Heroes of the Americas" gallery on the game site. During breaks in the game, a player is taken to an online database of educational resources, texts, and images, where they can learn more about the characters, icons, and events they've just encountered.

The students from Belmont High School who created "Tropical America" gained hard-earned knowledge of their places, both in Latin American history and in today's American culture. Through the "Tropical America" project they are able to share their newfound civic literacy with site visitors of all ethnicities. Thanks to the Internet, visitors from the United States, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom, China, and Canada have all played the game.

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