Spanish Praxis Help: A Country by Country Tour.

I hope this will make students' research a little easier.

(a work in progress)

Lonely Planet gives a general overview of a country. It's light and positive with great visual impact. This is a nice way to introduce students to a country. Remember, they are trying to encourage you to visit that country, so you are getting an advertisement which highlights the good and avoids the serious issues affecting its people and tourists. If you are thinking about visiting a country, the U.S. State Department provides alerts and warnings.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/

The U.S. Department of State Fact Sheets or Background Notes are available on any country in the world. You will find a brief overview of the people, the economy, the history, how to get a passport or visa, and a small map of the country. (See CIA maps below for page size maps).
Look to the right and you will see "country profiles". Type in the country name.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/

U.S. Embassies make a great starting point to find out more about a particular country.
Here is a list of their websites:
http://www.usembassy.gov/

BBC Country Profiles is excellent. It provides an historical and political perspective as well as links to major media sources in radio, television, and newspapers for each country.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/

Google's country specific search engines help to find information that is in Spanish and unique to that country; artists, authors, travel, government offices, etc. Each link is provided below and there is a list of Google specific country search engines on the left of this blog www.cs-spanishnews.blogspot.com for your convenience. You will get much better results than searching google.com in English or Spanish. I prefer google's country specific websites to Yahoo's country specific websites because Yahoo's country specific websites appear to be U.S. content with subjects like Hollywood stars etc. instead of news related to the Spanish speaking country. Note: some countries do not have their own Google search engine, so you would use a nearby country's Google search engine.

The Ministry of Tourism of each country provides a view that promotes commerce and tourism highlighting the positive aspects such as culture, trade, and natural spaces in Spanish, but many offer a view in other languages too. I am working on providing the link to each Ministry of Tourism for every Spanish speaking country. (a work in progress...thank you for your patience)

CIA maps: Free. In the Public Domain.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html

CIA World Factbook South America :
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/wfbExt/region_soa.html

Argentina

Buenos Aires, Argentina http://www.buenosaires.gov.ar/index.php

Ministry of Tourism Argentina: http://www.turismo.gov.ar/
Google Argentina: http://www.google.com.ar/

Chile

Ministry of Tourism Chile: http://www.gob.cl/ministros/economia-fomento-y-turismo/

Google Chile: http://www.google.cl/

Uruguay

Montevideo http://www.montevideo.gub.uy/

The Department of Tourism Uruguay: http://www.turismo.gub.uy/

Google Uruguay: http://www.google.com.uy/

Uruguay on video: http://www.uruguaynatural.tv/videos/

Paraguay

The U.S. Embassy in Asunción: http://paraguay.usembassy.gov/pe_113009.html

The Department of Tourism: http://www.senatur.gov.py/