From there, the Spanish developed sugar plantations in Jamaica and Puerto Rico. But sugar plantations really took off in Brazil under the Portuguese and Dutch, the cane initially being transplanted from Madeira in the 1540s. Two decades later, Brazil was producing 2,500 tons of sugar a year. The rise of the Brazilian sugar industry in the 16th century confirmed the importance of the plantation.
LASA was founded in 1966 following a meeting sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies (composed of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), held at the Hispanic Foundation (now the Hispanic Division) of the Library of Congress, May 7, 1966.
Another theory is that the word lasagne comes from the Greek Î»Î¬ÏÎ±Î½Î± (lasana) or Î»Î¬ÏÎ±Î½Î¿Î½ (lasanon) meaning  trivet or stand for a pot, chamber pot. The Romans borrowed the word as lasanum, meaning cooking pot in Latin. The Italians used the word to refer to the dish in which lasagne is made.s with most other types of pasta, the Italian word is a plural form, lasagne meaning more than one sheet of lasagna, though in many other languages a derivative of the singular word lasagna is used for the popular dish.