...The Catholic Church was an integral part of colonial Mexican life. The Spanish conquest led to the conversion of the indigenous populations, which then led to a blending of the Catholic tradition with that of the indigenous religions. Catholicism became a part of everyday life for the populations of colonial Mexico and because Catholicism is a hierarchal religious tradition, it reinforced the pre-existing social class structure within the Spanish kingdom. The minorities continued to be excluded from certain aspects of society, including religious positions and education. Both of which were greatly influenced areas of colonial society by the Catholic Church. The church was deeply involved in most, if not all aspects of colonial Mexican life including influencing politics, education, and other local social issues. The Spanish conquest of the Americas was one of great expansion in more ways than one. The Spanish crown not only added new areas of the world to their kingdom but simultaneously spread Christianity throughout this New World. The Catholic Church, a powerful institution in its own right, with the dedicated word of European missionaries, the growth of the religion led to the conversion of much of the indigenous populations in the Americas. The missionaries built missions and had haciendas that created environments in which the Catholic religion was a fundamental incorporation of life, so as to convert the indigenous population. The missionaries also built schools and...
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...1. Which of the following states did not become a colonial power in the period 1450–1750? a. Italy b. Russia c. Spain d. France FEEDBACK: Italy was not a unified state in the period 1450–1750 and thus did not have colonies. (See the chapter introduction in your textbook.) 2. Which of the following statements most accurately describes Europe’s global position in 1450? a. Europe had climbed to relative equality in Eurasian commerce. b. Europe had little trade contact with Africa or Asia. c. Europe remained marginal in Eurasian commerce. d. Europe had come to dominate Eurasian commerce. FEEDBACK: The determination of European elites to progress beyond their marginal position in Eurasian commerce was a main incentive for European exploration after 1450. (See section “The European Advantage” in your textbook.) 3. What was the single most important factor that aided the European conquest of the Americas? a. Gunpowder b. Disease c. Horses d. Superior organization FEEDBACK: The peoples of the Americas had no immunity to European disease and up to 90 percent of the population died after contact with the Europeans, greatly easing the process of conquest. (See section “The Great Dying” in your textbook.) 4. Which of the following is an old-world crop that was soon established in Europe’s American colonies? a. Tobacco b. Potatoes c. Corn d. Rice FEEDBACK: Rice is a Eurasian product that soon became an agricultural staple in many locations in the...
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...Pressure on the Mestiza/Indigenous Women of Colonial Latin America Colonial times in Latin America were tough for both mestizas/indigenous and Spanish women. Latin America’s status of indigenous women changed in terms of their positions in the hierarchy of society, labor roles, and their marriage responsibilities and their own freedoms. The Spanish women began to impose several changes in order to accustom the indigenous women to their level in order to make the “New Spain” a reality. During early conquest, mestiza women, especially those of noble classes were accustomed to be married off as soon as their fathers had an idea of who they wanted to be allied with and to move up in hierarchy. As Susan Socolow said, “Indeed, chiefs offered their sisters and daughters to Spanish conquistadors, continuing the pre-Columbian pattern of using women to appease the powerful and ally with them.” Reigning Spanish conquistadors or other tribal leaders sought to establish alliances, so women were in other words seen as objects to benefit them. Spanish women at the time of colonization were rare, but for instance, Juan Jaramillo was one of the early conquistadors who married. As said, “Her father, don Leonel de Cervantes was a comendador of the Order of Santiago…” The few rare Spanish women available during the colonization state tended to be noble daughters of comendadors, who were married off quickly to other rising nobles, which is similar to how mestiza women were given off, but different...
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...The colonial life in the new world was not always suitable for most occupants. As the works of Howard Zinn, Deborah A. Rosen, and John M. Murrin’s indicate the hardships of the colonial residents. In the book entitled “A people’s history of the United States” Howard Zinn takes a different approach from familiar text around the time period of Christopher Columbus and described the hardships of Indians as they first made contact with foreign settlers and the horrifying ordeals salves went through just to get across the Atlantic Ocean. Zinn first points out in his book how Columbus took some Arwak Indians native to the island in the Bahamas as prisoners for the sole purpose of finding gold.(1) These Indians either faced hard labor for a prolonged period of time or death by inadequate living conditions under their captures. Moreover, Zinn describes how salves being shipped from Africa to America were plagued with crushing conditions by having been placed in shackles around their necks and forced to walk long miles just to get on a ship. The boat ride was descried as worse by Zinn because slaves were put in a compact space that one could not turn his or her head around. Slaves also faced suffocation within these ships. Deborah A. Rosen takes on a women’s prospective in her...
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...indigenous populations in Mesoamerica have been marginalized and viewed by first the Europeans and then by the Criollos and modern Mesoamericans as an inferior, powerless and primitive race. Subsequently, they have been forced to endure extreme social, economic and political inequalities, which originated during the colonial period and persist to present day. Although they have initiated countless protests and uprisings and are arguably the backbone of Mesoamerican economic development, they remain in a subordinate position in society and suffer considerably from the lack of education, inadequate health care, malnutrition and repeated human right violations. This essay discusses the disproportionate social, economic and political circumstances of the Mexican indigenous population throughout the last 500 years, and the institutions, ideas and attitudes that have persisted in terms of three major stages: the colonial period, post independence and the post revolution era. First, through the ecomienda system, Spanish political sovereignty, and social reorganization, the colonial period established the foundation for most of the oppressive institutions in Mexico today. Second, the post independence era did not bring sovereignty, equality and freedoms to the indigenous as it did to other sectors of Mexican society, but rather served to propel them even further into the depths of subordination under the rule of an elitist and repressive Criollo class. Lastly, following the...
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...Chapter Summary: The Spanish took over the Caribbean, Mexico, and Peru. They also wanted to conquer the Americas. Most of the native people were forced into slavery or they were swept away by the smallpox. Colonies were made in North America. The Europeans were beginning to mix with the indigenous people, even though there were still social and sexual hierarchies. Silver became quite important, so laborers were sent to mine for silver. There were three different labor systems; one came right after the other. Until the free laborer system got set in place. Europeans began settling in Australia, even though there wasn’t much trade going on at the time. Many more people traveled to the Pacific after Magellan and Captain Cook. I. Colliding Worlds...
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...In a similar manner, the country causes the author to meditate on the national and personal crisis and at the end leading to reconciliation. An in-depth approach to the historical procedures in Mexico is known as “the dialectics of solitude” in the book Labyrinth of Solitude. In contrast to the approaches of the ancient reasoning, the end result of this state is seen through analogous insight reaching for a more elaborate goal, which in the actual sense is not able to meet a Mexican any longer, but a person needs reconciliation with oneself. All the efforts to discuss the themes of the book cultivate through a lot of problems form the beginning. As depicted in the essays, the Labyrinth of Solitude is described as follows: “I felt desolate, and I additionally felt that Mexico was a friendless, separated nation remote from the focal stream of history… . Pondering foreignness, which intends to be a Mexican, I found an old truth: Every man covers up in himself somebody obscure” (Franek,...
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...soldiers, named conquistadores. Also, rulers in Spain developed efficient techniques for controlling new colonies. The conquistadores left a trail of destruction by attacking native villages and killed or captured the inhabitant since they preferred seeking gold and slaves to creating permanent settlements. In 1519, some Spanish soldiers landed on the coast of Mexico. Three years later, these Spanish soldier conquered Aztec empire. The three factors of Spanish victory were technological advantages, division within the Aztec empire, and disease. Later, some other Spanish soldiers conquered a richer empire, Inca empire. By 1550, Spain’s New World empire, which stretched from the Caribbean through Mexico to Peru, was administered from Spain by the Council of the Indies. The council enacted laws for the empire and supervised an elaborate bureaucracy to maintain political control and extract wealth from the land and its people. Then, two expedition went to north America to find gold and silver but they did not find any gold and silver. So Spain stopped to extend its empire and just maintained two precarious footholds in north of Mexico. By a large number of gold and silver flowing into Spain, it became the richest and most powerful state in Europe. However, these American treasure undermined Spanish predominance. Many leading merchants who refused to become Christian was expelled from Spain. The remaining Christian merchants, awash in American riches, had no desire of trading. Consequently...
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...culture, politeness, characteristic, beautiful colorful costumes, tradition, and social status originating from colonial times and current Mexico times. Since the Charros were rebelling to the Spaniards, the Charros created their own saddle style and riding methods. This is when the charrería, the Mexican folk tradition was created. Even though the Charro men gained freedom and independence, the Charro women were only considered to be the male counterparts. The attention was on the Charro men who took care of their animals, dominated their cattle, and was considered to be the man who took care of their families. This is why there are nine events for men and one event for the women. However, the Charro men admit that they could not do their...
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...very important to know how México’s and United States’ culture make their principles valued and how they have been influenced through time. ENGL 1301 April 29, 2014 American and Mexican Culture History through the years has changed the development of cultures around the world. Culture is the distinguishing aspects of a specific group of people, defined by everything within it. México and United States share some characteristics and the following are examples: arts, foods, holidays, and religions. It is very important to know how México’s and United States’ culture make their principles valued and how they have been influenced through time. México is a distinctive country that is differentiated by its porcelain, cotton fabrics clothes, and wool scarfs. Their traditional creations of art produced a sense of pride. Artistic legacy has played an important role in Mexican patrimony. “Current research on hybridity in the visual arts helps to tease out Euro-Christian and Mesoamerican forms and meanings in the ritual objects that nuns wore on their bodies” (Cordova 449). Traditional origins with colonial inspirations have continued to influence Mexico’s music. In the United States art involves the history of painting and visual drawings. “German painter Otto Dix reproduced the nightmare of World War I in works so disturbing they were banned from exhibition and destroyed by the Nazis” (Lifson 9). Artists painted landscapes and portraits in exact styles based primarily on European...
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...The system of castas was a socio-racial classification that impacted every aspect of Spanish colonial life, including honor, taxation and marriage. This division was shown clearly and visually in all artwork and readings throughout colonial time. The Castas system revolved around four major categories of race: Peninsular, a Spain-born Spaniard; Criollo, a person of Spanish descent born in the colonies; Indio, a person who is descendent of the Native Americas and Negro, a person of African descent, usually a slave. Variations and combinations of these four categories had specific rank attached to them with the highest being a Spaniard born in Spain and the lowest being those of African descent that were brought to the colonies as slaves. Each socio-racial “rank” came with their own set of privileges and restrictions, both legal and customary. During Spanish colonialism, a long list of different terms were...
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... 1. Nonsedentary peoples 1. Mobile communities 2. Hunters and gatherers 3. Relatively simple social organization 4. Examples include 1. Chichimecas of northern Mexico 2. Pampas of Argentine grasslands 1. Semisedentary peoples 1. Often lived in forests 2. Relied on some agriculture as well as hunting 3. Built villages, but moved frequently 4. Employed “shifting cultivation” agriculture to take advantage of thin forest soil 5. Examples include Tupí people of Brazil 1. Fully sedentary 1. Permanent settlements 2. Often on high plateaus, rather than forests or grasslands 3. Stability allowed for complex societies 4. Employed irrigation to sustain agricultural base 5. Sometimes developed into city-states or empires 6. Highly stratified societies 7. Examples 1. Aztec empire 2. Maya empire 3. Inca empire 1. Empires of the Americas 1. Aztec empire 1. Aztec refers to the empire, not the people 2. In modern-day Mexico 3. Ruled by the Mexica people 4. Nahuatl-speaking 5. Capital at Tenochtitlan more populous than Spanish or Portuguese capitals 1. Inca empire 1. Located in the Andes of...
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...In Colonial Latin America, women resignedly occupied inferior roles in the political, economic, and social spheres that dictated the happenings of their daily lives. Society did not view women as equivalent to their male counterparts and thus aimed to restrict and diminish their intellect and political agency. Their most effective manner of perpetuating this oppression was to discourage women from seeking an education. From a colonial mindset, the duty of the woman was to meekly obey the desires of the paternal figures in her life and aspire to become a wife and mother; the only acceptable alternative was to devote her life to Catholicism by entering into a convent with the intent of becoming a nun. Although both options deprived women of their right to self-autonomy, the latter offered lesser societal confinements. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a woman who challenged the social norm that women were not worthy of entering the realm of academia. Her inquisitive nature and desire for knowledge prompted her to...
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...by the Spanish. In centuries following Columbus's landing in the Americas, as much as 90% of the Indians had died due to the diseases. The Spanish Conquistadores In the 1500's, Spain became the dominant exploring and colonizing power. The Spanish conquerors came to the Americas in the service of God as well as in search of gold and glory. Due to the gold and silver deposits found in the New World, the European economy was transformed. The islands of the Caribbean Sea served as offshore bases for the staging of the Spanish invasion of the mainland Americas. By the 1530s in Mexico and the 1550s in Peru, colorless colonial administrators had replaced the conquistadores. Some of the conquistadores wed Indian women and had children. These offspring were known as mestizos and formed a cultural and biological bridge between Latin America's European and Indian races. The Conquest of Mexico In about 1519, Hernan Cortes set sail from Cuba with men and horses. Along the way, he picked up two translators - A Spanish prisoner of Mayan-speaking Indians, and an Indian slave named Malinche....
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...In Mexico, there are currently 37, 504, 392 young people between 12 and 29 years of age. Young people represent 31.4% of Mexico's total population. The distribution among young men and women is very similar, 49.4% in men and 50.6% in women (Gobierno de México, 2016). The lack of importance given to the strategic role of young people in the development of the country explains the political disinterest of Mexican youth and helps to understand its consequences in their future. The price that most young people are paying is very high because of the consequences of government policies, or rather the absence of them, are segregation, discrimination, marginalization and disenchantment by the country and its public institutions. In fewer words, Youth's...
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