Chapter 2: The occupation of Middle America (1480-1821)

Whats drove the conquest?

Spain occupation of Mesoamerica destroyed Mesoamerican social intuitions, religion and infrastructure.

300 years of colonial rule, accompanied by political and economic exploitation, the categorization of people by color, and the projection of the dominant class’s worldview Spain the rest if Europe was pulled out of the dark ages and allowed them to buy into world market dominated by China. (the foundation of gold, sliver and Philippines for location of world trade ) allowed china population to grow 1/3 of world population. Africa Begins at the Pyrenees fall of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century ad, the Visigoths, a Germanic people from central Europe, ruled Spain.African presence lasted more than seven centuries.

Under Muslim rule, Spain was a center of learning and art. They preserved the writings of many Greek, Roman, and Middle Eastern intellectuals—writings that otherwise surely would have been lost. Muslims brought improved irrigation methods, food strains (e.g., oranges and other fruits and vegeta- bles), rice, sugar cane, and cotton.

The Africans also brought other breeds of animals; using stock from the Muslims and Moors, the Spaniards developed a better breed of horse, which they adapted to an arid climate. They developed strategies to travel long distances, herding African cattle and churro sheep.

Meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms to the north regained power in holy wars known as la Reconquista (the Reconquest), driving the Moors southward. By the 1000s, Christians were gaining an upper hand, and by the 1200s, they had driven the Muslims into the Granada region of the peninsula. In 1479, the marriage of Queen Isabela and King Fernando united the kingdoms of Castile and Aragón, and in 1492, they conquered the last Moorish kingdom, Granada (the eastern half of present-day Andalusia).6 That same year they expelled between 120,000 and 150,000 spanish jews and all these set the stage for occupied America

The Spanish conquest

Christopher Columbus, landed in islands of Caribbean and began trading slaves because he couldn’t find wealth he selected 500 specimens to sail back to spain but only 300 survived leaving few people alive on the islands.

As the raid and slaved methods thrived , they expanded across west African coast and most native populations.

The pop condemned the portuuese practice of enslavement of human beings but Columbus found a loop hole, claims the nativies were cannibals and enslaved them.

They did this throughout the colonial period, in and about central America where they captured and sold thougsands and thousand of sloves.

Faith vs. rationality

People say that CC didn’t invent slavery but it was spain controlling slavery and the crown promulgated laws of burgos which incluced regulatins protecting indigenous labor and ensuring christianiztion but fight that Dominicans Antonio de Montesinos and Bartolomé de las Casas vigorously defended the rights of the Native Americans.

But laws were never enforced and Bartolomé de las Casas and the renowned Spanish scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda took place in 1550–1551 in Valladolid, Spain. Sepúlveda based his arguments on Aristotle’s doc- trine of natural slavery: “that one part of mankind is set aside by nature to be slaves in the service of masters born for a life of virtue free of manual labor.” Sepúlveda wrote a treatise justifying war against the natives. According to him, the Spaniards had the right to rule the “barbarians” because of their superiority. He com- pared the natives to wild beasts.

The Spanish invasion of the Mexica

Spaniards conquered cuba, mexico and colonization of the maya and the Aztecs ( the new spain) Spaniards were able to advance because they had gun powder, hores, snarling dogs, and armor.

The Aztecs didn’t want to kill them but wound them and sacrifice them to the gods.

In the battle of Tenochtitlan they killed captured and killed local chief in which warriors fell back

Smallpox and other diseases broke out and ravaged the native people

The colonization of native mesoamericas

After the Aztecs they went looting and torturing people, dragging and burning rulers throughout the towns.

Smallpox and other plagues

Genocidal proportion, genocide in this contect mean more than 90 percent of people died Smallpox, measles and influenze

There were 4 main epidemics, first small pox, second smallpox and measles was called little leprosy, the third epidemic last three years and called it pest (hemorrhagic fever) and lasted

1576-1581 and 300,000-400,000 people died

The Spaniards brought gunpowder, the horse, and the Catholic Church to the Americas. The Europeans brought livestock such as cattle, pig, and sheep and grains such as wheat. They brought the onion, citrus fruits, bananas, coffee beans, olives, grapes, rice, and sugar cane from other parts of the world. But they also brought smallpox, influenza, malaria, measles, typhus, and syphilis. The ex- change wiped out the indigenous peoples’ religions, submerged their languages, and tried to blank out their history. It introduced a European construct of race that lasts to this day.

The Americas as part of the exchange sent corn, the potato, the tomato, peppers, pumpkins, squash, pineapples, cacao beans (for chocolate), and the sweet potato and animals such as turkeys.

The conquest of race and labor in Mesoamerica

Conqurers used scorched-earth” strategy, causing widespread environmental destruction and social disorganization. Large numbers of displaced, disoriented, and depressed refugees roamed the countryside, suffering severe nutritional deficiency and often starving to death..

Illness spreads

Made natives farm

Conqurer showed natives about distilling alchol which alcoholism took over

Indigenous labor

Vieroy was the person in charge of new spain, hes crowned conquistadores encomiedas which were land with native subjects

encomenderos would protect the natives under their care and supervise their conversion to Catholicism. In reality the conquerors often maltreated and abused the natives, keeping them in a state of serfdom. Theory vs practice the Laws of Burgos, passed in 1512 as Recopilación de las Leyes de los Reynos de las Indias (Compilation of the Royal Laws of the Indies), protected the natives. Spain strengthened the laws in 1542, eliminating the right of encomenderos to unlimited use of indigenous labor. Native sued , for their land and personal labor but nothing happened because laws weren’t enforced

The Spanish crown abolished slavery in 1550’s but slavery continued until 19th century. repartimiento, requiring a native community to provide labor for public projects, agriculture, and mines and as carriers of goods was practiced into the eighteenth century, the system made wages for the natives mandatory were ignored the provision also requirement that natives purchase goods from Spanish authorities.

The structural control

Colonia authoritites group the native into communities called municipios which gave strengthened colonial control destroying the nativing to rebel, intercommunity regionals networks an pre-invason world system

The spainard allowed the people to maintain there languages but Spanish was the official language

Spanish people nativies known as casta were considered better than

Catholic church was state religion, and christen god supplanted the indigenous gods To hold any office or become a nobel you had to be proved “purity of blood” meaning you weren’t jewish or Moorish blood.

Spain created a caste system in in which ranked people of color

the “peninsular,” or Spaniard born in Spain; the “criollo/a,” a person of Spanish descent born in

Mesoamerica; the “indio/a,” or native; and the “negro/a,” of African slave descent the caste system was used for social control women in colonial Mesoamerica

sor juana intellectual genious suppressed because gender

changing roles of women women were victume of rape, the ultimate symbol of subordination, and the economy opened only limited opportunities for them.

Women were responsible of wool

Azteca women were adults that had right before law. Society, depending of class

Spanish law, allowed them to litigate inheritance and land rights and soon only men were able to represented in court

Women right narrowed under colonisliam and their power was decreaded Instututionlizing inequality

Women usually married in 20s but when spain came women married 12/14

Resulting in men being more powerful and more violent toward the women

Women weren’t buried in church like men were able to

Family structure changed from extened family but nuclear family unit decreasing support network,

Assimilation of native women

Catholic churst made women look bad for not assimilationg children, and there were little religious schools for women as well

e pre-conquest period, women worked as marketers, doctors, artisans, and priests, and perhaps occasionally as rulers. The opportunities for life outside the home were based on class Myth of passivity

Native women accounted for 1/3 of mexico city workforce

In Mexico City, 46 percent of native women and 36 percent of women from las castas (mixed races) engaged in work outside the home, whereas only 13 percent of the Spanish or criollas worked outside the home in the labor force. Most women found employment as domestic servants

Josefa María Francisca unable to speak Spanish, or read or write was able to become feared opponent because of her firey temperament. She led an assault on jail and freed repartimiento workers. She liberated the ornaments and vestments

Myan women locked the doctor and priest in the chrusch until they release of the deceased Through- out the colonial period, women lodged complaints against clergy for sexual improprieties. This was no small feat considering they were appealing to a patriarchal structure.

Agent of social control or liberator

Virgin de Guadalupe, wasd indigenous proof of church benevolience but to other is was Spanish social control passive female role model, subservient to male. story of the apparition appears to have changed during the colonial era as did the tradition itself, until Father Miguel Hidalgo used her as a symbol of Mexican independence in 1810. Today the Virgen de Guadalupe has taken on different dimensions, symbolizing for many Mexicans and Latin Americans a “renewal and rebirth as a people. Guadalupe stands for both transformation and continuity in Mexican religious and national life al norte: god, gold, glovry, sliver and slaves

spanisards sent ecpenditions from colonial mexico in search for riches the northern people didn’t live in concentrated areas, the northern tribes resisted the Spanish encroachments, and the Spaniards called them indios bárbaros, or barbaric Indians. the conquistadores felt entitled and were offended that the Indians did not meet them with open arms

as the Spaniards moved up north they named colonial administrative region in western colonial mexico nueva Galicia , which made up of Jalisco, Nayarit, and south Sinaloa and goveren guzman expedition left a trial of depredations, enslavement, and mistreatment of natives the northern tribes resisted, resisted unti 1541 were the Spanish were able to open mines of zxacatecas which produced 1/3 of mexico slive the decimation of indigenous population

spnaiards pulled people off their lands by organizing presidios forts in which became huge part of invasion chichimeca war of 1560’s population fell from 1700000 to 165000 living patterns of northen corn people

most native lived in Rancherias and most people were uto-aztecan

people moved with the move of water, rainfall , rivers,

Great Rio Bravo or Grande, gave life to villages of thousands and complex social and political systems. The Pueblo people, found mostly in what is today New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas, also lived in villages. In comparison, the nomadic people were still in the process of migration when the Spanish arrived.

The changing order

The mining of Zacatecas varied races and people

Tension asrised with people moving into land and believe themselves entiled to native labor Spanish people est. presidios, missions, heciendas, and pueblos.

Grow of mini was an increase of food source

Natives worked longer hours while the mines and the haciendas pressured the missionaries to provide more native workers. These demands, along with the frequent droughts and epidemics that depopulated

Uprise of missions changed lifes, women held strong role sin communities , inherited walth, and women were involed in trades of weaving and pottery

People get married more than once, native women had choice of abortion and preticipated in ceremonies but their roles in church was suppressed.

The bonanzas

Natives from central Mexico as well as Africans, Spaniards, mestizos, and the castas were drawn over this road to the mines. The conquerors uprooted Native Americans from their villages and destroyed their institutions

There were many mining strikes

Northern expansion the natives resisted enslavement and forced labor but came with war and epidemics of illness costing the population to decline by 50%. frequent revolts spread throughout northwestern New Spain during the 1600s forced labor landowner and miners would avoid restriction on forced labor due to distance of central govement.

encomenderos were in full control of the native population under their charge, abusing native trust and renting their native to mine owers or other hecendados the northern corridor

nueva vizcaya was heartland of northern frontier

in new mexico, colonist used fiction to forcibly place natives in christain households so they could receive education

forcelabor was so wide spread that there was no need for black slaves

the pueblo people live in the region for so long that they have lifestyle with interrelated knship and religious groups

they knew how to cope with their enivoment

kinship head groups around core blood related women, they related kinship to native aniamls and plants

Hispanicized population grew where isolated farms, ranches and hamlets settled, natives were even intermarried

Tension arose when force labor and region came about

Apache raids known as great northern revolt The natives washed off the stains of baptism, annulled Catholic marriages, and destroyed churches. The New Mexicans wanted the Spaniards and their God out of their space and wanted to return to the old ways

Slavery had its abuses, every household has more than one slave, women were worth more than males because children born were consistered slaves

The decline of native poplation

Constant warfare decreased population many pueblos went exile with apache, Navajo and hopi excessive use of the repartimiento system had a devastating impact on the indigenous people, depriving the native communities of labor for their own crops, which caused a shortage of food, and ultimately malnutrition. considerable tension existed between the Pueblo population and the colonial administration; Though Pueblos and Hispano villages had no political or economic power during the eighteenth century, the elite, on the other hand, never gained the necessary economic prosperity to affect the predominant village life of the province nor to change land tenure patterns radically during the colonial period.” The colonization of Texas

Texas natives lived off wild game, build villages and had well-developed farms and political and reli- gious systems. These tribes formed a loose federation, known as the Caddo confederacies, to preserve the peace and provide mutual protection

Texas is so big it took viceroyalty of new spain hundreds of years to occupy it.

18th centry spian power was decreaing spain didn’t have the resoures to navigate the rio grande e Rio Bravo did not escape the early colonists, who recognized the interdependence of the frontier colonies in what today is called the American Southwest and northern Mexico.