Announcements:
- First exam on Wednesday, 10/4/17
- A good place to start studying is looking at the HAP homework assignments and class notes posts.
- Continue thinking about and working on Wikipedia projects.
LA History and Culture Post by Jacob
Cuban Doctors Against Brazil’s “Programa Mais Médicos”
Jacob’s news article was about Cuban doctors who are unhappy with Brazil’s “More Doctors Program.” It is a program where foreign doctors are brought into Brazil to provide healthcare services to remote and impoverished areas of Brazil. Many of these doctors come from Cuba. However, these Cuban doctors are paid less than doctors from other countries, while the Cuban government receives far more money per doctor sent to Brazil than the doctors get. Cuban doctors who have tried to fight for more money have been threatened by the Cuban government. They are told to either immediately return to Cuba or face exile. However, the program does provide much needed medical care to poor and remote regions of Brazil that would not otherwise receive it. For this reason, the UN has supported this program.
Class Discussion- Go Betweens
We talked about the role of go betweens, people who could interact with both European and indigenous societies, helping bridge the gap between the two. A key historical question that was discussed was, “What roles do cultural intermediaries play in Iberian colonization of Latin America?” We talked specifically about the cases of La Malinche, the indigenous woman who served as a translator for the Spanish conquistadors under Hernan Cortes and as Cortes’ mistress, Don Melchior Caruarayco, an Andean kuraka, and Domingos Fernandes Nobre, a mameluco slave trader in colonial Brazil. For La Malinche we discussed both her importance as a facilitator of communication between the Spanish and the Mexica, and her role as Cortes’ mistress. More generally, we talked about the sexual relations, both consensual and non-consensual, between European men and indigenous women in colonial Latin America. The children of these relationships were the mestizos or mamelucos, people of both European and indigenous heritage. These people were often intermediaries between the European and indigenous societies, belonging to both at the same time. Domingos Fernandes Nobre and Don Melchior Caruarayco were both talked about in small groups. Both of these men served as go betweens in different ways. Don Melchior Caruarayco was the leader of an Andean group and had to both lead them, while also making sure his people provided tribute and labor to the Spanish. Domingos Fernandes Nobre was a mameluco slave trader who had two identities, one Portuguese and one indigenous. He used this to build relations with both groups to capture and sell indigenous people as slaves to work on Portuguese sugar plantations. Finally, we also talked about the ways inheritance was carried out in Iberia and colonial Latin America, and how marriage was influenced by this.
Important Terms
- Mestizo or Mameluco: a person of both European and indigenous heritage.
- Encomienda: a system where Europeans, often conquistadors, would be given lands in the Americas and the labor of native peoples in the area to work it as a reward for their service to the king or the colonial government.
- Kurakas: traditional Andean leaders who held political, social, and religious significance. They were in charge of assigning work to the people of their communities and were supposed to protect them. They were used by the Spanish as intermediaries to control the native Andeans.
Links:
Kurakas and Commerce: A Chapter in the Evolution of Andean Society
Article about the role of mestizos in colonial Latin America
Potential Exam Questions:
How did the role of kurakas in Andean society change after the Spanish conquest?
Who were go betweens in colonial Latin America and what was their importance?
How do historians use historical biography to explain the past?