Author Archives: David

Class Notes: November 1st 2017

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Latin American History and Culture:

Rhys covered a topic involving the Miss Peru 2018 Beauty Pageant. The significance of this is instead of discussing body characteristics of the competitors, they spoke about Gender Based violence and they wanted to raise awareness about it since it isn’t as widely spoken about in Peru. Each of the competitors spoke about statistics involving Gender Based (specifically Female) discrimination. Peru has the second highest rate of Gender Based Violence in South America, first being Bolivia. In 2015 they attempted to pass legislation to perpetuate the criminals who acted in these crimes but it didn’t garnish enough support from the government.

 

Class Discussions:

Today we are discussing the treatment of natives based on Native opinion. As well as the relationship between Indios and Ladinos/Castas. The native people were mostly workers in the colonies and often times they were impoverished. The reason for this impoverishment is the lack of access of land since natives were not allowed to have it. Often times it would be given to Spanish Enconmedias to garnish wealth. Despite the impoverishment, there is still a hierarchy of sorts inside these native communities. The elites in these groups would be the ones to have access to land and have high value children (Daughters especially) and marry them off to Spanish people. This would be a way to form alliances between the Spanish and these communities. Gender Separation was wildly enforced by the Spanish as previously there wasn’t particularly roles for the two genders.

 

Tangit:

We talked about various types of marriage in Colonial Latin America and there was some weird Habsburg level cousin marriage going on. Recessive inherited traits show up.

 

Guaman Poma

  • The book has a large amount of pictures that show the priest forcing marriage onto two Incan people.
  • The priests are considered active members of the abuses going on in the Americas.
  • Highly critical of the Spanish authority in the colonial society.
  • They view the native people as Children.

 

Thomas Gage

  • He travelled around Latin America and he has on the ground experience
  • He was an English Priest (member of Dominican Order) converted to Puritanism and was critical on the Catholic Church.
  • Strong Moral Objection (It’s not the way God would have wanted) against the Spanish.

 

Native Lords of Pintag

  • Basically a complaint directly to the king from the native people to remove the tyrannical colonial authorities.
  • [dan], it is a worthy title used by an “elite” of sorts.
  • Land rights were violated, colonists abusing the labor system (more than half male population), no control over their own crops, their tribute gets eaten by animals.
  • In the second letter to the king(1599), clearly things have not improved and the crisis is only getting worse. The natives decided to leave since it isn’t worth it anymore.

 

Important Terms for Today

  • Republica de Indios- The Republic of the Indians, it was an autonomous form of government that allowed the natives (to a certain extent) to govern themselves.

 

  • Ladimos- mix ethnic group of Mestizo and Hispanized people

 

  • Gurani- a Native people that live in Southern Brazil and almost all of Paraguay.

 

  • Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala- A Quechan noble man who was a councillor and he wrote on the abuses the Spanish did to his people in the Andes.

Colonial Latin America Culture and Blog Post – Murder and it’s Effects on the Argentinian Election.

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As the Argentinian Election cycle draws near, there has been an incident in finding the body of a prominent Argentinian “Native Rights” activist named Santiago Maldonado in Patagonia (Southern Argentina). In his background prior to the disappearance/murder, he was an activist that wanted to help the Mapuche who were facing trouble when a clothing company attempted to interlope on their land claims. Ultimately, the Mapuche people were evicted from the premises by security forces. Santiago was last seen protesting with the Mapuche as the eviction took place and that had occurred two months ago on August 8th, 2017.

There is some speculation that the Argentinian ruling party known as The Republican Proposal, would have done this since Santiago and the party often collided with each other in regards to native rights infringements. The case is described as being a thorn in the Marci Governments side since people speculate that the case isn’t be handled well enough by investigators. But, the Election is temporarily shaken by this event and it could lead to some drastic political results. Otherwise, this is an ongoing story that is going to affect Argentina greatly. 

  • This image was taken in August and it shows protestors protesting the disappearance of Santiago. (Image is taken from the NY Times Article)

 

  • This is a picture of the current President of Argentina, Mauricio Marci (taken from the NY Times article)

This relates to what we are talking about in class today since it’s about the treatment of native peoples in colonized territories. Some people are activists who want to help the native people get their well-deserved lands back. Others not so much, they want the resources to go to the government and their pockets.  It is still an ongoing issue that is clearly still with us in the 21st century. Historically, the Argentinian government has done a lot of infringement on native treaties to get much-coveted resources in their given territories.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/08/argentina-santiago-maldonado-benetton-missing-activist  Article about the disappearance/eviction two months ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/world/americas/argentina-santiago-maldonado.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Famericas&action=click&contentCollection=americas&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront October 19th, 2017)

Wikipedia Critique: Akab Dzib

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akab_Dzib

The wikipedia article that I chose to look over is Akab Dzib. This is a mayan structure at the Chichen Itza site. Now the reason I chose this was it sounded cool because I never knew that some of the buildings on the site actually had names. When I went to the wikipedia article associated with it, I was kind of disappointed. There are no images of said structure that was mentioned and there are only two refferences. I feel that there would be more sources of information out there that can be used to make this article better. As well as a picture of the building!

Now as for what this article has. It’s pretty neutral for the most part and that is good since going through the Wikipedia training, they really want an emphasis of a neutral opinion. There description it gives of the building in question is pretty bland but overall gives a good idea of what it is. The author(s) describe the building in question well and talk about the various details across the structure.

If I were to improve the quality of this article, I would add a picture of Akab Dzib and try to find more sources from scholars. That would make this article a whole lot better in my opinion.

Class Introduction

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Hey guys, my name is David and I’m attending this semester’s Colonial Latin America Class. I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennslyvania and my intended major is either gonna be in International Studies or Computer Science. My dream goal is to work for the NSA as an Agent or apart of the counter-terrorism division at the United Nations.

Now as for this Colonial Latin America course, I think what I want to learn most from it is how South American Spanish identities (Chilean, Argentinian, Colombian for example) managed to form during this time period. But as for specifics, I actually really enjoy Chilean history (especially during the late 19th century and the 1970s) and would like to learn about the various native peoples that lived in its present day borders. Since to me, I’m not entirely sure who lived in Chiles borders besides maybe the Quechans and Aymarans in the north.