Today in Class we looked at the  gender and racial hierarchy in Latin America, and how people can move from one position to another within their lifetime.

Before going into our class discussion, Ben spoke about how the Vice President of Venezuela’s National Assembly has sought refuge in the residence of the Chilean ambassador. He is banned from leaving the country due to crimes against him for leading protests against Maduro. Here he hopes to continue to work with the opposition party against President Maduro.

Lecture Notes:

• American Anthropology Association
• Three key messages when teaching about race
  • Race is a recent human invention
  • Race is about culture, not biology
  • Race and racism are embedded in institutions and everyday life.
• Looked at Jose de Acosta as a view of earlier colonial race
  • Colonial anxiety of European rule over non European majority taking over.
  • Assumption of indigenous unity used to rebell against European rule
    • Indigenous people are more united than the spanish “can all understand each other’s thoughts”
  • Back into discourse about civilized versus barbaric outlooks on indigenous people
  • People really believe that race is destiny
• Spanish are really interested in dividing people up into castes “castas”
  • Look at race, skin color and phenotype, class, place of birth, gender
  • What it means to be a man what it means to be a woman
    • Woman: virgin till married, under control of husband, father, brother
  • Took a look at casta paintings from the 1700’s that are observing the new world and explaining it to people back in europe
    • • Grid art peice that shows the results of different racial mixtures
      • Two Examples:
      • Jose Joaquim, magon, “Mestizo”
        • Shows family of different races wo all share the same status
        • All of these people are literate, mother son, and white man
        • All three have on fancy clothing
      • Andres de Islas “De Espanol e Nagra nace Mulatta”
        • White old guy resisting black woman about to hit him, mixed child holding mothers dress. Family dynamic are very different. Women in kitchen, people from african descent here for slavery. Much lower status in this image. Child dressed the same as the mom, implying that she inherited mother’s status
      • As the colonial order matures, people try to solidify roles and positions and social hierarchy
• Next we took a look at convents in colonial Latin America
  • Convents: Economically important, socially important
    • Importance of the economic role for convents
      • Katherine burn “colonial habits”
    • Religious prohibition for loaning money for interest
      • Worked by individuals giving land to convent, and they would give you money i return
        • Worked as a low interest loan. Convents are some of the only institutions you can borrow money from in these societies
      • Incredibly influential and controversial through the amount of money and land they owned and controlled
      • Source of hyper literate women who kept sources
      • Social divisions between nuns displayed through types of veils they wear. Not a utilitarian community.
    • Economic benefits for daughter who joins convent
      • Cheaper than dowry
      • Social status: connection to god
      • If she becomes a formal nun, she will not inherit property, which is cheaper for the family
      • Very respectable option that gives family prestige
      • Family network when it comes to controlling loans, access to loans

• • Sor Juana
    • Sor: title, (Sister Juana)
    • Pg. 62
    • Beloved to historians and feminists
    • Ideas of gender intersexually
    • How is she performing gender?
    • Attracts a lot of attention for doing things she is not supposed to
    • Wants to dress as a boy and go to a university as a child
      • Shows desire for learning not allowed by society
    • Parents would often leave their daughters unexposed and uneducated in fear of distracting other people’s sons throughout their education
    • Pg. 64: distinction between women being inferior and intellectually inferior
      • “The secrets of nature I have discovered while cooking”
        • Women have a power of observation and making a chemistry experiment in the kitchen are restrained educationally

Class Notes

Blog Post

• Have other native groups risen against the government?
• Was the article showing a negative light on the people? Yes, showing a negative bias against the Mabuchi.

Pirates and Privateers

• What do we know about piracy? How do we know it?
• Who is a pirate? Who is a privateer?
• Why do people become pirates?
• What effects does piracy have on the Iberian colonial empire?

Notes

• Silver silk and goods are main exports being traded
• Alliances to help prevent ships from being unprotected
• People are being heavily taxed but question if they are protected from pirates.
• Pirates had trouble when they could legally steal.
• Spanish are upset because they are being pirated
• Pirate- lord less Bridget who pirates anything
• Privateer- someone who is paid by a monarch
• Social banditry- social crime lower class resistance
• What is Marcus Rediker’s argument- anyone who was in illicit activity is considered a pirate.
• Spanish trade routes were used against them, Spanish were being stolen from and sold to natives.
• People became pirates because of wealth and greed.
• Living conditions of pirates was not well they had no home for themselves.
• Pirates would spend most of their income on the ports mainly on alcohol.
• MR argument- similarities between pirates and sailors
• Pirates threat to colonial rule
• War time people would become sailors because there was work and opportunity
• If you were a slave or lower-class worker you can become a pirate.
• 1561 Spanish establish fleet system

Class notes 11/6/17

Upload Wikipedia project memo if haven’t already

Visual audio slide show- 4 to 5-minute project. Be super precise and concise. Find the most important things for the audience to know about colonial Latin American history.

Try to develop a full script for feedback (due Friday). Include images and script, develop argument, primary source analysis, histography

As you find good images make sure you’re keeping track by citing them

For audio recording- can use imovie, recording area in the library, audacity online, flipgram ? on phones (can use freesound for different sound effects). Quality of sound of your recording is important

Can use any format if you can export it and share it on YouTube

Writing center is awesome for these types of projects

Try not to wear windbreaker type jackets or noisy clothes when recording

Plantation slavery

• More Africans coming over the Atlantic than Europeans before 1800s. Large volume of slaves
• Intensification of the process of slavery of economic purposes
• Transportation, provisions, purchase price were main costs of slavery
• Slavery existed in Africa before contact. However, weren’t dehumanized and had better living conditions- more paths to freedom
• Economic demands caused high volumes of slaves exported from Africa to the new world
• Transatlantic slavery database has a ton of information. Shows Atlantic slave trade overtime
• investors in the enterprise of slavery provides financial records
• Some people involved who realize the true horrors will turn anti-slavery and give firsthand accounts
• It’s hard to do genealogy of slaves because the records aren’t very good
• Its difficult to tell ethnic and language groups because slaves are often gathered up by warring tribes all over Africa and sold out of common ports out of western-central Africa
• Hati shows the instability of slave labor and the violence that comes from it
• Brazil and Caribbean largest importers of slaves mainly due to sugar plantations
• sugar transforms slavery- larger scale, more profits
• sugar is intense crop large mortality rate, industrial accidents, malnutrition, disease
• to have colonial rule of a small minority over a large majority involves massive coercion. very ridged hierarchical society
• benevolent coercion. People are made promises that if you behave you and your family will get benefits
• historical agency- ability to keep their identities, culture
• a lot of apologies for slavery arguing that people were better off under slavery
• long term domestic partnerships where women remain enslaved but their children may become free. Causes wealthy mixed population where in some cases the children own their mothers
• some women purchase their freedom through prostitution
• legal status, race, gender form a complex racial hierarchy

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.