Maria Brito and immigrant from Cuba, came to the United States in 1961. Maria saw the U.S. as a place of endless opportunities, as many Cubans who migrate to the U.S. due to lack of opportunities, poverty and oppression that exist within their own country. Her piece El Patio de Mi Casa, symbolizes the struggles she has experienced with identity and a symbol of transformation once she arrived to this country. The wall in her piece, represents the threshold between the past and the present. The crib symbolizes her childhood and her experiences living in poverty.
the Spanish saw the natives abundance of gold and that they were not Christian, and they felt justified in mistreating them because they thought they were helping them religiously
General • First Name: Bartolomé • Last Name: de Las Casas • Middle Name: X • Birth Date: 11 November 1481 • Gender: Male • Ethnicity/Nationality: Spanish General Info: Bartolomé de Las Casas lived during the 16th century. He was one of the first people to settle in the New World. He is most famous for being a social reformer who indeed introduced many social reforms to the world never seen before.
of schedule Spanish conquistadors, numerous evangelists considered themselves to be siding empathetically and defensively with the indigenous people groups. In 1537, Pope Paul III pronounced that Indians were not mammoths to be slaughtered or oppressed, but rather people with souls fit for salvation. At the time, this was comprehended to be an edified perspective of indigenous individuals, and one that good natured teachers tried to empower. Letters from ministers who lived among the Indians give us a feeling of the worries numerous held for the welfare of tribal people groups. A letter by Franciscan monk Juan de Escalona reprimands the "shocks against the Indians" conferred by a Spanish legislative head of what is presently New Mexico.
Still, he did provide a look back into Native American history, how the silver flow consequently led to their enslavement. Pursuing this further, Antonio Vazquez de Espinosa, a Spanish priest, wrote of the harsh quagmires the natives underwent on a daily basis (Doc 3). Like de Bry before him, Espinosa may have harbored a bit of frustration toward the Spanish, considering his position as a priest intent on gathering converts. It must have been quite difficult, though, since the Native Americans probably wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Life was already ephemeral enough as is, what with their still somewhat primitive lifestyle and whatnot, but then the white man had to come along and introduce smallpox, a disease hitherto unbeknownst to their immunity.
They often killed and robbed several natives for their gold, as Document Six tells us. They were incredibly greedy, and wanted wealth and riches, as opposed to friendship and peace. Their cruelty grew so terrible that the Native Americans they tormented became afraid of the word "Christian," as the Spanish plunderers called themselves as such. Document Six was written by a Spaniard calling for reform. Document Seven displays Native American life as if it were quaint and quiet.
Bartolome de Las Casas was born in 1848 in Spain. Las Casas was a Spanish historian and dominican missionary who objected the Spanish treatment of the Natives. Las Casas is known for his famous writings which weren’t published until many years after his death. Las Casas was not like any ordinary man in his time period. He opposed to several things the Spanish had against the Natives.
In document two, Bartolomé de las Casas is completely agaisnt and adressing the mistreatment under this system. He believes that the abuse that was begun by Cortés will ultimately not convince the Native’s to Christianize. He states that they were looked upon as the “dung and filth of the earth”. This in turn is the impetus of a new law. As shown in document three, Charles V creates new ordinances against the slavery and mistreatment of the Indians.
The Aztecs were constantly launching raids to capture prisoners for the enormous number of human sacrifices they conducted. There is important archeological evidence showing that several Indian civilizations suffered violent ends at the hands of other Indian cultures long before the arrival of the Europeans in America. • In effect, the Spanish employed a colonization strategy of "gold and souls. " Converting the native population to Catholicism not only spread the doctrines of the Catholic Church, then under threat in Europe, but could, it was believed, further the control of Indian behavior in the mines and on the plantations.
All the Spaniards had done was killing of innocent lives for personal greed and acquiring as much goods as they could for their Majesty, doing so for the money was their justifications for killing the natives. Then we have Cortes, who instead of killing off the Natives of Tenochtitlan, he opened their eyes to the horrors of their religious ways and gave them the revelation of Christianity. Cortes didn’t mention any genocide of the natives, he spoke about the geography and religious views of the natives. He stated, “I will simply say that the manner of living among the people is very similar to that of Spain, and considering that this is a barbarous nation shut off from a knowledge of true God or communication with enlightened nations, one may well marvel at the orderliness and good government which is everywhere mentioned” (SB, 8). Cortes is only praising the natives and their life style because he feels the people have everything figured out in terms of being dominant and true government but, lacked in religion which he left them
Before the Spanish ship that changed it all, which arrived in the “New World” in 1492, thriving organized communities of native people had centuries of history on the land. That ship, skippered by Christopher Columbus, altered the course of both Native American and European history. 1492 sparked the fire of cultural diffusion in the New World which profoundly impacted the Native American peoples and the European settlers. Prior to European contact, Native Americans lived as hunter-gatherers, living and traveling in groups of typically less than 300 people. These Native Americans spoke over 400 languages and practiced a myriad of different religions (The American Pageant).
“ It should be kept in mind that their insatiable greed and ambition, the greatest ever seen in the world, is the cause of their villainies.” (Las Casas) The people of Spain used murder and slavery as a means to depopulate the Islands due to their greed. According to Casas, the number of slain Indians is about 15 million in the fourty years that the Spaniards have intruded on the Natives land. Young men and rulers were killed, while women and young children were forced to be slaves to the Christians.
In the 16th Century, Spain became one of the European forces to reckon with. To expand even further globally, Spanish conquistadors were sent abroad to discover lands, riches, and North America and its civilizations. When the Spanish and Native American groups met one another, they judged each other, as they were both unfamiliar with the people that stood before them. The Native American and Spanish views and opinions of one another are more similar than different because when meeting and getting to know each other, neither the Spaniards nor the Native Americans saw the other group of people as human. Both groups of people thought of one another as barbaric monsters and were confused and amazed by each other’s cultures.
The Catholic Church and Latin America The Catholic Church was a great power ruling many civilizations in Europe during the period between 1492 and 1830. Therefore, the role of the Catholic Church was of utmost importance to the colonization and development of Latin America as it was a great force in Spain and Portugal. Despite the peaceful teachings of the Church, greed and a hunger for power led them to make decisions harming Latin America and Christianity, rather than thriving it. In this paper, I will show that the Catholic Church is significantly responsible for the colonization and development of Latin America through, the Christianizing mission, the Treaty of Tordesillas, and the Spanish Inquisition.
There was not a simple clear and distinct dichotomy between the “good” and the “bad”. As established previously, the Aztecs did not all live in perfect harmony, leading to tensions, and side-taking when Europeans arrived. A number of Indigenous peoples had a part to play in the downfall of the Aztec empire. Furthermore, the importance of gold in these relations was of great significance, and “Cortes bullied… tortured the Aztec lords… to obtain gold” (p.116). León-Portilla chooses to end on the topic of the tributes of “gold that had been lost in the Canal of the Toltecs” which the Captain expects to be returned to him.
