Transculturation In The Catholic Friar Diegous

Transculturation is the merging of two cultures, taking elements from the both and creating somewhat of a new assimilation of these cultures. It is not the complete takeover of a civilization and wiping out all of their culture. The text describes transculturation as “confrontations and tacit negotiations taking place in people’s daily lives, always within the force field of hierarchy and domination” (Chasteen, 2016, pg. 68). Meaning while there is a domination of one culture over the other there is still cultural aspects from the other. Chasteen also explains transculturation and hegemony to be “two sides of the same coin, one good, and the other negative” (Chasteen, 2016, pg. 68). Often in the film we saw examples of transculturation between the Catholic Friar Diego and Tomas.

Tomas seems to be confusing the Mother goddess and the Virgin Mary. It is not so much confusion as it seems to be his way of incorporating the Virgin Mary into his own religion. This is why it pictures him trying to sacrifice Maria as they did to the woman in the begging of the film because sacrifice was seen as an honorable thing in his culture. This goes along with the text book where it said that the indigenous people “accepted the Europeans’ true religion” (Chastein,2016, pg.63). On the other hand, there was a great example of the Europeans trying to accept the indigenous culture when in the death scene of Friar Diego the other disciples opened his bible and there was a cut out of a piece of the drawings Tomas had drawn from the battles that had taken