Tupac Amaru II November 18, 2009

This week’s lecture and discussion on the rebellions of the late eighteenth century in the Andes was very interesting to me. It made it clear why we studied the reasons for the period of peaceful coexistence in the earlier part of the Hispanic/Andean relationship- conflict was bound to erupt eventually. The reasoning behind the Tupac Amaru rebellion is fairly obvious due to the oppressive nature of the Spanish on the indigenous people. Indians found themselves in a flooded market and had difficulties in obtaining the money needed to pay taxes and for repartos, which were forced purchases of commodities from the government (according to Alberto Flores Galindo). Conditions allowed an alternative to colonial domination to emerge in the southern Andes. All that was required beyond that was to destroy the image of the absolute authority of the Spanish king. Amaru acquired status as rightful ruler, being the fourth grandson of the last Inca.

Amaru had his portrait painted holding the symbols of Inca royalty to help claim his status. He had peasants treat him as an Inca and was followed by a close group of supporters. He made an army that replicated the hierarchy of colonial society and he tried to meld Inca culture with Christianity- using Christian religious beliefs with Incan traditional ceremonies and customs. All of these things helped him attract a wide base of support for the movement.

Supporters were drawn to the drastic action of the rebellion because they believed in Amaru’s claim that he would change the government. As we said in class, one of the battle cries was “Long live the king, down with bad government.” This kept away any accusations of treason, but got the point across about their concerns. Supporters wanted to end the reparto and mita systems, too, due to their oppressive nature and corruptible potential. The corregidors would act dually as merchants and raise prices to absurd amounts and there was nothing the natives could do about it. With all of these grievances and Amaru’s rightful claim to the Inca throne, it is very clear as to why people would have joined the cause.

Although it seems drastic to start a rebellion to promote change, it really seems like it was the only option. Amaru did attempt to peacefully fix their problems by writing letters to the king, but he was completely ignored and nothing was accomplished. It would have been very difficult to sit around and let an unorganized, disconnected sort of government system take away all of your rights to things like property and even royalty. I agree with Amaru’s thinking and think it is unfortunate that he did not achieve what he set out to do.

Centralized Power November 11, 2009

In class we discussed the way a time was seen in the Andes for about a century after the Spanish invasion when things were mostly peaceful and stable. Indigenous people were certainly exploited in many ways, but were given opportunity to be involved in the life and workings of society. The power at the time was decentralized in such a way that things easily remained calm.

As the rulers in Spain began an attempt to form a parallel beaurocracy in the Americas, primarily by Charles III’s initiative, and power was pushed to be centralized, a series of explosions ensued. In terms of Creole identity, one of the first events to occur was their alienation from peninsular Spaniards. Non-Spanish people were excludeed from office and clergy experienced attacks. The Jesuits were even expelled eventually.

The military was formed in the Americas at this point in time. It was an entirely new institutional creation and a source of new privileges. There was now a visible social standing based on military rank and uniform. A census started at this point in time as well, finally ensuring the payment of taxes due to being able to fully account for everyone living in the region. With the census and a new system for taxes, people began to try to prove their ethnicity. Indigenous people wanted to distance themselves from their indigenous roots. The further away from indigenous and the closer to whiteness- the better. Mestisos were half white and half indigenous, a much better situation in terms of social and economic life. This idea of “whitening” is very interesting to me. The greater and greater percentage of Spanish a person had, the higher their status would be. Not only were the higher in society just based on appearance, though, they also had many more opportunities and more money. It is really amazing that this kind of social stratification could all be so precisely based upon this kind of racial makeup.

Consummation of Marriage November 6, 2009

One of the aspects of the trial in Good Faith and Truthful Ignorance is the view of what constituted marriage in that time period in Spain. I found this very interesting because it is an issue that could not be addressed similarly in this day and age. Basically, the Catholic church and the Spanish court (in terms of their laws) considered marriage official only once it had been consummated. In other words, you were not legally bound to someone until you had actually sealed the deal with sex. 

In the book, this makes a very interesting situation due to the fact that Francisco Noguerol uses this view of what is considered legal marriage to fight the lawsuit that was started against him. Noguerol was practically forced to marry his first wife Beatriz by his commanding mother. He got a large dowry from her father, which he immediately used to get himself across the Atlantic to Peru. After having been in Peru for a number of years, Noguerol was informed by one of his sisters in a letter that Beatriz had died. A few years later he married a widow living in Peru and when the two of them returned to Spain he was informed that Beatriz was actually still alive. 

The lawsuit that she had begun upon learning about her husband’s second marriage was based upon charges of Bigamy. In order to prove his innocence, he declared that he married Catalina in “good faith and truthful ignorance” and that in fact he was never legally married to Beatriz in the first place due to the fact that they had never consummated the marriage. It is amazing to me that this could be brought up as a real defense! Noguerol was very aware and conscious of being married to Beatriz for many years and even recieved the dowry- yet when pressed for a defense he could easily claim it to be invalid. He and Catalina did come out on top in the case and he did not lose all of his money or possessions as Beatriz had hoped. Although it is an unfortunate situation the first wife, it is also a very intriguing and understandable type of scenario. Unless Noguerol was lying about everything, he truly had no reason to not marry Catalina and did nothing knowingly wrong. I thought the outcome of the trial was legitimate for the time, but it seems very likely that it could never have gone that way in a court today. He would have been legally married to two living people with no legal grounded excuse.

I thought the book did a great job portraying the way life was in that time period. Women had a very different role then and additionally so did sex. It is amazing how far we have come from that type of social construction.

Christianizing the Andes November 2, 2009

The Jose de Acosta on the Salvation of the Indians article really describes the reality of what Spanish evangelism was like and how it was responded to in the Andean region. Acosta was a Spaniard and a member of the Jesuit clergy, known for his many teachings and writings in the late 1500s. His extensive travel and missionary work in the Andean region- particularly Peru- and Mexico really prepared him to be a great leader in terms of religious thought and evangelical strategy in the new world.

Although at first his thoughts seem quite pessimistic and almost defeated, he sends a clear message of hope. It seems very understandable that in an attempt to convert natives from an entirely different culture and world view who even speak another language primarily, one would run into many problems. As we discussed in class, they obviously could not just use literary or written resources. This was not a huge problem for the Spanish, though, who were used to evangelizing to pagan Europeans who were sometimes even illiterate. Techniques of using pictures, drawings, and building elaborate churches and cathedrals to depict Christianity were utilized.  It was probably easy to convey the centrality of God, the necessity of Jesus, and the ever present help of the Holy Spirit. It would have been easy to portray the usefulness of Mary and her importance in the story. It would have even been easy to show the day of judgment, death, and destruction and how one can be saved from it. The most difficult part, and the part Acosta actually describes as such, is the ability to make the natives actually believe it or actually care.

It would have been easy for the natives to just go along with the priests and missionaries who were telling them what to do and how to behave. The natives obviously did just appease them in many ways, which is what Acosta had such a problem with. It would certainly bring up the question- what is the point? The indigenous people might have seen the three parts of the trinity and Mary as different gods and the saints as their own idea of ancestors that one could implore. According to Acosta, and what does make some real sense, is that in order to be effective there needed to be a greater number of priests and missionaries to keep the new converts accountable and growing in their faith. Acosta’s hope even in the midst of this seemingly hopeless scenario came from the fact that he believed God would not forsake the Andean region or the people there. He believed that all would be revealed in its due time. This was, in my opinion, probably a very inspiring and encouraging writing for missionaries at this time because I think it gives great reason to continue in an effort that at times might have felt completely futile.

Spanish and Indigenous Relations October 24, 2009

I thought the chapter on the indigenous Andeans in the book Spanish Peru was interesting because the relationship there was much different than I would have thought. The native people actually in many ways had much fewer rights and lower standing in society than did even the Africans. The Africans, obviously as we have discussed, were able to work their way out of slavery and even were used on more equal terms in the military and a few other facets of society. The natives were not seen even as high as the Africans and I think it must have been the fact that they were unwilling to transition fully into Spanish culture and ways. I know Lockhart alludes to this in the book, but it does seem like it would have been true. It would have been much easier for the Africans who were forced into a foreign land to change their ways than for the indigenous people to do so. They had lived in that area and with their people for years and it was what they were accustomed to. I know that if someone invaded and took over Tennessee I would have no desire to learn the invading group’s language or customs or traditions. I would not want to even mix into a new society with them. I think there had to have been bitter if not hostile attitudes toward the Spanish from the natives and this was completely justified.

It is unfortunate that the native people from other areas like Mexico and Nicaragua were actually treated better than the local natives. The whole way that the Spanish saw these people and used them is just so bizarre to me. I know that some men married higher ranking indigenous women, but other than that I feel like they were just ignored in terms of rights and used for all they could possibly give. It is strange what an invading group can do to an existing people. Life was completely turned upside down for them. It is amazing the amount of power the Spanish truly have. And it is also strange to consider the fact that all of this truly was not THAT long ago, and the effects of this time period of invasion, killing, change of rule, and hispanic transition are seen today in what South America is and has become.

Purchasing Whiteness October 16, 2009

I found the Pedro de Ayarza: The Purchase of Whiteness article very interesting. Ayarza was a very wealthy and dark-skinned man who had a lot of connections and was actually more or less treated like he was white. His son did not get accepted into a university because of his race which made Ayarza go on a many year quest to attain white status and the title of “don” for himself and his three sons. As it turned out, the oldest son was granted whiteness and the rest of the family was not. This created a huge divide in the family and certainly would have caused many problems. I think the authorities must have thought if they did make this exception for this dark-skinned family it would set a precedent that they were not willing to make.

This whole idea that individuals could buy whiteness is just amazing to me. If you simply had enough money, persuasion,  and connections you could improve your status in society by legally becoming white. This says so much about what was valued in this culture and how race was seen. Something I had never thought about until class the other day is that people did not see race in that time the way we do now. The scientific evidence for biological reasons for race and nature determining that aspect of our humanity for us did not exist back then. Race was something that they considered able to be changed- which is far from true in our society today. I wonder what it would be like if that kind of thinking had continued.

Although the basis for this system is that being white is the ultimate status in society, it could potentially make race relations better. If we could let a mixed or light skinned person buy whitness in America and legitimately then saw them as such, would prejudice and racism exist so intensely? Would the 1960s have been different in America? I know that fully black African Americans would perhaps never have the ability to really be high status in this system, but it would give a lot more people the ability to be out of the minority. It would even the playing field in ways that can never really be achieved in this day and age. I suppose the major drawback would be that poor and impoverished people would never have the ability to get out of their place in society. Money meant a lot more in terms of status than it does today, where in America we are at least all theoretically seen as equal. I do not agree, obviously, that whiteness is the ultimate achievement in life at all, but I cannot help but notice that it is more difficult in a lot of ways to be born into the minority in American society and I wish that this was not the case.

Mining the Andes October 10, 2009

After the Spanish conquest of the Andes the focus became very clearly the accumulation of wealth from the region’s natural resources. Indigenous towns were left alone as long as they continued paying tribute to the Spanish. Mining became a major need/industry because obviously this is how many of the resources were attained. I thought the whole idea of how the Spanish went about getting laborers for these mines was really interesting. They would require people in a town to work for two months straight at a mining site and then they got to go back to their village. The workers would work for absurd amounts of times, along the lines of twenty hours a day. They barely had time to eat and sleep. They also had to be away from their family and friends for these lengths of time.

There were many risks involved with mining, as there still are today, and there was obviously no regulation of it. The workers would have worked and lived in less than acceptable conditions. They also had the risk of cave-ins and therefore the potential for death. In the longer term, many of the workers who worked in mercury mines would have experienced toxicity from the handling of it as well as breathing it in. All of these things were more or less disregarded by the Spanish, though, because all that really mattered for them was the accumulation of the resources so they could send them back to Europe. It is amazing to me that this is the way that the resources from South America were attained. I think it seems like the Spanish would have gone and sought out the resources and found them themselves, but it does actually make a lot more sense that they would have used an alternate source of labor. This really changed the way of life for many indigenous people and their communities. I wonder what effects this really had on them, and what their view of the Spanish really was. I wonder if they preferred the new way of things over the ways of the Inca? Or not? It is interesting to consider.

Arbitrary power and rule October 1, 2009

Aguirre, the Wrath of God was actually an incredibly insightful film. Regardless of its exact historical accuracy, it portrayed a very real sense of what the actual intentions of the Spanish conquistadors was. They wanted El Dorado- they wanted gold; they wanted to “convert” natives to Christianity. These things were all amazingly accomplished in some ways, but this exact expedition seen in the film was obviously very unsuccessful in their conquest. 

Aguirre, in the film, was absolutely perfect in his embodiment of a corrupt, power hungry white European conquerer. It was such a vision of what some men did and would have done to gain their fortune. Although in reality Aguirre was not known to be insane, it was an interesting take to see the film character exaggerated in such a way to cause even more disgust with what the Spanish did in South America.

The whole idea of ruling authority, law, and order is very interesting to look at in a situation like what was shown in the film. Literally, the men “overthrew” their leader- by killing him and his supporter. Once that was taken care of, it was easy for the second-in-command Aguirre to take over. Since evidently he could, Aguirre decided to put someone else on the “throne” as emperor. I just think it is completely crazy and amusing that rule could have been as arbitrary as that. Someone is appointed, and so they are. It is hard for me to even imagine something like that with our extravagantly complex political system in the United States for electing rulers. It is an interesting perspective to see the eventual overtake of the Incan Empire from this. It is so much less “official” in my mind than I would have thought it had to be. It would have been actually very easy for the Spanish to have controlled Manco Capac as their puppet ruler. The political intricacies of today were not actually in existence!

It seems like the world was just completely different in that time, although only a few hundred years ago. I know today there are still many ruthless leaders and power hungry criminal types, but we have come so far to be able to hold rulers accountable and enforce justice in the developed world. History of events like the Spanish conquest of the Americas and how it was gone about paints a very clear picture as to why institutions such as the United Nations are so vital and necessary in our world today. I think people in power really might go to any extreme to attain their goals if not held in check, mentally insane or not.

Viewing the film Aguirre, the Wrath of God, was overall a very effective way to begin to really understand the reality of what it is we are studying. The Spanish conquistadors were men, just like men today. Most of them were probably not mentally disturbed and yet they still did the ruthless things we know about today, similar in many ways to the actions of Aguirre.

The Truth September 25, 2009

Even though it is slightly disturbing to realize everything we have been taught about history during our lives most likely came from some sort of biased source, it actually makes complete sense. It is amazing to me, truly, that we have surviving documentation of any ancient historical events in our modern world. The fact that we are able to preserve and utilize ancient manuscripts and learn anything from them is really impressive. Perhaps that is a vital aspect of “history” in general.

Everyone embellishes stories as they are told more and more- it is human nature. It is hard to even know whether or not a story someone tells you about their night last weekend is entirely true. Based on this logic, I can’t believe I ever blindly trusted history being taught to me. History is useful and important regardless of the exact “truth” of it, though.

The various perspectives seen in the essays we read this week say a lot about the society and time. Even though they have their own ideas and views of the world, they all account for an aspect of their world at that time. Maybe there is “truth” in all of these accounts regardless of their historical accuracy. We learn about individuals in this way and can actually piece together a lot of the differing thoughts to make a broader picture. 

I suppose the point I am making is just that maybe it is unnecessary to qualify documents and writings based upon their accuracy alone. It has become apparent to me that you can truly learn a lot from them regardless.

The Demise of the Inca September 18, 2009

Coming into this class, I had very little background knowledge about civilizations in the early Americas besides the stereotypical European view of history and new world conquests. I was always under the impression, based on what I was taught growing up in school, that the European conquerers were so strong, advanced, and great that they easily overpowered the primitive, barbaric native tribes. This is truly very far from the truth.

In the first few weeks of this class I grew much more aware of the complexity of the early Andean people and their society. They were brilliant builders and road constructors, politically minded, devoutly religious, and relatively advanced technologically. The Incan Empire stretched across a vast region and was an incredible feat in itself. The documentary shown in class this week took the story from here, addressing how in the world a small group of Spanish conquistadors could have overcome this?

The obvious first thought is better weaponry. The Spanish must have had the advantage with their guns and metal swords. This could not have been it, though, because there are very few instances seen where a native was killed by a European weapon. It is also easy to think it was because of their horses or the diseases that they brought along with them. Interestingly enough, it is a whole other element that was certainly never addressed to me in a classroom growing up.

The Spanish, very strategically I might add, recruited native Andean people to fight on their side. It had never really occurred to me that even though it is unfortunate that this great empire was taken down, of course not everyone was happy there. It is easy to consider them as a small, easy target that was wrongly destroyed; but truly they had just as much dissension, civil war, and unhappiness as any civilization. The revolters of the empire were looking to the Spaniards to help them just as much as the conquistadors were eliciting their help.

I find all of this aspect of the history in the Andes very fascinating. Credit should be given to the natives that fought. I really think it could be seen just as much or more as a revolution than as an enemy conquest. This just shows me all the more the way that everything is biased. The history I have grown up learning was written by the white Europeans, not the South American natives. How interesting to feel as if you are finally uncovering some real truth.