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Example research essay topic: Latin America Upper Class - 1,678 words

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Colonial Latin America: European Encounters in the New World Throughout history and during alternating time periods, countries have grown from feeble entities, defeated by or ruled by the governing structures of foreign nations, to powerful nations. Between the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, Spain ruled as a great power among other nations. Its empire began when, in 1492, Spain financed Columbus's expeditions and explorations to conquer territory in the New World. Once it held its new established territory, Spain relied on the influx of gold and silver from the New World. When it was an empire, Spain had control over many countries, including South America, Mexico, and Latin America.

This however wasnt all a negative aspect of European colonization in the Americas. European colonization in the Americas also brought many positive, social, cultural, and economical, changes that make up what we are today. If we look at the encounters between Europeans and Native Americans during the fifteenth century and beyond, it is obvious to see a trend of invasion, conquest, slavery, and eventually death lurking about the historical documents describing that time. The expeditions into the New World by Europeans during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can't be easily labeled as invasions. If one looks at the end results of the conquests by Europeans, it is evident that the most of the native tribes who made contact with Europeans were in most cases worse off than they were before they made contact. However, the barbaric overtaking of territory and culture by the Europeans is a far- fetched myth as these conquests were more a sort of cultural exchange than anything else.

An example of this cultural change was the increasing amounts of settlers from Spain including soldiers and Franciscan priests that were assigned to work at the pueblos. The priests' task was to, "win souls for the Roman Catholic church, " and, "to educate the natives on how to become citizens of the Spanish Empire. Andres Bello along with Jose Marti where among the many nationalist that emphasized why this history is so important. Acknowledging the history of the Spanish conquest in the Americas shaped the territory for which we acted upon throughout the years after the conquest.

For example one of the most important reasons for Chiles independence as well as other Latin American countries, was the emergence of a class of CRIOLLOS (Creoles). Creoles were American born Spaniards, who were different from the Iberians. They developed a desire for self-government. The Criollos, then, began and supported a movement in order to gain independence from Spain.

The Criollos had a lot of influence in the merchant class as well as in the upper class of Chile. They resented Spain's trading system. For tax reasons, all trade with Spain had to pass through Panama by land to the Caribbean and Havana, Cuba, instead of directly by ship from the port of Valparaiso. This system was definitely one of the reasons Spain lost its American colonies.

Colonialism has often spread to areas where it is economically valuable for the colonizer to develop. South America was one of these places. First came the Spanish for gold, then for rubber. As colonization took place two cultures met, thinking they were opposites, but in reality they were very much connected to one another, their histories were now tied together.

In considering the question of how Indians have developed their healing practices and spiritual beliefs as a reaction to colonization, there are a number of areas we must explore. What happened within the culture of the South American Indians was syncretism, or the synthesis of both old and borrowed traditions, a common occurrence of colonization as one civilization dominates the other and forces conversion. (Schwartz, 394). Because of pre-existing beliefs, Catholicism was accepted into the culture and combined with its original beliefs much more easily than other religions. "Catholicism embodied a rich pageantry and complex ceremonial cycle. It offered roles to men and women, young and old.

Its priests, believing in the devil, spirits, and magic, could deal with the older religion in ways Mesoamerican people could squarely comprehend. And Catholicism provided, in its multiple manifestations of the Virgin and the Trinity, both an approximation of multiple deities and physical object for veneration" (Schwartz, 394). One of the best examples of syncretism is in the images that are brought on by the hallucinogenic substance that is often used by shamans in curing rituals called yale. In these images we can see a blend of traditional Indian beliefs (i.

e. seeing the shaman as the tiger) and Christian belief (i. e. receiving blessing from the Virgin), both symbols can coexist within the same image and are representative of the assimilation of Indian culture to particular Western ideas. Today, certain themes are shared by both cultures: "New World version of the theme of descent, ascent, and salvation is the way by which the tropical hell of jungle and jungle Indians is so clearly opposed to the terrestrial paradise of the highlands above.

The imagery proper to each realm, as well as the cycle of death and rebirth connecting them, reappear persistently down through the ages-as we shall see in curing visions of poor white colonists, Indians, and Capuchin missionaries in the twentieth century in the Putumayo" (Lery, 292). Another common aftereffect of colonization is the creation of myths that combine the deities, and people of the two cultures involved. This idea is not new; it occurred even in Ancient times when one Greek city-state would conquer another. Stories would be constructed that found a way to link together particular concepts of both the conqueror and the conquered into a form that both could identify with.

Tying Christian mythology to Indian mythology and therefore changing the course of remembered history symbolizes an attempt of both cultures to integrate or assimilate certain aspects of one culture into the other. "This seems tantamount to saying that the historical function of the Virgin is the political one of accommodating the pagan to the conqueror's god and thereby, in this case, establishing the divine legitimacy of white rule" (Lery, 196). It is also ironic that in most of the myths it is the Indian who discovers the catholic saint. "It is the Indian who is chosen by history to provide the civilized and conquering race with a miraculous icon. As a slave attends the needs of the master, so the conquered redeem their conquerors" (Lery, 189). What made the Indians "wild savages" was not what they were in reality but how people believed they were. "It is not the Indians' belief that is here at issue, but the white's belief of the Indians' belief" (Lery, 197). This image that was created by the colonizer was often used to justify the spread of imperialism and domination, as well as used to further underlying (economic / political ) causes. "In thus using them [Indians], the company objectified its fantasies concerning the people of the forest, creating very real savages from its mythology of savagery in order to coerce the people of the forest into gathering rubber" (Lery, 391). The rubber boom is one demonstration of this technique and all of the atrocities that resulted from it.

It is important to note that the Indians were not the only ones to synthesize new customs into their culture. At times whites would rely on Indian shamans for such things as healing illness, curing their farm, or helping them figure out a problem. How people's concepts of "Indian" affected their perceptions is illustrated by the following: "As with their manual labor, skills, and land, this power of the primitive can be appropriated, in this case by grafting it onto the mythology of conquest so that illness can be healed, the future divined, farms exorcised, wealth gained, wealth maintained, and, above all, envious neighbors held at bay. But unlike land and labor, this power did not lie in the hands of the Indians or the blacks.

Instead it was projected onto them and into their being, nowhere more so than in the image of the shaman. In attempting to appropriate this power, we see how the colonists reified their mythology of the pagan savage, became subject to its' power, and in so doing sought salvation from the civilization that tormented them as much as the primitive onto whom they projected their anti-selves" (Lery, 168). With colonization comes the creation of the colonial consciousness (Schwartz, 202 - 212). This consists of two main parts, one psychological, the other more economically based.

First, is that the natives begin to associate themselves with the colonizer's concepts of being "native" and these often take on a negative form of meaning. This is due to the fact that it is hard for one group to dominate another unless it is under the belief or impression that it is superior in some way to the group that it is dominating. "It was more reassuring to deny the humanity of the natives and decry the barbarism of their customs, and then seek to uplift them. One could rationalize exploitation with a sense of moral responsibility" (Schwartz, 412). If stereotypes exist long enough they become accepted and believed by many as social facts. Secondly, with economic development and the introduction of a world market changes occur within the society. These changes often create capitalism and class systems.

It is generally the "elites" of native society, the ones who went to the missionary schools, or who assimilated the most with the colonizers that go on to achieve in this system. They eventually become the upper class and set up a neocolonial form of rule in which they imitate the values and life styles of the former colonists. Words: 1612 Bibliography: COLUMBUS, [Christopher]. THE LETTER OF COLUMBUS ON HIS DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD. Los Angeles: USC Fine Arts Press, 1989.

Jean de Lery, HISTORY OF A VOYAGE TO THE LAND OF BRAZIL, New York: Routledge, 1988. Schwartz B Stuart, Victors and vanquished, Boston: McMillan Press, 2000 Adorno, Role. German Pm. Dallas: Texas University Press, 1999.


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Research essay sample on Latin America Upper Class

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