Neither of these led to anything remotely challenging European cultural dominance, which is my point. They are interestesting anecdotal events at best, which ironically would have been lost in the mists of time if not for western scholorship instituted by the Spaniards.
Well that sounds great, even romantic, but again prove it. Simply saying it is so, and wishing it is so does not make it so.
Again, my point is that what people may think of themselves now is a recent construct, they weren’t thinking like this 100 years ago. If so, please cite it.
Colibri, all you are citing is pointed, feel-good stuff; South Americans’ appreciation, understanding and respect historically for the portion of their ancestory that is “indigenous” pales in comparison to the same for their European ancestory, at least until recently. This is not a slight. This is just the way it has been historically for the past few hundred years. For you to argue there has been some kind of underground resistance, some kind of overriding mystical understanding of their aboriginal origins is fairly fantastical, i.e. revisionist. Which was my original point.
Not being S. American, I can say that in Mexico, in public schools, the historicy taught in school is: A) Columbus discovered the Americas. B) Key Conquistador history mainly Hernan Cortez, and C) Indigineous history of Mexico.
I am not sure what your point is. That indigineous nations, after being conquered, had no idea or continuation of their culture and history?
Since you made this original assertation, do you actually have any cites showing that this is all recent?
Indigenous populations continue to make up nearly 50% of Peru according to the CIA World Factbook (and 37% mixed race). Quechua customs and language are still pervasive throughout the Andes. If you want folks to accept that this culture is a recent development, revising a Eurocentric outlook throughout the Andean indigenous people for the last several hundred years and only now turning back to native beliefs, customs, artforms and language… well, I’m going to need a cite on that.
What you have written here is utter nonsense, and just flat out wrong. You have provided not one single cite or documented fact to back up any of your assertions. If you actually have some evidence, provide it. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of Latin American culture and history knows that your statements are historically false. I have already posted some detailed cites showing that there has in fact been a continuous awareness of cultural origins, marked by periodic uprisings and resistance. While I could provide many many more, I feel no need to do so until you provide some actual evidence to back up your statements.
What, exactly, does your deep knowledge of Latin American culture and history stem from? Have you lived in these countries? Have you even visited them? With how many Latin Americans have you discussed their cultural awareness and understanding? What books or articles have you read on the subject?
I have worked in Latin America for almost 30 years, and lived in the region for 16. I have worked in or traveled in a dozen countries in the region, including those in which indigenous identity is strongest, such as Mexico, Guatemala, and Peru. I have had frequent discussions with Latin Amercans on issues of culture and identity, ranging from scarcely-acculturated Indians (one of my other assistants in Peru, a guy of 40, told me his tribe was not visited by missionaries or in regular contact with outsiders until he was in his 20s), to Indians such as the Kuna who jealously guard their traditional culture and have maintained a quasi-independence for over 300 years, to mestizos such as the Cholos Coclesanos who maintain some cultural identify with their indigenous ancestors, to members of the acculturated elites, which in some places are mainly European, but in others are of significant mestizo ancestry. I have read very extensively on Latin American history, and worked closely with Latin American and foreign anthropologists and historians who know the region intimately. I helped develop one of the Smithsonian’s exhibitions on the Columbus quincentenary in 1992, in which Latin American cultural identity was a frequent matter of discussion. Currently I am curator of exhibitions for a new museum in Panama that will feature a gallery on its cultural history, for which I have consulted extensively with local historians and anthropologists.
Operation Ripper, all you have posted so far has been bullshit founded on an apparently abysmal ignorance of the region and its culture and history. Provide some documented facts, or give it a rest.
Oh, and Ripper? Since I was considering Pitting you myself for your behavior in this thread, I am glad that someone else has saved me the trouble, based on another thread. This thread has also become part of the discussion, so I suggest you join us there.
Colibri, as wrong as OR’s posts may be, please don’t be too harsh on him because he goaded you into posting some very interesting stuff that was directly responsive to the OP. Thank you.
Well, thanks. If people have some real interest, it’s fine if they want to ask further questions, and I’m happy to answer. But I’d rather not be goaded into anything.
It’s rather hard to tell, and since it seems he has run away (evidently to ask questions about some more pressing concerns, such as King Arthur), it’s unlikely we will find out. Of course, even if he were correct and the modern consciousness of indigenous heritage among latinos was due to revisionism, it would not invalidate it. (He seems to think revisionism is some kind of bad thing, rather than a necessary correction to historical distortions.) But identification with indigenous cultures among parts of Latin American societies is a theme that goes back five centuries, to their very beginnings; it is not of modern origin and not due to revisionism.
A good example; the Mexican Revolution, especially in the south, had strong aspects of an indigenous uprising, as evinced by the current indigenous revolutionaries, the *Zapatistas, * taking on his name. Another example is the Caste Wars of the Yucatan Mayas in the last half of the nineteenth century.
As an interesting note, issues of mestizo identity took a quite peculiar turn in Panama. Arnulfo Arias dominated Panamanian politics for much of the 20th century (and his widow was president 1999-2004). He was elected president five times, but was always either deposed or had the election stolen from him by fraud. Arias was a fascist, in the literal sense - he was an admirer and supporter of Mussolini and Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. Of course, as a mestizo himself, Arias could hardly embrace the ideals of racial purity espoused by the Nazis. Instead he emphasized that the mixture of races was at the very heart of Panamanian identity. In 1940, he passed a new constitution that disenfranchised those groups who he deemed had not assimilated themselves enough into Panama, that is, those of West Indian and Chinese heritage. (Fortunately he was soon deposed and this was reversed.)
At least in Mexico, where the indigineous population continued to outnumber the conquistadores, it would be hard to break that continuity of culture and sense of the past. Up today, there a good number of rural communities in the Southern part of Mexico that retain their traditions, culture, and language.
Anyone who knows Spanish and has been to Mexico can still feel the mark that the Aztec culture left in the Conquistador language:
> Unlike North America where most of the native populations were outright
> destroyed during the spread of European colonization, the Central and South
> American nations are composed primarily of people with mixed native and
> European blood.
Is it really true that more of the native North American population were outright destroyed when Europeans arrived than of the native South American population? I thought I read that everywhere in the Americas, both North and South, about 85% of the native population died within 50 years of the arrival of Europeans because of plagues caused by European disease and that there wasn’t much difference between the various regions of the Americas. I’m not talking about the difference in the influence of native and European culture here, just about the proportions killed by disease.
Furthermore, isn’t it true that the proportions of the modern inhabitants of the South American countries who are descended to some extent from the pre-Columbian inhabitants are quite variable? As I understand it, it varies from places like Peru with large proportions of people with large proportions of native American ancestry to places like Argentina with relatively small proportions of people with large proportions of native American ancestry. Again, I’m not talking about the relative influence of native and European culture here, just about the present-day proportions of ancestry.
You’re correct and that’ll teach me to debate at 2:00am and when I’m cranky. I had a Peruviancentric outlook on my mind and should have stuck to discussing that instead of projecting without doing some additional research.
Thanks for the correction since I hate mucking up GQ with inaccuracies. It’d be interesting to hear if there’s a major difference in outlook between teaching the exploration of the New World in heavily indigenous Peru and the almost entirely Spanish & Italian populated Argentina. You can’t get a much more dramatic potential point of view than that.
I have no cite but I read somewhere that Spanish (possibly basque ) fishermen routinly fished the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland Before! Columbus but after the vikings but kept it a secret to prevent others encroaching on their fishing grounds .
Go down a little more than three-quarters of the way on this Wikipedia page to a section labeled “Portuguese”:
The claim that Basque fishermen reached the shores of the Americas is one of many of such claims of pre-Columbian contact. There’s not really any more proof than that of other such claims.
As Jophiel says, this is probably correct. Throughout the Americas, most of the original indigenous population was killed off by contagious diseases not long after European arrival. (The proportions may have differed somewhat locally, however, and it may have taken place over more than 50 years in some regions as different diseases arrived.) In some places the native population was also destroyed by warfare and slavery; this was especially true in the West Indies, which retains almost no indigenous identity.
The main difference between Anglo-America and Latin America was the kind of the European immigrants who arrived. In North America many immigrants arrived as colonists with their families, and among the Protestant there was a strong religious taboo against extramarital sex. (Not that this didn’t occur to some extent, but it was restricted.) In contrast, in Latin America many of the immigrants were single male adventurers who arrived without women. They would often take concubines wives from the native population, and Catholicism as practiced there was far more relaxed about extramarital relations. These social and cultural differences resulted in a far larger mixed population in Latin America than in Anglo-America.
Very true. Argentina didn’t have a large native population to begin with, and most of those were killed off. Argentina also didn’t import many African slaves. Buenos Aires is by far the ''whitest" major city I have ever visited, much more so than Paris or London. Costa Ricans also are mostly of European ancestry.
This varies even within countries. In Panama, the population of the country’s heartland in the Azuero Peninsula is much more European than elsewhere. In places such as northern Coclé province, although the people are almost entirely acculturated and speak only Spanish, they appear to be nearly pure Indian. This can vary even from village to village; during colonial times a local town inhabited mostly by colonists would have outlying villages occupied mainly by Indian peons or African slaves. These patterns are still evident in the appearance of the people today.
The heaviest indigenous influences are found in the countries that were the heartlands of the major native civilizations, the Aztecs and their predecessors, the Mayas, and the Incas. These include Mexico (especially the south and Yucatan), Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia.
Regarding Mexico, it might be noted that indigenous identity was inherent in the very foundation of the country. The region was known as the Viceroyalty of New Spain in colonial times. When Mexico was established, the name chosen was derived from the Méxica, another name for the Aztecs. The Mexican flag itself is based on Aztec legend about the foundation of their capital, Tenochtitlan, now Mexico City:
I’m Salvadoran and I agree with everything **Colibri ** has posted,
I only need to add that the “Día de La Raza”, as I learned in school in Central America, refers to all the races; Indians, whites and the mestizo.
The day of the race does acknowledge Columbus, but it does not ignore the loss of our Indian heritage, and the abuses and unfairness of the conquest.
The day of la raza focuses on the history of the clash of civilizations, and remembers the result of that clash regardless if it was good or evil.
The day is still Columbus day in the US for some reason. You would think that Americans during the era of the Monroe doctrine would dislike the idea to celebrate a conqueror from Europe.
The celebration of Columbus Day in the US is of fairly recent origin - one might say that it is even revisionist ;). It has especially been promoted by Italian-Americans, since Columbus was from Genoa. It did not become a national holiday until 1937, at the urging of the Knights of Columbus fraternal organization:
I went to a series of lectures on Columbus and ironically, several pointed out he was quite probably a Genoa Jew. As these were lectures from the Quincentennial and before I will not attempt to cite this statement but I will save a few mouse clicks with this Google Search for anyone interested.
As an Italian-American, I always found the pride taken in Columbus to be a little odd. The fact that the Knights of Columbus is largely an RCC organization, just increased my humor when I saw fairly convincing arguments that there was an excellent chance he was Jewish.
