Colonial Latin America -- 3

Colonial Latin America -- 3 Questions

What aspects of Iberian society were transferred to the New World?

Urbanization, bureaucracy, and close ties to the Church were some of the primary aspects of Spanish and Portuguese culture that were immediately transferred from Iberia to the New World. Iberian society was also highly patriarchal, which the Conquistadors imported to the New World as well. By the time the Conquistadors arrived on the Americas, they had become reliant on slave labor to work their Atlantic Island plantations; this same practice was then transferred to and perpetuated in their New World conquests. The practice of plantation farming was, itself, something that the Spaniards introduced to the New World, and they persisted with it, overcoming natural obstacles to its success through the sheer force of slave labor in great numbers.

The most pervasive aspect of Iberian society imposed on the New World was the fundamental belief that the king owned all lands in his kingdom and that the inhabitants and administrators of those lands were obligated to produce revenue for the royal crown. The Spanish conquerors imposed taxes on the indigenous populations and used their established cultural leaders and chiefs to collect those taxes from the local populations.

What was the nature of the exploitation of Indigenous people in the New World?

The indigenous populations of the New World, particularly on the Latin-American Islands, were horribly exploited and mistreated by the European explorers. By today's standards, some of the most famous European explorers in whose honor we still hold parades and name city streets and high schools in the United States were war criminals who committed genocide at the same level as the most notorious of the Nazis who were tried as war criminals in Nuremburg shortly after the end of World War Two.

Practically from the first moment they set foot on shore, Columbus and Cortes began enslaving and abusing the indigenous peoples of the lands they claimed on behalf of the Spanish crown. They began rounding up people by the hundreds and shipping them back to Europe to work as slaves; the conditions of travel were so severe that approximately half died at sea. On the New World islands, the Spanish explorers forced the native inhabitants to mine for the gold that the Spanish erroneously believed was present in great quantities and they enforced ridiculously unrealistic daily quotas through barbaric means such as cutting off the hands of any Indian who failed to reach his required yield. They also routinely raped, tortured, and killed the peaceful native inhabitants, sometimes for no reason whatsoever besides their amusement. During the entire Colonial period, the European explorers eventually completely wiped out native civilizations, some of which had previously numbered in the millions.

Describe the social hierarchy of the Latin American and Caribbean colonies.