Spanish Empire in the Americas

Lori HealyHIST 140 Section 71258

November 24, 2010

Chapter 2- Diego Vasicuio PeruPeriod: 1580-1670s Location: Salamanca, PeruGroup: Native IndianGender: MaleOccupation: Native Priest

• Diego was a quite and cautious man. He managed to live a long life by avoiding direct contact with the Spanish imperial system, confronting it only when necessary.

• The Spanish attempted to convert the Indians of Peru into Catholics since the beginning of the colonial period.

• Diego and hundreds like him were key in keeping traditional religious beliefs alive. He worked hard to hand down gods and gospels from one generation of believers to another.

• The Sorimana worshipers created a cult that was flourishing in Salmanca.

• The Spanish priests were outraged with Diego’s ceremonies and thought they were offensive.

• In the end The Sorimana received public punishment, but father Diego survived while living with the European domination.

Chapter 7- Martin Ocelotl New SpainPeriod: 1496-1537Location: Chinanta, PueblaGroup: AztecGender: MaleOccupation: Indigenous priest and cult leader

• Ocelotl was imprisoned by Moctezuma, the powerful lord of the Mexica-Aztec world.

• At the time Ocelotl was a religious prodigy, who had predicted the coming of white men.

• He and nine accomplices were sent by the lord of the village of Chinanta to tell Moctezuma about certain ominous signs they had seen sometime around 1519.

• In 1521 Ocelotl was released. He made his way to the east bank of the lake surrounding Tenochtitlan, and set up a residence.

• He continued to predict the future, death, weather, etc. against the Church and have gatherings in his cellar.

• The newly appointed Bishop heard of these things and decided Martin was a threat and took action.

• The judges decided that Ocelotl should be banished from New Spain and sent to Seville to be kept in jail for life.

• Martin had many possessions that were taken from him after his banishment.

• The ship carrying Martin was lost at sea and never heard from again.

• Although his body was never found, his memory lived on in his home town.

Chapter 9- Juan de Morga/Gertrudis de Escobar New Spain

Period: Middle 17th centuryLocation: Central MexicoGroup: MulattoGender: Male, FemaleOccupation: Slaves

• They were young mulatto slaves. • Both Juan and Gertrudis were able to

overcome the unbelievably difficult circumstances of short periods of their lives. They had an extraordinary vitality, strength of character, lively intelligence, and a familiarity with the norms of urban and institutional life in the colony.

• People like them played a large role in the armed struggle to destroy the restrictive colonial social order.

• Both were strong rebels against the cruel circumstances into which they had been thrown.

• The only means for survival against the colonial of Spanish America was the combination of rebelliousness and adaption to the social norms.

Chapter 11- Isabel Moctezuma New Spain

Period: 1509-1550Location: MexicoGroup: AztecGender: FemaleOccupation: Princess

• She was one of the most famous women of her time.

• She is one of 150 children of Montezuma II, the Aztec emperor.

• She married her uncle at the age of eleven, and widowed within two months of marriage.

• She remarried her cousin, Cuauhtemoc, the last Aztec emperor. He was killed and she was a widow again.

• Isabel became a representation of the Hispanization and Christianization of Mexico.

• After she passed away in 1550, there was a dispute over which of her many heirs would receive ownership of Tacuba.

Montezuma II

Chapter 13- Beatriz de Padilla New Spain

Period: 1620-c. 1650Location: Lagos, New SpainGroup: MoriscaGender: FemaleOccupation: Mistress and Mother

• Beatriz de Padilla was accused of having caused dreadful and mysterious things to happen to her two lovers.

• She was a women who lived an active and irregular private life. She was never married but had two sons and two daughters.

• Beatriz was a housekeeper and mistress at the time of her arrest and removal to Mexico City.

• While she was on trail for the murder of Diego Ortiz, and for beating and torturing slaves in the Ortiz house.

• Ortiz family did not approve of Beatriz and Diego’s relationship. Beatriz was being made the scapegoat for all the people who were left bitter in broken marriages.

• Later on in the trail one of the slaves confessed that she made up the rumors of Beatriz abusing her.

• Beatriz was then set free and allowed to return to her hometown without any punishment.

• The women of New Spain preformed a fundamental role in the historical development of Mexican society.

Chapter 16- Miguel Hernandez New Spain

Period: 1550-1604Location: Mexico Group: MulattoGender: MaleOccupation: Master of Mule Trains

• He became familiar with the complexities of trade, and developed personal and financial associations with people of wealth.

• He moved to Queretaro because he felt that there was better opportunity for success there than Mexico City.

• He began to build his own freighting business.

• He earned most of his income from hauling wool to the southern markets of Mexico City, Texcoco, and Tlaxcala.

• He also earned money by small profits from petty trade, and from the collection of the tithe, a tax levied by the Church on economic production. He also sold mules, and it was likely that he was a subcontractor or an agent for a merchant.

• Although Miguel never reached the top, he did earn enough to buy valuable property in town.

• Miguel had crated a life of meaning that was respected by his family and friends.

Chapter 18- Enrico Martinez New Spain

Period: 1557-1632Location: Veracruz, MexicoGroup: EuropeanGender: MaleOccupation: Printer and Engineer

• Enrico was an educated man. • He established himself in Mexico

City in his thirties. • He was the Chief engineer of the

drainage works. It was designed to prevent flooding in Mexico City.

• He was imprisoned in 1629 for impairing his own work.

• The drainage system he built failed during the heavy rains in 1629.

• Enrico persisted but did not succeed. This was not due to only his mistakes but also because of the political and social structure of the colony.

Tula, The Mythical Beginning• Tula was a civilization that developed,

flourished, then collapsed in the highlands of central Mexico.

• The Toltec's of Tula will always remain the masters of material, technical, and intellectual refinements of civilization.

• They are known as the inventors of painting, sculpture, and pictographic writing.

• Tula receded in power during the 12th century and collapsed.

• Tula was the former capital of Toltec civilization. It left its mark on the entire history of ancient Mexico.

The Empire Builders• In 1440 Moctezuma became emperor. • He is known as the father of the Aztec empire. • In 1446 famine, locusts, flooding, and catastrophic harvests caused a wave of

panic throughout the valley. • Aztecs believed that our universe is extinguishable and that time consists of a

chain of cycles ultimately doomed to lead to annihilation. • In order to please the gods, they set up campaigns to capture prisoners. They

did this not to conquer the enemy, but to find offerings for the gods. • These wars were called the Wars of the Flowers. • Moctezuma set out to conquer the Tropics. He began by striking blows to the

southeast, and seized Coixlahuaca, a city famous for its market, in 1458.• Rank was marked by adornments and clothing. • The Triple Alliance was at the center of the empire. The structure of the

empire was flexible, and was nothing like a highly centralized and totalitarian power.

• In 1465 Moctezuma conquered Chalco. He died shortly afterward in 1469.

The Aztecs, Conquering Heroes• In 1473 Tlatelolco rose up against Tenochtitlan. • Ahuitzotl came to power in 1486 and began leading several

campaigns against provinces in revolt. • Thousands of men and women were scarified to the gods in

1487. The Aztecs believed that if they did not feed the gods, then the world would come to an end.

• Ahuitzotl occupied shores of the Pacific between 1491 and 1495.

• Limits had to be placed on the expansion since the Triple Alliance was based on the loyalty and goodwill of local leaders. The empire conquered countries, but had no control over them, which led to a lack of both means and men.

• There was a constant risk of rebellion, since little integration of foreign populations took place.

• In 1503 Moctezuma II succeeded Ahuitzotl. • Under his reign, power became decisively absolute, and the

Aztecs unleashed aggressions in a more systematic fashion. • Under Moctezuma II, the Aztec system was changed from a

unpolished democracy to one of absolute power, in which class privileges prevailed.

The Clash of Two Worlds• The Spaniards passed completely unnoticed by the Aztecs and landed in

the West Indies, in 1492. They settled in Hispaniola and Cuba, and established themselves on the coast of Venezuela and Panama.

• For twenty years European fleets had been cruising between the islands. • In 1517 a first Spanish expedition touched the eastern coasts of Mexico. • Moctezuma was not sure if the Spanish ship that had been seen was the

prophesied return of the god Quetzalcoatl and his companions. • Moctezuma sent people to find out the Spaniards intentions in 1519. He

then mounted an attack against them.• The Spaniards were immovable and Moctezuma continually hesitated

about what he should do. • The Spanish, led by Cortes, left the coastal region and marched on

Tenochtitlan. • The Aztecs fought back, but in the end the city fell on August 13, 1521. • Almost all of the Aztec nobility died, there were only a few survivors.

About 240,000 people died in Tenochtitlan. • Cortes continued his conquest and in 1522 became governor and

captain-general of New Spain.

From Resistance to Collaboration• Cortes demanded that the Indians convert to Christianity. He also ordered an end to

human sacrifices. • From 1525 on the Aztec clergy was brutally forced to leave its sanctuaries and practice its

rites in secret. • The Spaniards carried out raids against the temples, assassinated pagan priests, set fire

to the pyramids, smashed the statues, and burned codices. • The European monks succeeded in winning over part of the elite. • Conversion posed a threat to family unity. It caused thousands of secondary wives into

the street with their children. Preachers did not hesitate to seize children and use them against their unruly parents.

• Due to the lack of organization, resistance was difficult and after time it died down though execution, accident, or disease.

• Over a hundred languages were spoken in New Spain.• Monks set out to Christianize the ruling class in the hope that the rest of the population

would follow its lead. • Montezuma's daughter, Tecuichpotzin was baptized and given the name Isabella. She was awarded the city of Tacuba, and married a

conquistador. • Indians learned to read and write under the monks leadership. • The Spaniards reserved the priesthood for themselves and had a monopoly on the sacred and hence on the meaning of existence.

The Aftermath of The Conquest• The Christianization of the Indians was no longer

interpreted as a brutal force. • The Church was now presented as the community’s

new axis. • The 17th and 18th centuries were filled with struggles

and lawsuits between Indians and Hacendados. • During the 18th century the Indian population began

growing again. • After the second half of the century tensions

increased and violent revolts broke out. • Little by little the Indians invented practices, beliefs,

and gestures of which there ate still traces in the native cultures today.

• In the 16th century the native people became familiar with Spanish tongue and underwent experience of all kinds of biological, social, and cultural inbreeding.

• They learned to move between two worlds. • By the 17th century the two different cultures had

assimilated together.

Kingdom of Spain• The Kingdom of Spain was created in 1492. • The same year Christopher Columbus had

his first voyage to the New World, which began the development of the Spanish Empire.

• For the next three centuries Spain was the most important colonial power in the world.

• It was the most powerful state in Europe and the foremost global power during the 16th century.

• Spain established a vast empire in the Americas.

• Spain’s European wars led to an economic damage, and in the 17th century saw a gradual decline of power.

• The decline ended in the War of Spanish Succession, which ended with the relegation of Spain from the position of a leading western power. However, It remained with Russia the leading colonial power.

Spanish Empire • In the 16th century, Spain settled in

the Caribbean islands.• Conquistadors toppled native

empires such as the Aztecs and Incas. • Later expeditions established an

empire that stretched from present-day Canada to the southern tip of South America.

• The Spanish expedition of world circumnavigation was started by Ferdinand Magellan in 1519, and was completed by Juan Elcanco in 1522.

• They both achieved what Columbus longed for, a western route to Asia.

• By the 17th century Spain controlled an empire on a scale and world distribution that had never been approached by its predecessors.

Ferdinand Magellan

Viceroyalty• New Spain was a viceroyalty, or

administrative unit of the Spanish colonial empire.

• It comprised of primarily territories in North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire.

• New Spain was established following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521.

• New Spain was the first of four viceroyalties created to govern Spain’s foreign colonies.