Name: _________________________________

World History – Colonialism and Slavery in the Early Modern Era

Standard 4.0 3.5 3.0 Not a 3.0 yetStandard 4: Patterns of crisis and recovery resulting from conflict, disease, climate change and economic growth

60 – 55 points

54.5- 50 points

49- 40 points

39.5 or less

Take complete notes of the packet _______/10 pointsPre-written paragraphs _______/4 points Assessment

- Part One - ______/16 points- Part Two – ______/16 points- Part Three- ______/16 points

Context

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Objective for Part I-

Part I- The Spanish Conquest and Forced Labor The History of the Spanish Empire https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lviEHJbjlpYWatch until 1:40

What happened to the Aztecs, Maya, and Inca?The great civilizations of Mexico and of Central and South America faced many internal conflicts at the start of the sixteenth century. But their troubles became far greater when the first Spanish explorers arrived. In 1519, Hernando Cortés landed on the Gulf of Mexico with 600 men, and plenty of horses and guns. The last of the Aztec rulers, Montezuma II, greeted Cortés with gifts of gold and other treasures. However, Cortés recognized an opportunity to weaken the Aztecs by allying with groups that the Aztecs oppressed. With the help of his new allies, Cortés defeated Montezuma's forces. Cortés then turned on his allies. By 1521, he had destroyed the Aztec Empire. Within ten years, Cortés governed all of Mexico for Spain. Present-day Mexico City covers the area where the Aztec capital once stood. Much of Aztec culture was destroyed, but some artifacts are now held in museums. Ruins of the Aztec capital have been uncovered from beneath the streets of modern Mexico City.

When Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered Maya people in 1502, the Maya civilization had greatly declined. After 900, conflicts within the Maya lands had resulted in divisions that caused the civilization to fall from its former height. In 1523, Cortés sent Pedro de Alvarado to conquer the Maya in Guatemala. The Maya fought back valiantly. By the mid-1500s, Spanish cities were founded in the Maya lands. Many Maya were killed or mistreated, but a few high-ranking members of the community retained some official control. 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Pizarro invaded the Incan Empire in 1532, seeking riches. The Inca had already had some contact with Europeans, and many had died of European diseases. The empire was also weakened by a civil war between two ruling brothers. Pizarro manipulated the two sides, eventually defeating both. The Spanish took over all the Incan lands within 40 years, taking vast quantities of gold, destroying the cities, and nearly erasing an entire civilization. Much of what is known today about the Inca comes from archaeologists. The mountaintop ruins of the Incan city of Machu Picchu were discovered in 1911 by Hiram Bingham, an American explorer. Located high in the Andes Mountains, the city was hidden from the Spanish and left intact.

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Guns Germs And Steel Part 2- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCBod2jFFyQ

Explain how Fernando Pizzaro and the Spanish were able to take over the Atahualpa and Incas in 1532.

Watch from – 26:50 – 28:00, and 34:40 -45:15

Watch the video on The Encomienda System - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbUE2TMozW0

The encomienda This system was modeled after the reconquest of Iberia. In Spain, the conquistadors were

granted access to Muslim labor in the areas they reconquered for the monarch (recall that much of Spain was under

Muslim control for centuries). After its success in Europe, the Spanish attempted the same practice in the Americas.

Land grants, called encomiendas, were given to Spanish conquistadors and soldiers and they were free to exploit

the labor of the people inhabiting the land entrusted to them. Under Philip II of Spain, the encomienda system was

instituted in the Spanish Philippines as well. In the Americas, the system went into decline as many natives died of

diseases in close contact with Europeans. 

The hacienda Like the encomienda and the mita system, the haciendas generally exploited local indigenous labor.

However, the hacienda was a private estate, often the result of a land grant given to an individual by the monarch.

Another difference is that the hacienda produced food and good primarily for local consumption. They tended to be

self-sufficient estates although many of them were economically connected to nearby encomienda with which they

traded food items and hand produced goods. 

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Creoles in Spanish America Having just driven the Moors and Jews out of Iberia, the Spanish Conquistadors who came to the Americas were very conscious of race. The class system they established there combined the racial prejudices of Europeans with the unique circumstances of the New World. The Spanish exercised power in their American empire primarily though large landed estates (see encomienda above) though which they controlled indigenous labor and collected tribute. The owners of these estates were creoles, people of pure Spanish descent for whom the New World was their permanent home. Although peninsulares, viceroys and other bureaucrats on assignment from Spain, continued to be the colonial connection to the crown back in Europe, creoles better understood the day-to-day management of the colonies and developed their own colonial culture. The new creole elites worked in close relationship with the Roman Catholic Church which served to reinforce the hierarchical and patriarchal social order of the colonies. [7] Needless to say, the creoles grew to resent the peninsulares. They would be the driving force for independence in the revolutionary period.

Spanish America and the República de Indios …. In the New World the Spanish likewise divided the population into two primary groups. The first group was the república de espanoles comprised of all Iberian born people, Spanish creoles, and anyone else of mixed Spanish race. The other group was the república de indios made up of the non mestizo indigenous population. This separation was initially made to protect indigenous people from the harness of the Spaniards; [29] they were divided into independent communities ruled by their own elites, and they enjoyed their own separate system of courts and laws. The system failed because of Spanish demand for indigenous labor. República de Indios were required to supply labor through the mita system to American silver mines. The became the target of the labor draft in Mexico known as the repartimiento which supplied labor to commercial farms, mines, and select private enterprises. Their required tribute payments became an important source of revenue for the Spanish colonial governments. The continued flow of people between the república de espanoles and the república de indios eventually blurred their distinctive identities. [30]

Spanish America and the República de Indios

Mit'a during Spanish rule[edit]

Under the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, communities were required to provide one seventh of their male labor force at any given time for public works, mines and agriculture. The system became an intolerable burden on the Inca communities and abuses were common. Complaints and revolts occurred and new laws were passed by Philip III but they only had a limited effect. It should also be noted that the Inca and Spanish mitas served different purposes. The Inca mit'a provided public goods, such as maintenance of road networks and sophisticated irrigation and cropping systems that required inter-community coordination of labor.[6] The majority of Inca subjects performed their mit'a obligations in or near their home communities, often in agriculture; service in mines was extremely rare.[7] In contrast, the Spanish mit'a acted as a subsidy to private mining interests and the Spanish state, which used tax revenues from silver production largely to finance European wars.[8]

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Working in mines[edit]

During the Inca period people had to work four months in mines, then they returned home. During the Spanish regimes the number of months required to work in mines remained the same, but working conditions changed dramatically, which made it impossible for them to come back home. While they worked in the mines they had to spend money on buying food and paying taxes. Earnings were so low that they were always in debt. Now the rule was that a miner could not leave the mine until he paid his debts. If a man died then his children had to work in the mines to pay his debts, so eventually they were in a circle, and rarely came back home.

The Spanish conquistadors also utilized the same labor system to supply the workforce they needed for the silver mines, which was the basis of their economy in the colonial period. Under the leadership of Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who was dispatched to Peru in 1569, the mit'a system greatly expanded as Toledo sought to increase silver outputs from the Potosí silver mine.

Toledo recognized that without a steady, reliable and inexpensive source of labor, mining would not be able to grow at the speed that the Spanish crown had requested. Under Toledo's leadership, the first mit'a recruits arrived in Potosi in 1573 from the regions directly surrounding the Potosi mine. At its peak recruitment for the Potosi mit'a extended to an area that was nearly 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2) and included much of southern Peru and present-day Bolivia.

The conquistadors used the concept of mit'a to suit their own needs. Mit'a is considered as the ancient and original version of mandatory state service. The mit'a system had severe impacts on the Indian population as it drained them of able-bodied workers at a time when their communities were experiencing demographic collapse due to epidemics of old-world diseases. It also resulted in Indians fleeing their communities to evade the mit'a. With fewer workers able to work the fields, farming production fell resulting in famine and malnutrition for many Indian communities in the region.

Potosí Silver Mines- https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/potosi-silver-minesAlso known as Cerro Rico (Spanish for “Rich Mountain”), the peak’s huge supply of silver has led to both immense riches and appalling suffering.Potosí was founded as a mining town in 1546, while Bolivia was still part of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Over the next 200 years, more than 40,000 tons of silver were shipped out of the town, making the Spanish Empire one of the richest the world had ever seen. But such vast wealth also came at a price. Thousands of the indigenous people were forced to work at the mines, where many perished through accidents, brutal treatment, or poisoning by the mercury used in the extraction process. Around 30,000 African slaves were also brought to the city, where they were forced to work and die as human mules.

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In 1672, Potosí became the site of the Spanish Colonial Mint and, with a population of around 200,000, was one of the richest cities in the world. But by the time that Bolivia declared independence in 1825, the silver had largely run out, leaving tin as the main product.To this day, a workers’ collective extracts minerals from the mine. Due to the lack of protective equipment, the work is still very dangerous. Many miners die in cave-ins or from silicosis, a serious disease that damages the lungs, and there’s been recent concern of the whole mine collapsing. Because of the hellish conditions, many of the miners survive by drinking extremely strong alcohol, chewing coca leaves, and worshiping Tio — a god of the underworld who holds the power of life and death between his fingers. El Tio, meaning “the Uncle,” appears as a devilish creature, and his statues in the mines are given offerings of cigarettes, strong alcohol, and coca leaves.

Part II- Beginnings of African Slavery

Objective for Part II-

Portuguese arrival[edit]

The Portuguese first reached what became known as the Gold Coast in 1471. Prince Henry the Navigator first sent ships to explore the African coast in 1418. The Portuguese had several motives for voyaging south. They were attracted by rumors of fertile African lands that were rich in gold and ivory. They also sought a southern route to India so as to circumvent Arab traders and establish direct trade with Asia. In line with the strong religious sentiments of the time, another focus of the Portuguese was Christian proselitism. They also sought to form an alliance with the legendary Prester John, who was believed to be the leader of a great Christian nation somewhere in Africa.

These motives prompted the Portuguese to develop the Guinea trade. They made gradual progress down the African coast, each voyage reaching a point further along than the last. After fifty years of coastal exploration, the Portuguese finally reached Elmina in 1471, during the reign of King Afonso V. However, because Portuguese royalty had lost interest in African exploration as a result of meager returns, the Guinea trade was put under the oversight of the Portuguese trader, Fernão Gomes. Upon reaching present day Elmina, Gomes discovered a thriving gold trade already established among the natives and visiting Arab and Berber traders. He established his own trading post, and it became known to the Portuguese as “A Mina” (the Mine) because of the gold that could be found there.

Write you notes from the reading here

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Two 16th century maps of African coast, showing A mina (the mine)

Portuguese trading stations in West Africa and the slave trade - http://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/africa-portugal

Portuguese expansion into Africa began with the desire of King John I to gain access to the gold-producing areas of West Africa. The trans-Saharan trade routes between Songhay and the North African traders provided Europe with gold coins used to trade spices, silks and other luxuries from India. At the time there was a shortage of gold and rumours were spreading that there were states in the south of Africa which had gold. This news encouraged King John’s son, Prince Henry, to send out expeditions to explore these possibilities.

At first, the Portuguese established trading stations along the west coast of Africa rather than permanent settlements. They built forts at Cape Blanco, Sierra Leone and Elmina to protect their trading stations from rival European traders. In this way, the Portuguese diverted the trade in gold and slaves away from the trans-Saharan routes causing their decline and increased their own status as a powerful trading nation.

During the 1480s the Portuguese came into contact with the kingdom of the Kongo, situated south of the Congo river in what is today northern Angola. The Kongo became powerful through war and capturing and enslaving the people they defeated.

The Portuguese did not conquer this region but chose rather to become allies of the Kongo king. The king was eager to make use of Portuguese teachers and craftsmen to train his people. He also allowed Catholic missionaries to work among his people. The Portuguese traded guns for slaves captured by the Kongo in wars against rival kingdoms in the interior. Other than small amounts of copper and raffia cloth, the area did not provide any profitable trade in gold or silver, which was disappointing for the Portuguese. The traffic in slaves more than made up for this disappointment.

In the 1490s sugar plantations were established on the islands of São Tomé and Principé. The Portuguese settlers on these islands used slaves bought from the Kongo traders to work on these plantations. Very soon São Tomé became the largest producer of sugar for Europe. When Brazil became a Portuguese colony in the 1530s, the demand for slaves to work on the sugar plantations established there increased. São Tomé became an important holding station for slaves before they left on the trans-Atlantic voyage to South America.

As the demand for slaves increased in Brazil, the São Tomé traders found a better supply of slaves further south near Luanda and Benguela. Wars fought in this region provided a constant supply of slaves. In exchange for slaves, the Portuguese provided the Ndongo and Lunda kings with guns, cloth and other European luxuries. The guns enabled the kings to defeat their enemies and maintain a dominant position in the region.

In 1641, the Dutch seized the slave trade in Angola away from the Portuguese and they were able to control it until 1648 when the Portuguese took back control again. Angola only became a Portuguese colonial settlement after the decline of the slave trade in the nineteenth century.

Consequences on the indigenous society

The Portuguese introduced agricultural products grown in South America such as maize, sugar cane and tobacco. Coffee plantations were introduced to Angola in the nineteenth century. Coffee is one of Angola’s major exports today.

The Portuguese introduced guns to the region which changed the nature of warfare and enabled their allies to dominate other kingdoms.

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The Portuguese encouraged wars between rival kingdoms to maintain a constant supply of slaves. The result of this was that the region was constantly at war and millions of young people, mainly men, were forced to leave Africa and work as slaves in the Americas.

The Portuguese language is mainly spoken in urban areas of Angola today. However, the indigenous languages have survived among the rural population.

In modern Angola, about ninety per cent of the population is Christian, mainly Catholic, as a result of Portuguese missionary activity in the area. The remainder of the population follows traditional African religions.

The following readings come from APWorldipedia.com and are used with permission:Forms of Forced Labor in the Americas: African Slavery in the Americas

Plantation systemThe Portuguese colony of Brazil was the first to implement the plantation system in the New World. A plantation is a large commercial farm used to grow a single cash crop for export. First tobacco, and then sugar became the most lucrative crops in this system. But indigenous labor did not work well as many native Americans succumbed to diseases carried by the European plantation managers. Europeans looked to Africa. With the growth of the plantation system the demand for African slaves increased. Over 10 million were transported across the Middle Passage of the Atlantic System.Many Europeans came to the new world to make a fortune. Without labor, the land they gained had no value in accomplishing this goal. Economic success depended on the ability to mobilize a large labor force in the service of the European colonizers. Consequently, they established a wide range of coerced labor systems in the Americas:

Chattel slavery Chattel slavery is what most people think of when they hear the word slavery. It is the form of labor

in which the laborer is most dehumanized as he or she is considered solely as private property of the owner. Chattel

slaves can be bought and sold at the owners discretion, are uncompensated, and have little chance of gaining

freedom. As mentioned above, Africa provided the chattel slaves to the Americas predominately after sugar

plantations, began by the Portuguese, spread across South America and the Caribbean.

Beginning of the African Slave Trade http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy3/E64ContentFiles/HistoryOfTheAmericas/BlacksInLatinAmerica.html

By 1518 the demand for slaves in the Spanish New World was so great that King Charles I of Spain sanctioned the direct transport of slaves from Africa to the American colonies. The slave trade was controlled by the Crown, which sold the right to import slaves (asiento) to entrepreneurs.

By the 1530s, the Portuguese were also using African slaves in Brazil. From then until the abolition of the slave trade in 1870, at least 10 million Africans were forcibly brought to the Americas: about 47 percent of

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them to the Caribbean islands and the Guianas; 38 percent to Brazil; and 6 percent to mainland Spanish America. About 4.5 percent went to North America, roughly the same proportion that went to Europe.

The greatest proportion of these slaves worked on plantations producing sugar, coffee, cotton, tobacco, and rice in the tropical lowlands of northeastern Brazil and in the Caribbean islands. Most of them came from the sub-Saharan states of West and Central Africa, but by the late 18th century the supply zone extended to southern and East Africa as well.

Impact of SlaverySlavery in the Americas was generally harsh, but it varied from time to time and place to place. The Caribbean and Brazilian sugar plantations required a consistently high supply of labor for centuries. In other areas–the frontiers of southern Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, and Colombia–slavery was relatively unimportant to the economy.

To tame the wilderness, build cities, establish plantations, and exploit mineral wealth, the Europeans needed more laborers than they could recruit from among their own metropolitan masses. In the early 16th century, the Spanish tried unsuccessfully to subjugate and enslave the native populations of the West Indies. Slavery was considered the most desirable system of labor organization because it allowed the master almost absolute control over the life and productivity of the laborer. The rapid disintegration of local indigenous societies and the subsequent decimation of the native peoples by warfare and European diseases severely exacerbated the labor situation, increasing the demand for imported workers.

African slaves constituted the highest proportion of laborers on the islands and around the Caribbean lowlands where the native population had died. The same was true in the northeastern coastlands of Brazil–especially the rich agricultural area called the Reconcavo, where the seminomadic Tupinamba and Tupiniquim peoples resisted effective control by the Portuguese–and in some of the Leeward Islands such as Guadeloupe and Dominica, where the Caribs waged a determined resistance to their expulsion and enslavement. In areas of previously dense populations, such as parts of central Mexico or the highlands of Peru, a sufficient number of the Native American inhabitants survived to satisfy a major part of the labor demands of the new colonists. In such cases African slaves supplemented coerced Native American labor.

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Overview

2-3 details, no small details, but big picture

PartsRead labels, look for symbols, Write 2-3 details about the individual parts/symbols

I learned that

Name two details that you learned from the image

Context How does this fit into this chapter”?

Part III- Cultural Diffusion in Latin America Brazil: The Story of Slavery- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXAFHmxW-2Q

0:50 - 2:30 How did the transatlantic slave trade and African slavery affect Brazil?

Blacks in Latin America- http://autocww.colorado.edu/~toldy3/E64ContentFiles/HistoryOfTheAmericas/BlacksInLatinAmerica.html

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Take notes on the following website Black Suriname: African Maroon Societies in South America- http://www.blackhistoryheroes.com/2010/02/african-maroon-societies-in-americas.html

African Maroon or Black Maroon societies are historically known to have existed throughout the Americas: from the Carolina islands of the U.S. to the Florida peninsula of the United States, to the mountains of Jamaica into the Suriname (fka Dutch Guiana) jungles. Maroon communities also existed in Brazil and Mexico. The Maroons were enslaved Africans captured by European slavers for forced plantation work in the New World.

Through revolt, the enslaved African became fugitive slaves and banded into refugee African communities throughout the Americas and Caribbean, developing separate from European settlers. Among the oldest known Maroons were from the region now called Suriname in northeastern South America. African Maroon societies developed in Suriname as early as the 17th Century….

… For the most part, the Djuka live along the interior rivers Suriname. After a half century of guerrilla warfare against colonial and European troops, Maroons of Suriname signed treaties with the Dutch colonial government in the 1760s, enabling them to live independently.

3:15 – 6:00- What does the term “Maroon” mean? How did African “Maroons” revolt in the Americas?

How do Maroon communities grow over time?

The Maroon Heritage of Moore Town - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3xW808tdJE

Who are the Maroon’s of Moore Town? Describe their culture and social structure.

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Watch the video - Black in Latin America E03, Mexico and Peru: The Black Grandma in the Closet - From 14:10 – 18:50 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIzHIRCBtdE

- Focus on the Castas Paintings

Take notes on the following reading - Las Castas – Spanish Racial   Classifications from Native Heritage Project - http://nativeheritageproject.com/2013/06/15/las-castas-spanish-racial-classifications/The European conquest of Latin America beginning in the late 15th century, was initially executed by male soldiers and sailors from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). The new soldier-settlers fathered children with Amerindian women and later with African slaves. These mixed-race children were generally identified by the Spanish colonist and Portuguese colonist as “Castas”.

The subsequent North American fur trade during the 16th century brought many more European men, from France and Great Britain, who took North Amerindian women as wives. Their children became known as “Métis” or “Bois-Brûlés” by the French colonist and “mixed-bloods”, “half-breeds” or “country-born” by the English colonist and Scottish colonist.

Casta is an Iberian word (existing in Spanish, Portuguese and other Iberian languages since the Middle Ages), meaning “lineage”, “breed” or “race.” It is derived from the older Latin word castus, “chaste,” implying that the lineage has been kept pure. Casta gave rise to the English word caste during the Early Modern Period.

The term Castas was a Spanish and Portuguese term used in 17th and 18th centuries mainly in Spanish America to describe as a whole the mixed-race people which appeared in the post-Conquest period. A parallel system of categorization based on the degree of acculturation to Hispanic culture, which distinguished between gente de razón (Hispanics) and gente sin razón (non-acculturated natives), concurrently existed and worked together with the idea of casta.

Box #1

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The system of castas, or genizaros was inspired by the assumption that the character and quality of people varied according to their birth, color, race and origin of ethnic types. The system of castas was more than socio-racial classification. It impacted every aspect of life, including economics and taxation. Both the Spanish colonial state and the Church expected more tax and tribute payments from those of lower socio-racial categories.  Even baptismal records includes your designation.

This complex caste system was used for social control and also determined a person’s importance in society. There were four main categories of race: (1) Peninsular, a Spaniard born in Spain; (2) Criollo (feminine, criolla), a person of Spanish descent born in the New World; (3) Indio (fem. india), a person who is descendent of the original inhabitants of the Americas; and (4) Negro (fem. negra) – a person of black African descent, usually a slave or their free descendants.

General racial groupings had their own set of privileges and restrictions, both legal and customary. So, for example, only Spaniards and Amerindians, who were deemed to be the original societies of the Spanish dominions, had recognized aristocracies. Also, in America and other overseas possessions, all Spaniards, regardless of their family’s class background in Europe, came to consider themselves equal to the Peninsular hidalgía and expected to be treated as such. Access to these privileges and even a person’s perceived and accepted racial classification, however, were also determined by that person’s socioeconomic standing in society.

Persons of mixed race were collectively referred to as “castas”. Long lists of different terms, used to identify types of people with specific racial or ethnic heritages, were developed by the late 17th century. By the end of the colonial period in 1821, over one hundred categories of possible variations of mixture existed.  I’m guessing that no one could keep up with them.

Box #2

The terms for the more complex racial mixtures tended to vary in meaning and use and from region to region. (For example, different sets of casta paintings will give a different set of terms and interpretations of their meaning.) For the most part, only the first few terms in the lists were used in documents and everyday life, the general descending order of precedence being:

Españoles (Spanish)These were persons of Spanish descent. People of other European descent who had settled in Spanish America and adapted to Hispanic culture would have also been considered Españoles. Also, as noted above, and below under “Mestizos” and “Castizos,” many persons with some Amerindian ancestry were considered Españoles. Españoles were one of the three original “races,” the other two being Amerindians and Blacks. Both immigrant and American-born Españoles generally shared the same rights and privileges, although there were a few cases in which the law differentiated between them. For example, it became customary in some municipal councils for the office of alcalde to alternate between a European and an American. Spaniards were therefore divided into 2 categories:

1. Peninsulares (Spaniards)Persons of Spanish descent born in Spain (i.e., from the Iberian Peninsula, hence their name). Generally, there were two groups of Peninsulares. The first group includes those that were appointed to important jobs in the government, the army and the Catholic Church by the Crown. This system was intended to perpetuate the ties of the governing elite to the Spanish crown. The theory was that an outsider should be appointed to rule over a certain society, therefore a New Spaniard would not be appointed Viceroy of New Spain. These officials usually had a long history of service to the Crown and moved around the Empire frequently. They usually did not live permanently in any one place in Latin America. The second

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group of Peninsulares did settle permanently in a specific region and came to associate with it. The first wave were the original settlers themselves, the Conquistadors, who essentially transformed themselves into lords of an area through their act of conquest. In the centuries after the Conquest, more Peninsulares continued to emigrate under different circumstances, usually for commercial reasons. Some even came as indentured servants to established Criollo families. Therefore, there were Peninsulares of all socioeconomic classes in America. Once they settled, they tended to form families, so Peninsulares and Criollos were united and divided by family ties and tensions.

2.  Criollos (Spanish Americans)

A Spanish term meaning “native born and raised,” criollo historically was applied to both white and black non-indigenous persons born in the Americas. In the contemporary historical literature, the term usually means only people who in theory were of full direct Spanish ancestry, born in the Americas. In reality white Criollos could also have some native ancestry, but this would be disregarded for families who had maintained a certain status. As the second- or third-generation of Spanish families, some Criollos owned mines, ranches, or haciendas. Many of these were extremely wealthy and belonged to the high nobility of the Spanish Empire. Still, most were simply part of what could be termed the petite bourgeoisie or even outright poor. As life-long residents of America, they, like all other residents of these areas, often participated in contraband, since the traditional monopolies of Seville, and later Cádiz, could not supply all their trade needs. (They were more than occasionally aided by royal officials turning a blind eye to this activity). Criollos tended to be appointed to the lower-level government jobs—they had sizable representation in the municipal councils—and with the sale of offices that began in the late 16th century, they gained access to the high-level posts, such as judges on the regional audiencias. The 19th-century wars of independence are often cast, then and now, as a struggle between Peninsulares and Criollos, but both groups can be found on both sides of the wars.

Box #3

Indios (Amerindians)The original inhabitants of the Americas and considered to be one of the three “pure races” in Spanish America, the law treated them as minors, and as such were to be protected by royal officials, but in reality were often abused by the local elites. After the initial conquest, the elites of the Inca, Aztec and other Amerindian states were assimilated into the Spanish nobility through intermarriage. The regional Native nobility, where it existed, was recognized and redefined along European standards by the Spanish and had to deal with the difficulty of existing in a colonial society, but it remained in place until independence. Amerindians could belong to any economic class depending on their personal wealth.

Mestizos (Amerindian and Spanish mix)Persons with one Spanish parent and one Amerindian parent. The term was originally associated with illegitimacy because in the generations after the Conquest, mixed-race children born in wedlock were assigned either a simple Amerindian or Spanish identity, depending with which culture they were raised. The number of official Mestizos rises in censuses only after the second half of the 17th century, when a sizable and stable community of mixed-race people with no claims on being either Amerindian or Spanish appeared.

Castizos (Spanish with some Amerindian mix)One of the many terms, like the ones below, used to describe people with varying degrees of racial mixture. In this case Castizos were people with one Mestizo parent and one Spanish parent. The children

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of a Castizo and a Spaniard, or a Castizo himself or herself, were often classified and accepted as a Criollo Spaniard.

Cholos (Amerindian with some Spanish mix)Persons with one Amerindian parent and one Mestizo parent.

Box #4

Pardos (Spanish, African, and Amerindian Mix)Persons who is the product of the mixing over the generations of the white Spanish, Black African, and Amerindians. This mix may come about from a white Spaniard mating with a Zambo, a Mulatto mating with Mestizo, or a Black African mating with a Mestizo.

Mulattos (African and Spanish mix)Persons of the first generation of a Spanish and Black/African ancestry. If they were born into slavery (that is their mother was a slave), they would be slaves, unless freed by their master or were manumitted. In popular parlance, mulatto could also denote an individual of mixed African and Native American ancestry. Further terms to describe other degrees of mixture included, among many others, Morisco, (not to be confused with the peninsular Morisco, from which the term was obviously borrowed) a person of Mulatto and Spanish parents, i.e., a quadroon, and Albino (derived from albino), a person of Morisco and Spanish parents, i.e., an octoroon.

Zambos (Amerindian and African mix)Persons who were of mixed Amerindian and Black ancestry. As with Mulattos, many other terms existed to describe the degree of mixture. These included Chino and Lobo. Chino usually described someone as having Mulatto and Amerindian parents. The word chino derives from the Spanish word cochino, meaning “pig”, and the phrase pelo chino, meaning “curly hair”, is a reference to the casta known as chino that possessed curly hair. (Since there was some immigration from the Spanish East Indies during the colonial period, chino is often confused, even by contemporary historians, as a word for Asian peoples, which is the primary meaning of the word, but not usually in the context of the castas. Chino or china is still used in many Latin American countries as a term of endearment for a light-skinned person of African ancestry. Lobo could describe a person of Black and Amerindian parents (and therefore, a synonym for Zambo), as in the image gallery below, or someone of Amerindian and Torna atrás parents.

Negros (Africans)With Spaniards and Amerindians, this was the third original “race” in this paradigm, but low on the social scale because of their association with slavery. These were people of full Sub-Saharan African descent. Many, especially among the first generation, were slaves, but there were sizable free-Black communities. Distinction was made between Blacks born in Africa (negros bozales) and therefore possibly less acculturated, Blacks born in the Iberian Peninsula (Black Ladinos), and Blacks born in the Indies, these sometimes referred to as negros criollos. Their low social status was enforced legally. They were prohibited by law from many positions, such as entering the priesthood, and their testimony in court was valued less than others. But they could join militias created especially for them. In contrast with the binary “one-drop rule”, which evolved in the late-19th-century United States, people of mixed-Black ancestry were recognized as multiple separate groups, as noted above.

Box #5

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The overall themes that emerge in these categories and paintings are the “supremacy of the Spaniards,” the possibility that Indians could become Spaniards through miscegenation with Spaniards and the “regression to an earlier moment of racial development” that mixing with Blacks would cause to Spaniards. These series generally depict the descendants of Indians becoming Spanish after three generations of intermarriage with Spaniards (usually the, “De español y castiza, español” painting). In contrast, mixtures with Blacks, both by Indians and Spaniards, led to a bewildering number of combinations, with “fanciful terms” to describe them. Instead of leading to a new racial type or equilibrium, they led to apparent disorder. Terms such as the above-mentioned tente en el aire and no te entiendo (“I don’t understand you”)—and others based on terms used for animals: mulato (mule) and lobo (wolf), chino (derived from cochino meaning “pig”)—reflect the fear and mistrust that Spanish officials, society and those who commissioned these paintings saw these new racial types.

Different paintings depicted different combinations.  In general, the Spanish-Indian combinations were in agreement between them, but the categories for black admixture are quite different.

Box # 6

In Spanish America, new racial classifications emerged.Overview

2-3 details, no small details, but big picture

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PartsRead labels, look for symbols, Write 2-3 details about the individual parts/symbols

TitleWrite the title and 2-3 details about what the title tells you about the image.

I learned that

Name two details that you learned from the image

Context How does this fit into this chapter”?

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