Mexican Independence, Essay Example

In Recovering History, Reconstructing Race, Martha Menchaca explains that while the crown had difficulty finding “pure” Spaniards who were willing to settle in the northern frontier regions of New Spain, many mixed-race people were more than willing to go, in part because they hoped to improve their social position. Explain what Menchaca means by this statement. In what ways did the mixed-race colonists inadvertently support the very ideologies that they were trying to escape?

Many people are taught from elementary that Native Americans’ first encounters with European settlers came from Christopher Columbus.(Acuna 13) However, what many people are not taught is that of course, the Native Americas were actually Mesoamericans, but also that many that came to settled in Americans from Spain, were mixed raced Spaniards that wanted to increase their social status. The Spanish had instituted their own colonial caste system in which separated the different “colors” of citizens in Spain. This type of philosophy was carried with them as they begin to settle into the Americas. Male soldiers that that fathered many children with African slaves and Amerindian women instituted the Latin America conquest by the Europeans during the 15th century. Martha Menchaca expounds on the difficulty that the Spanish crown had in finding pure Spaniards that wanted to come to the Americas. Instead, those that were mixed raced wanted to improve their social status, so they fed into the same system in which oppressed them, by oppressing others that were different from them. The following essay will provide more reasoning to explain the perplexing ideology, as well as give an explanation of why many continued with the Spanish caste ideology.

The Spaniards gave the world the ideology that a noble’s blood is not red yet blue. The Spanish respectability began coming to fruition around the ninth century in a fantastic military manner, warriors on horseback that were possessing land. They were to proceed with the methodology for more than five hundred years, ripping at back segments of the landmass from its Moorish occupiers, and an aristocrat exhibited his family by holding up his sword arm to show the filigree of blue-blooded veins underneath his pale skin. Carrasco explains, “Mesoamerica, “was an urban civilization organized by powerful, pervasive religious beliefs, and practices.” (Carrasco 7) The recorded Spanish fixation on the virtue of blood developed into a showy position framework, which arrived at its apogee with the colonization of South America and the consequent intermixing of pioneers with both South American Indians and African slaves that were imported; the majority of whose blended posterity obviously required a different order.

It was a complicated framework intended to set areas of society against one another and play on the resulting dread of ousting by the lower classes, so that Spain could keep on applying its top-down control. Yet it additionally connoted the relative social significance of the rank parts, generally in a pejorative sense, implying that just certain rights, occupations, and establishments were interested in them. In the event that you had been conceived in Spain, then you naturally qualified as an issue of the world class. On the off chance that you had been conceived in South America, however if their bloodline was “immaculate” then they were agreeing with their advantaged status, yet of the second request, and the most persuasive posts were out of scope. On the other hand, if your progenitors had the nerve to dither with the Indians or blacks, then an entangled calculation was brought to hold up. According to Menchaca, “Within fifty years of the conquest, Spanish-Indian relations were redefined and race became a principal factor in the social and economic organization of Spanish colonial society.” (Menchaca 49) While there were many exemptions that were given to the nobles, the divide between the different races all benefited the European settlers.

Most of the blending of races was used as a survival strategy and safety net in which helped them to maintain enjoyed privileges by their families they have come to known. According to Menchaca, “In return for their post conquest complicity members of the indigenous nobility were allowed to retain control of their property and were awarded additional land.” (Menchaca 50) This reasoning can be seen as a benefit in which they could take part in the oppressive system, while also allowing them to attain some superiority to the natives in America. Many of the mixed raced Spaniards were given clothes, gifts, and other commodities from Europe, which also allowed them to not have to pay penance to the crown. For doing the job of conquering the natives, the conquistadors that were made up of “un-pure” Spaniards were rewarded with land and other gifts. However, they continued to play into the “divide and conquer” philosophy in which was proliferate that those that were different were inferior.

The Spanish caste system and the ideology in which Spain spread was that which has carried on throughout the development of the New World. What fails to make the history books is the colonist of color that chose to come to the Americas in order to improve their social status. What Menchaca stated in, “it came “at the cost of entrenching the same colonial order that oppressed them.” (68) She meant that they fed into the same oppressive system in which oppress them and their families in Spain, to the Native Indians. They chose to do this in order to be accepted as a noble and enjoy the benefits of nobles in Spain enjoyed. They benefitted but at a cost that continued to conquer and oppress others, as well as continue to spread the foolish ideology that people are superior to others.

Works Cited

Acuna, Rodalfo. 2010. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos.  Seventh Edition.  Pearson. Book.

Carrasco, David. Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers (Religious Traditions of the World).Waveland Pr Inc 1998. Book.

Menchaca, Martha. Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans. University of Texas Press. 2001. Book.