Latin America I: Pre-Columbian to 1750
HIST 380, By Reuben Zahler
Term: Fall 2022
Syllabus:HIST380-LatinAmericaI-Zahler-Fall2022
Major economic, political, and cultural trends and continuities. Pre-Columbian and Iberian history, the colonial period up to 1750.
“Hernando Cortes took Mexico-Tenochtitlan in the year 1521. In commemoration of this great event and victory, the people of the city celebrate the day every year, with a festival and processions” [Francisco Lopez de Gomara, biographer of Cortes]
“Broken spears lie in the roads; we have torn our hair in our grief…. We have pounded our hands in despair against the adobe walls, for our inheritance, our city, is lost and dead.” [Anonymous Aztec lament on the fall of Mexico-Tenochtitlan]
Two views of the same event. Two distinct ways of looking at the past. The discord created by these diametrically opposed views underlies the socio-cultural history much of what is commonly called “colonial Latin America.” Over the “colonial” centuries, or in other words that period of time when the region was controlled by the Spanish and Portuguese empires, many different kinds of people with distinctive backgrounds and ideas helped to forge a culturally variegated “new world.” This means that the story of this region’s formative centuries is not the history of any one group–not just the Spanish nor the indigenous people, nor any other specific culture, ethnicity, gender, or race. It is a story of destruction, but also one of perseverance and rebirth. We will focus on the social, cultural, biological, political, and economic consequences of Spanish and Portuguese “conquest” and colonial rule. We will pay greater attention to the people caught up in these “new world” enterprises than to the institutions that arose, seeking to understand the deeper meanings of colonialism for individual women and men of all kinds. Whenever possible, class presentations will include visual materials, and we will listen to excerpts from colonial-era music from time to time. It is hoped that this approach will help us all move beyond a concentration on merely “what happened” in the past to a better understanding of the textures of human life in early Latin America.
Prereq: Sophomore standing recommended.
4 credits