HIS 231 - History of Latin American Civilization I

Huayna Capac

"the young mighty one", "Powerful Young One"[8] or "Powerful Youth" (1464/1468-1524) was the third Sapan Inka of the Inca Empire, born in Tumipampasixth of the Hanan dynasty, and eleventh of the Inca civilization. As other Sapa Inkas, Wayna Qhapaq subjects commonly approached him adding epithets and titles when addressing him, commonly as Wayna Qhapaq Inka Sapa'lla Tukuy Llaqt'a Uya "Unique Sovereign Wayna Qhapaq Listener of All Peoples", His original name was Titu Kusi Wallpa. He was the successor to Tupaq Inka Yupanki.

Ayllu

A family clan, is the traditional form of a community in the Andes, especially among Quechuas and Aymaras. They are an indigenous local government model across the Andes region of South America, particularly in Bolivia and Peru.

Encomienda

A grant of land made by Spain to a settler in the Americas, including the right to use Native Americans as laborers on it

hidalgos/fidalgos

A member of the Spanish or Portuguese nobility; the feminine forms of the terms are hidalga, in Spanish, and fidalga, in Portuguese and Galician. In popular usage, the term hidalgo identifies a nobleman without a hereditary title. In practice, hidalgos were exempted from paying taxes, yet owned little real property.

asientos

A monopoly contract to import slaves to the Spanish colonies.

Union of the Crowns

Accession of James VI of Scotland to the thrones of England and Ireland as James I, and the consequential unification for some purposes (such as overseas diplomacy) of the three realms under a single monarch on 24 March 1603.

Triple Alliance

Alliance of three Nahua altepetl city/states: Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. These three city-states ruled the area in and around the Valley of Mexico from 1428 until the combined forces of the Spanish conquistadores and their native allies under Hernán Cortés defeated them in 1521.

Sapa Inka

Also known as Apu ("divinity"), Inka Qhapaq ("mighty Inca"), or simply Sapa ("the only one"), was the ruler of the Kingdom of Cuzco and, later, the Emperor of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) and the Neo-Inca State.

Diego de Almagro

Also known as El Adelantado and El Viejo, was a Spanish conquistador known for his exploits in western South America. He participated with Francisco Pizarro in the Spanish conquest of Peru. From Peru Almagro led an expedition that made him the second European to set foot in central Chile (after Gonzalo Calvo de Barrientos). Back in Peru a longstanding conflict with Pizarro over the control of the former Inca capital of Cuzco erupted into a civil war between the two bands of conquistadores. In the battle of Las Salinas in 1538 Almagro was defeated by the Pizarro brothers and months later he was executed.

Dominicans

Also known as the Dominican Order, is a mendicant Catholic religious order founded in France by the Spanish priest Saint Dominic. The order is famed for its intellectual tradition, having produced many leading theologians and philosophers. Dominicans tried to defend the Indians from what they saw as exploitation and abuse, they continually found them-selves in political and judicial clashes with the settlers.

Cajamarca

Also known by the Cajamarca Quechua name, Kashamarka, is the capital and largest city of the Cajamarca Region as well as an important cultural and commercial center in the northern Andes.

Auto de fe

An act of faith; a public or private event at which the Inquisition decreed punishment of transgressions

Forasteros

An outsider; a person residing in a region other than where born

Teotihuacan

Ancient Mesoamerican city located in a sub-valley of the Valley of Mexico, which is located in the State of Mexico. "Birthplace of gods"

Veracruz

Because Cortés had left Cuba in rebellion, he needed to legitimize his command and neutralize the disgruntled men still loyal to Governor Velázquez. He solved this problem by founding a city, Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz (today Veracruz) and establishing a municipal government that then selected him as its chief military and judicial officer.

Francisco Pizarro

Best known for his expeditions that led to the fall of the Inca Empire and the Spanish conquest of Peru. The illegitimate and poorly educated son of a modest Extremaduran noble, Pizarro emigrated to the New World as a young man. After a brief and unexceptional stay in Española, he joined an expedition to the Isthmus of Panama where he gained military experience. As an encomendero and one of the founders of the city of Panama, Pizarro was in midlife a prosperous citizen of a small and obscure city on Spain's expanding American frontier.

Quilombos/palenques

Brazilian hinterland settlement founded by people of African origin including the quilombolas, or maroons, and others sometimes called Carabali. Most of the inhabitants of quilombos (called quilombolas) were escaped slaves.

Tenochtitlan

Capital of the Aztec Empire, located on an island in Lake Texcoco. Its population was about 150,000 on the eve of Spanish conquest. Mexico City was constructed on its ruins.

Henry the Navigator

Central figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and in the 15th-century European maritime discoveries and maritime expansion. Henry was responsible for the early development of Portuguese exploration and maritime trade with other continents through the systematic exploration of Western Africa, the islands of the Atlantic Ocean, and the search for new routes.

Chattel slavery

Chattel slavery, also called traditional slavery, is so named because people are treated as the chattel (personal property) of the owner and are bought and sold as commodities. Typically, under the chattel slave system, children inherited slave status via the mother

(cofradias)

Cofradía events enjoyed village-wide participation, and joyous celebrations marked its saint's day in particular. The institution won rapid support, and in many communities its officers became active associates of the friars and devotees of the Virgin Mary. L

feitorias (Portuguese trading posts)

Common name during the medieval and early modern eras for an entrepôt - which was essentially an early form of free-trade zone or transshipment point. At a factory, local inhabitants could interact with foreign merchants, often known as factors.[1] First established in Europe, factories eventually spread to many other parts of the world.

Atlantic Creole cultures

Creole people are ethnic groups which originated during the colonial era from racial mixing mainly between Africans as well as some other people born in the colonies, such as Europeans and sometimes South Asian and American Indian peoples; this process is known as creolisation.

"native sons"/radicados

Creoles. A person of European descent born especially in the West Indies or Spanish America.

Olmec

Earliest known major civilization in Mesoamerica. The aspect of the Olmecs most familiar now is their artwork, particularly the aptly named "colossal heads". The name 'Olmec' comes from the Nahuatl meaning "rubber"," rubber people".

Mali

Empire created by indigenous Muslims in western Sudan of West Africa from the thirteenth to fifteenth century. It was famous for its role in the trans-Saharan gold trade.

Tlaxcala

Entering the Tlaxcalan capital, Cortés saw for the first time the urban development of the Mesoamerican heartland: This city is so big and so remarkable [as to be] . . . almost unbelievable, for the city is much larger than Granada and very much stronger, with as good buildings and many more people than Granada had when it was taken, and very much better sup-plied with the produce of the land, namely, bread, fowl and game and freshwater fish and vegetables and other things they eat which are very good. There is in this city a market where each and every day upward of thirty thousand people come to buy and sell, without counting the other trade which goes on elsewhere in the city.

New Laws (1542)

Following complaints and calls for reform from individuals such as the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, these laws were intended to prevent the exploitation and mistreatment of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the encomenderos, by strictly limiting their power and dominion over groups of natives. were issued on November 20, 1542, by Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (King Charles I of Spain)

Franciscans

Group of related mendicant religious orders within the Catholic Church, founded in 1209 by Saint Francis of Assisi. Cortés repeatedly urged Charles I to send Franciscans, preferring them to the more worldly secular or diocesan clergy.

Fernando Cortes

He was commissioned by the Spanish viceroy of New Spain to write histories of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. The Codex Ixtlilxochitl is attributed to him.

Inquisition

Historical ecclesiastical parlance also referred to as the "Holy Inquisition", was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy. The Inquisition started in 12th-century France to combat religious dissent, in particular the Cathars and the Waldensians. During the Late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance, the concept and scope of the Inquisition significantly expanded in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.

Kongo

In 1483, the Portuguese explorer Diogo Cão sailed up the uncharted Congo River, finding Kongo villages and becoming the first European to encounter the Kongo kingdom. King Afonso I worked to create a viable version of the Roman Catholic Church in Kongo, providing for its income from royal assets and taxation that provided salaries for its workers.

Yanaconas

In the Inca Empire yanakuna was the name of the servants to the Inca elites. The word servant, however, is misleading about the identity and function of the yanakuna.[8] It is important to note that they were not forced to work as slaves.[citation needed] Some were born into the category of yanakuna (like many other professions, it was a hereditary one), some chose to leave ayllus to work, and some were selected by nobles.

Huacas

Is an object that represents something revered, typically a monument of some kind.

Amerigo Vespucci ("America")

Italian explorer, financier, navigator, and cartographer from the Republic of Florence. Sailing for Portugal around 1501-1502, Vespucci demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies were not Asia's eastern outskirts (as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages) but a separate continent described as the "New World". In 1507, the new continent was named America after the Latin version of Vespucci's first name.Vespucci then became a citizen of the Crown of Castile and died in Seville (1512).

Nahuatl

Language or group of languages of the Uto-Aztecan language family. Varieties of Nahuatl are spoken by about 1.7 million Nahua peoples, most of whom live in central Mexico. Nahuatl has been spoken in central Mexico since at least the seventh century CE.[5] It was the language of the Aztecs, who dominated what is now central Mexico during the Late Postclassic period of Mesoamerican history.

Calpulli

Large house Nahuatl. was the designation of an organizational unit below the level of the altepetl "city-state". A Nahua city-state was divided into a number of calpullis, whose inhabitants were collectively responsible for different organizational and religious tasks in relation to the larger altepetl. Calpullis controlled land which was available for calpulli members to cultivate and also operated the Tēlpochcalli schools for young men of commoner descent.

Chichen Itza

Large pre-Columbian city built by the Maya people of the Terminal Classic period. The archaeological site is located in Tinúm Municipality, Yucatán State, Mexico. UNESCO World Heritage Site. "At the mouth of the well of the Itza."

Atahuallpa

Last Inca Emperor. After defeating his brother, Atahualpa became very briefly the last Sapa Inca (sovereign emperor) of the Inca Empire (Tawantinsuyu) before the Spanish conquest ended his reign.

corregidor/alcalde mayor (provincial governor)

Local administrative and judicial official in Spain and in its overseas empire. They were the representatives of the royal jurisdiction over a town and its district.

Mit'a

Mandatory public service in the society of the Inca Empire. Mit'a was effectively a form of tribute to the Inca government in the form of labor.

Maya

Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples, and noted for its logosyllabic script—the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas—as well as for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization occupied a wide territory that included southeastern Mexico and northern Central America. This area included the entire Yucatán Peninsula and all of the territory now incorporated into the modern countries of Guatemala and Belize, as well as the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador.

Aztec

Mesoamerican culture that flourished in central Mexico. The Aztec were a state created by Mexica and their Nahuatl speaking allies. For the century before the arrival of Cortés, they were unquestionably the most powerful political force in Mesoamerica. The civilization that resulted from this cultural exchange, however, was more militaristic and violent than that of its predecessors.

Wari

Middle Horizon civilization that flourished in the south-central Andes and coastal area of modern-day Peru. As a result of centuries of drought, the Wari culture began to deteriorate around 800 AD. Also well-known are the Wari ruins of Pikillaqta ("Flea Town"), a short distance south-east of Cuzco en route to Lake Titicaca.

Moctezuma La Noche Triste

Moctezuma perished during this attack but whether at the hands of Spaniards or natives is uncertain. Convinced that defeat was imminent, Cortés decided to flee under cover of darkness. His men made careful preparations to avoid detection, covering the horses' hooves with cloth and constructing portable bridges to span gaps cut in the causeway.

Dona Marina/Malintzin

More popularly known as La Malinche [la maˈlintʃe], was a Nahua woman from the Mexican Gulf Coast, who played a key role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire, acting as an interpreter, advisor, and intermediary for the Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés. She was one of 20 women slaves given to the Spaniards by the natives of Tabasco in 1519.

Mexica

Nahuatl-speaking indigenous people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of the Aztec Empire. various nomadic peoples entered the Valley of Mexico, including the Mexica. When they arrived, they "encountered the remnants of the Toltec empire. Given the Mexica's religious beliefs, it is said that they were actually searching for a sign which one of their main gods, Huitzilopochtli, had given them. The Mexica were to find "an eagle with a snake in its beak, perched on a prickly pear cactus."[2] Wherever they saw that was where they were meant to live. They continuously searched for the symbol. Eventually, they happened to stumble upon Lake Texcoco, where they finally saw the eagle and cactus on an island on the lake. There, "they took refuge..., naming their settlement Tenochtitlan (Among the Stone-Prickly Pear Cactus Fruit).

Vilcabamba

Often called the Lost City of the Incas. Vilcabamba means "sacred plain" in Quechua. Vilcabamba was the capital of the Neo-Inca State from 1539 to 1572. The Neo-Inca State was the last refuge of the Inca Empire until it fell to the Spaniards and their indigenous allies in 1572, signaling the end of Inca resistance to Spanish rule.

Reconquest

Period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula of about 780 years between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711, the expanding Christian kingdoms and the fall of the Nasrid kingdom of Granada in 1492.

Toltec

Pre-Colombian Mesoamerican culture that ruled a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo, Mexico. The later Aztec culture saw the Toltecs as their intellectual and cultural predecessors.

Tiwanaku

Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia near Lake Titicaca and one of the largest sites in South America. Unesco World Heritage Site. Some have hypothesized that Tiwanaku's modern name is related to the Aymara term taypiqala, meaning "stone in the center", alluding to the belief that it lay at the center of the world.

Tlatelolco

Prehispanic altepetl or city-state, in the Valley of Mexico. Its inhabitants were known as Tlatelolca. The Tlatelolca were a part of the Mexica, a Nahuatl-speaking people who arrived in what is now central Mexico in the 13th century.

Quechua:

Quecha people, may refer to any of the indigenous people of South America who speak the Quechua languages, which originated among the indigenous people of Peru. Although most Quechua speakers are native to the country of origin, there are some significant populations living in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Argentina.

Quipu

Recording devices fashioned from strings historically used by a number of cultures in the region of Andean South America. A quipu usually consisted of cotton or camelid fiber strings. The Inca people used them for collecting data and keeping records, monitoring tax obligations, properly collecting census records, calendrical information, and for military organization.

Pope Alexander VI

Rodrigo de Borja y Doms. Corrupt, worldly, and ambitious pope (1492-1503), whose neglect of the spiritual inheritance of the church contributed to the development of the Protestant Reformation.

Huascar

Sapa Inca of the Inca Empire from 1527 to 1532. He succeeded his father, Huayna Capac, and his brother Ninan Cuyochi, both of whom died of smallpox while campaigning near Quito. Huáscar then declared war on Atahualpa. Huascar was defeated in the battle of Chimborazo and the Battle of Quipaipan. Huascar was made prisoner, and Atahualpa's chiefs Quizquiz and Chalicuchima occupied Cuzco.

Treaty of Tordesillas

Signed at Tordesillas in Spain on June 7, 1494, and authenticated at Setúbal, Portugal, divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between the Portuguese Empire and the Spanish Empire (Crown of Castile), along a meridian 370 leagues[note 2] west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. This line of demarcation was about halfway between the Cape Verde islands (already Portuguese) and the islands entered by Christopher Columbus on his first voyage (claimed for Castile and León), named in the treaty as Cipangu and Antilia (Cuba and Hispaniola).

Francisco de Vitoria

Spanish Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, one of the founders of inter-national law, outlined in the 1530s other reasons justifying Spanish conquest and rule. Although Vitoria opposed war for war's sake, he considered it just if the na-tives prevented Spaniards from living among them in peace, opposed the preach-ing of the Christian gospel, or tried to force Christian converts to revert to idolatry. He also claimed that Spaniards were obligated to save innocent people from canni-balism or other "unjust death" as well as to aid their native allies.

Juan Gines de Sepulveda

Spanish Renaissance humanist, philosopher, theologian, and proponent of colonial slavery. Sepúlveda defended the position of the colonists, although he had never been to America, claiming that some Amerindians were "natural slaves" as defined by Aristotle in Book I of Politics

Repartimiento

Spanish labor system in Latin America, supposed to replace the encomienda system, in which native communities were compelled to provide laborers for the farms or mines and the Spanish employers were expected to pay fair wages.

Diego Velazquez

Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV, and one of the most important painters of the Spanish Golden Age.

Songhay

Successor state to Mali; dominated middle reaches of Niger valley; formed as independent kingdom under a Berber dynasty; capital at Gao; reached imperial status under Sunni Ali

Arawaks/Taino

The Arawak are a group of indigenous peoples of South America and of the Caribbean. Specifically, the term "Arawak" has been applied at various times to the Lokono of South America and the Taíno, who historically lived in the Greater Antilles and northern Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean. All these groups spoke related Arawakan languages.

Chavin

The Chavín culture is an extinct, pre-Columbian civilization, named for Chavín de Huantar, the principal archaeological site at which its artifacts have been found. The culture developed in the northern Andean highlands of Peru.

Inca

The Incas were most notable for establishing the Inca Empire in pre-Columbian America, which was centered in what is now Peru. From the beginning, Inka power was rooted in the efficient organization and administration of their resources.

"Congregations"/"Reductions"/Aldeias

The Jesuit reductions were a type of settlement for indigenous people specifically in the Rio Grande do Sul area of Brazil, Paraguay and neighbouring Argentina in South America, established by the Jesuit Order early in the 17th century and wound up in the 18th century with the banning of the Jesuit order in several European countries.

"Black Legend"

The most important long-term consequence of the controversy was the use that Spain's enemies made of some of its assertions. The English, Dutch, and other European rivals gleefully seized upon Las Casas's allegations of the conquistadors' cruelty, elaborating the so-called Black Legend to undermine Spanish claims to the Americas. So effective was this propaganda campaign that a continuous thread of anti-Hispanic preju-dice can be traced to the present day in the English-speaking world.

Mezquital Valley

The poverty of the natives of this once-fertile region became renowned, and by the end of the seventeenth century the name Valley of Mezquital, or "place where mesquite grows," was attached to the once-flourishing agricultural region. European livestock also affected the environment of the Andes

Ferdinand & Isabel ("Catholic Kings")

The term Catholic Monarchs refers to Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon, whose marriage and joint rule marked the de facto unification of Spain.They were both from the House of Trastámara and were second cousins, being both descended from John I of Castile

Viceroy/viceroyalty

The viceroyalty was a local, political, social, and administrative institution, created by the Spanish monarchy in the 15th century, for ruling in its overseas territories.

Elmina

Town and the capital of the Komenda/Edina/Eguafo/Abirem District on the south coast of Ghana in the Central Region, situated on a bay on the Atlantic Ocean. It was Portugal's West African headquarters for trade and exploitation of African wealth.

Bartolome de las Casas

Was a 16th-century Spanish colonist who acted as a historian and social reformer before becoming a Dominican friar. He was appointed as the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians". His extensive writings, the most famous being A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and Historia de Las Indias, chronicle the first decades of colonization of the West Indies. He described the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples.

Cusco

Was a small kingdom based in the city of Cusco, Peru, on the Andean mountain ranges that began as a small city-state founded by the Incas around the start of 13th century.

Old Christians v. New Christians (conversos)

Was a social and law-effective category used in the Iberian Peninsula from the late 15th and early 16th century onwards, to distinguish Portuguese and Spanish people attested as having cleanliness of blood from the populations categorized as New Christian,[1] mainly persons of partial or full Jewish descent who converted to Christianity, and their descendants.[2] The term was also used to distinguish "clean-blooded" Christians from Christians who descended from Muslim families - although the overwhelming majority of Spain's Muslims were themselves descendants of native Iberians who converted to Islam under Muslim rule.

Regular clergy v. secular clergy:

While regular clergy take religious vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience and follow the rule of life of the institute to which they belong, secular clergy do not take vows, and they live in the world at large (secularity) rather than at a religious institute.

Cabildo

a Spanish colonial, and early post-colonial, administrative council which governed a municipality. Cabildos were sometimes appointed, sometimes elected; but they were considered to be representative of all land-owning heads of household (vecinos).

Benin

a kingdom that arose near the Niger River delta in the 1300s and became a major West African state in the 1400s

Audiencia

a type of royal court in late medieval Spain and Spanish courts among Spain's colonies in the Americas

College of Santiago Tlatelolco

is the first and oldest European school of higher learning in the Americas and the first major school of interpreters and translators in the New World. It was established by the Franciscans on January 6, 1536 with the intention, as is generally accepted, of preparing Native American boys for eventual ordination to the Catholic priesthood.

Mayapan

last great Maya capital, Pre-Columbian Maya site a couple of kilometers south of the town of Telchaquillo in Municipality of Tecoh. Mayapan was the political and cultural capital of the Maya in the Yucatán Peninsula during the Late Post-Classic period.

Bandeirantes

literally "flag-carriers", were explorers, adventurers, and fortune hunters in early Colonial Brazil. They led expeditions carrying the Portuguese flag, the bandeira, claiming, by planting the flag, new lands for the Crown of Portugal. They are largely responsible for Brazil's great expansion westward, far beyond the Tordesillas Line of 1494, by which the Pope divided the new continent into a western, Castilian section, and an eastern, Portuguese section.

Corregidores

local administrative and judicial official in Spain and in its overseas empire. They were the representatives of the royal jurisdiction over a town and its district.

Altepetl

local, ethnically-based political entity, usually translated into English as "city-state". The word is a combination of the Nahuatl words ātl (meaning "water") and tepētl (meaning "mountain"). A characteristic Nahua mode was to imagine the totality of the people of a region or of the world as a collection of altepetl units and to speak of them on those terms.

Society of Jesus ("Jesuits")

s a religious order of the Catholic Church headquartered in Rome. It was founded by Ignatius of Loyola with the approval of Pope Paul III in 1540.

Patronato Real/Padroado

the expression of royal patronage controlling major appointments of Church officials and the management of Church revenues, under terms of concordats with the Holy See. The resulting structure of royal power and ecclesiastical privileges, was formative in the Spanish colonial empire.

Council of the Indies residencia/visita

the most important administrative organ of the Spanish Empire for the Americas and the Philippines. The crown held absolute power over the Indies and the Council of the Indies was the administrative and advisory body for those overseas realms. It was established in 1524 by Charles V to administer "the Indies," Spain's name for its territories.

IndiosLadinos

those natives who had learned Castilian, as assistants in their parish work.

Index of Prohibited Books

was a list of publications deemed heretical or contrary to morality by the Sacred Congregation of the Index (a former Dicastery of the Roman Curia), and Catholics were forbidden to read them without permission

Kurakas

was an official of the Inca Empire who held the role of magistrate, about 4 levels down from the Sapa Inca, the head of the Empire.[4] The kurakas were the heads of the ayllus (clan-like family units). They served as tax collector, and held religious authority, in that they mediated between the supernatural sphere and the mortal realm. They were responsible for making sure the spirit world blessed the mortal one with prosperity, and were held accountable should disaster strike, such as a drought.