Exam 2

Mexicanidad

the spirit of an inclusive mexican cultural identity

Spanish Empire

New Spain- Panama up to New Mexico, the islands of the Caribbean, and the Philippines. Spain had the richest and the most powerful empire of the 16th century BUT began to decline in the 17th century. The Spanish Empire remained intact and relatively prosperous through informal networks of exchange and viceregal power.

Virgin of Guadalupe

A Roman Catholic title of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Official Catholic accounts state that the Virgin Mary appeared four times before Juan Diego and one more before Juan Diego's uncle. According to these accounts the first apparition occurred on the morning of December 9, 1531, when a native Mexican peasant named Juan Diego saw a vision of a maiden at a place called the Hill of Tepeyac, which would become part of Villa de Guadalupe, a suburb of Mexico City. Following the Conquest in 1519-21, the Spanish destroyed a temple of the mother goddess Tonantzin at Tepeyac outside Mexico City, and built a chapel dedicated to the Virgin on the site. Newly converted natives continued to come from afar to worship there, often addressing the Virgin Mary as Tonantzin.

New Spain

A Spanish colony in the New World north of the Isthmus of Panama. It was established following the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire in 1521, and following additional conquests, it was made a viceroyalty (Spanish: virreinato) in 1535. Central America, Mexico, the West Indies, Florida, and most of the land in the U.S. west of the Mississippi River. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was the name of the viceroy-ruled territories of the Spanish Empire in North America and its peripheries in Asia from 1535 to 1821. New Spain was the name that the Spanish gave to the area that today is central and southern Mexico, and since the capital city of the Viceroyalty was in Mexico City, the name was also used for the viceroyalty.

Repartimiento

A colonial forced labor system imposed upon the indigenous population of Spanish America and the Philippines. With the New Laws of 1542, the repartimiento was instated to substitute the encomienda system that had come to be seen as abusive and promoting unethical behavior. The repartimiento was not slavery, in that the worker is not owned outright—being free in various respects other than in the dispensation of his or her labor—and the work was intermittent. It however, created slavery-like conditions in certain areas.

Encomienda

A grant by the Spanish Crown to a colonist in America conferring the right to demand tribute and forced labor from the Indian inhabitants of an area. A labor system, rewarding conquerors with the labor of particular groups of people. It was first established in Spain during the Roman period, but utilized also following the Christian reconquest of Muslim territory. It was applied on a much larger scale during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines. Conquered peoples were considered vassals of the Spanish monarch and the award of an encomienda was a grant from the crown to a particular individual. In the conquest era of the sixteenth century, the grants were considered to be a monopoly on the labor of particular Indians, held in perpetuity by the grant holder, called the encomendero, and his descendants

Viceroy

A regal official who runs a country, colony, city, province, or sub-national or state, in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. New Spain had 62 viceroys overtime that all came from high nobility and were born in Spain. 1st: Mendoza (1534-1550) 2md: Luis de Vasco (1550-1564) VICEROYALTIES

Black Legend

A style of tendentious, nonobjective historical writing or propaganda that demonizes Spain, its people and its culture in an intentional attempt to damage its reputation. The Black Legend is a style of propaganda that criticizes the Spanish Empire. It was first described by Julian Juderias in his book, The Black Legend and Historical Truth. The legend infers that no good came of the period of exploration except for the gains of the Spanish. Juderias said the Spanish were 'cruel, bigoted, exploitative, and self-righteous in excess of reality.'

Colonial Legacy

Colonial legacy is a term used to describe the changes that affect nations and regions governed by invasive colonial rulers. In many areas of the world, including Africa, colonialism brought a change in many facets of society, including government structure and organization, political practices and even economics.

New Spain Caste System

Spaniard/ Criollos/ Mestizos/ Indigenous

Audiencia

Spanish Courts. The highest tribunal of the Spanish crown in the Kingdom of New Spain. The Audiencia was created by royal decree on December 13, 1527, and was seated in the viceregal capital of Mexico City.

New Spain Economy

The Economy of Colonial Mexico. The 16th century was a time of conquest, consolidation, and growth for the Spanish empire. Mexico, or New Spain, as it was referred to at the time, emerged as one of the world's chief suppliers of silver. The chief function of the colonies in the eyes of the Spanish Hapsburg kings — who ruled until 1700 — was to make Spain stronger, richer and more self-sufficient. Raw materials brought home from the New World were turned into finished goods, which were then exported to other European nations or sent back to the colonies to be sold for profit. MERCANTILISM. Best of all, New Spain's wealth of silver and gold deposits could be tapped on to swell the royal coffers.

Franciscans

The Order of Friars Minor is a mendicant Catholic religious order, founded in 1209 by Francis of Assisi. The Franciscans sent the greatest number of missionaries to minister in the New World. This is quite likely due to the fact that they were the largest order in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries. A large number of them were in Spain.

Debate over Indian Rights

The Valladolid debate (1550-1551) was the first moral debate in European history to discuss the rights and treatment of a colonized people by colonizers. Held in the Colegio de San Gregorio, in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it was a moral and theological debate about the colonization of the Americas, its justification for the conversion to Catholicism and more specifically about the relations between the European settlers and the natives of the New World. It consisted of a number of opposing views about the way natives were to be integrated into colonial life, their conversion to Christianity and their rights and obligations. A controversial theologian, Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas Bartolomé de las Casas, argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order despite their practice of human sacrifices and other such customs, deserving the same consideration as the colonizers. Opposing this view were a number of scholars and priests including humanist scholar Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued that the human sacrifice of innocents, cannibalism, and other such "crimes against nature" were unacceptable and should be suppressed by any means possible including war. Although both sides claimed to have won the disputation, there is no clear record supporting either interpretation. The affair is considered one of the earliest examples of moral debates about colonialism, human rights of colonized peoples and international relations in history. In Spain, it served to establish de las Casas as the primary, though controversial defender of the Indians. He and others contributed to the passing of the New Laws of 1542, which limited the encomienda system further. Though they did not fully reverse the situation, the laws achieved considerable improvement in the treatment of Indians and consolidated their rights granted by earlier laws. More importantly, the debate reflected a concern for morality and justice in 16th century Spain that only surfaced in other colonial powers centuries later.

Silver

The discovery of silver in Zacatecas in the 1540s drew settlement there to exploit the mines. Silver mining not only became the engine of the economy of New Spain, but vastly enriched Spain, and transformed the global economy

Mercantilism

The economic philosophy that holds that the purpose of a colony is to make the mother country stronger and more self-sufficient.

Council of the Indies

The most important administrative organ of the Spanish Empire for the Americas and Asia. It was placed at start as a section under the jurisdiction of the Council of Castile and it had legislative, executive and judicial functions.

Bartolome de las Casas

was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became 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 and focus particularly on the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples. Protector of the Indians was an administrative office of the Spanish colonies, that was responsible for attending to the well being of the native populations, including speaking on their behalf in courts and reporting back to the King of Spain.