Spanish Conquest Research Articles

Rethinking the Coloniality of Race: Blood Purity and the Politics of Periodization

The coloniality of power stands as a major framework for theorizing race within the context of Latin America, providing an influential account of the origin of race in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Without abandoning the task of theorizing the ways in which race functions in Latin America, this article asks: what is obscured by an insistence on 1492 as the moment when race emerged, and what different understandings of race can be made available by connecting the colonization of the Americas to a different set of temporal and spatial referents? Specifically, I develop a “prismatic” approach to analyze the impact of fifteenth-century Iberian blood purity statutes on the development of race without positing these as the new, singular origin of race. This article thus suggests an alternative genealogy of racialization while providing a critical engagement with the coloniality of power’s account of race.

A History of Argentina: From the Spanish Conquest to the Present

A History of Argentina: From the Spanish Conquest to the Present

A chilei nemzetállam és a mapuche-kérdés a 19. században

The Chilean nation-state was consolidated in the nineteenth century, and one of the greatest challenges it faced was how to deal with the plight of the autonomous indigenous people, the Mapuches or Araucanas, who had resisted Spanish conquest for centuries. The aim of this article is to explore and interpret this problem, which has had a unique importance in the history of the Chilean nation-state, but has not been an equally significant issue in other Latin American countries. The study also examines the extent to which it is justified to trace the roots of the current conflict back to the Pinochet era alone.

Culture, traditions and natural resources of Mexican lakes under the onslaught of anthropic pressures and climate change

Indigenous people and local communities play a vital role in conserving inland water ecosystems and their resources through their cultural and spiritual values embedded in the geographic, socio-political, and economic contexts. The Central Mexico lakes along the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt harbored important prehispanic cultures that hybridized during the Spanish conquest, evolving into modern Mexico and changing how lakes were valued. The terrestrial Spanish ways of life were inimical to the prehispanic indigenous lacustrine culture. After the conquest, various actions were carried out to drain the lakes for urban growth and to provide agricultural land. The result has been a decline (e.g., Lake Cuitzeo, Michoacán) and, in some extreme cases, the near disappearance (e.g., Lake Texcoco, Mexico City) of what were once extensive water bodies. Unsustainable use of resources, unsympathetic spatial planning (anthropic impacts), and climate change to warmer/drier conditions have all placed additional pressure on the inland ecosystems. Nonetheless, as herein presented, the prehispanic lacustrine cultural knowledge and traditions persist locally in some locations, having been perpetuated by indigenous people's traditions and habits.

The Ego Conquiro as the Paradigm of Modern Imperialism and its Violence Against the Struggle for Epistemic Justice

This article begins with a discussion of the implications of Enrique Dussel’s “I conquer, therefore I am” (ego conquiro) thesis as the paradigm of modern imperialism. According to Dussel, underlying the “myth of modernity” (mito de la modernidad) is an epistemological structure of a substantive ego that naturalizes European colonial expansion. Dussel admits that the “I conquer, therefore, I am” thesis began earlier than Descartes’s account of the cogito, which was theorized after the Spanish colonization of the Americas, but the substantive “I” that constitutes the ego conquiro nonetheless represents a theory of knowledge that served and continues to serve the political domination of bodies that have been historically victimized. Couched within the epistemic structure of Descartes’s cogito is a duality between soul and matter, where the former represents an immortal substance detached from the body, taken to be the recipe for rational truth, while the latter is reduced to a quantifiable object occupying a “zero-point” geometrical space. But the cogito became the epistemological standpoint that allowed for the justification of the many hidden forms of domination around the world, because it masks the social, economic, and geopolitical contexts and their history to the modern subject. This article will investigate the ego conquiro thesis and its link to epistemic violence, namely, epistemic racism and epistemicide, and will argue as a concluding point for a method of resistance that foregrounds philosophical pluralism to disrupt the internalization of the epistemologies of the Global North as the common-sense position(s) of today.

Population expansion, larger, and more homogeneous native American ancestry among Mexican mestizo populations based on 10 X-chromosome STR loci (X-STR decaplex system).

To evaluate the genetic diversity, admixture, genetic relationships, and sex-biased demographic processes in Mexican Mestizo (admixed) populations based on 10 X-chromosome STRs (X-STRs). We analyzed the X-STRs Decaplex system in 104 Mexican Native Americans to obtain the ancestral reference needed to complete the demographic analyses above mentioned. We included reported Iberian and Latin American (admixed) populations from Central and South America, as well as datasets from Mexican Mestizos based on Y-linked STRs (Y-STRs), autosomal STRs (A-STRs), and mtDNA. Higher X-linked Native American ancestry was observed among Latin American populations regarding that reported from A-STRs and Y-STRs. The interpopulation differentiation based on ancestry among Mexican Mestizos diminished according to the inheritance pattern: Y-STRs (highest), A-STRs, X-STRs, and mtDNA (lowest). This finding is related to the peculiar admixture process that occurred during and after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico (and most of Latin America), involving a large number of Spanish men (Y-chromosomes) with a lesser proportion of X-chromosomes than autosomes; besides to the limited number of Spanish women (XX) arrived in the Americas in subsequent and shorter periods. Population expansion was detected in Mexican Mestizos from all the country, except those from the southeast region characterized by elevated indigenous ancestry, marginalization, and poorness. Population growth was detected in most Mexican Mestizos, besides more homogeneous and larger Native American ancestry based on X-linked inheritance than that based on autosomal STRs and Y-STRs.

At the Heart of the Borderlands: Africans and Afro-descendants on the Edges of Colonial Spanish America

At the Heart of the Borderlands: Africans and Afro-descendants on the Edges of Colonial Spanish America

A Gold Ounce for Every Throat Cut

Peace in the Banda Oriental, at the borders between the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Río de la Plata region, marks one of the major developments in the political geography of Latin America from 1777-1801, yet the subject has not been studied rigorously. This chapter explores how this peace came about after failing several times previously. Both Spanish and Portuguese colonial agents and policy-makers affected such peace by overcoming resistance to imperialism. A Luso-Hispanic policy of removal resulted in the Jesuits’ loss of power in South America. Several successful mapping expeditions reduced Iberian dependence on native guides, limiting indigenous control over European colonization. Near extermination of cattle in the region and increased Spanish and Portuguese patrols over grazing lands curbed much of the illicit cattle hunting in the Río de la Plata. And the Spanish conquest of Colonia del Sacramento, a key contraband base, decreased smugglers’ activity in the region. As the power of these non-governmental actors diminished, Iberian empires augmented their claims to sovereignty in the region and could finally affect the peace that Lisbon and Madrid so desired. This moment demonstrates a brief apogee in Iberian colonial control in the late eighteenth century.

Devouring the empire: the Pijaos’ anticolonial project in the sixteenth-century northern Andes

ABSTRACT This article examines the making of an anticolonial Indigenous coalition in the sixteenth-century northern Andes that came to be known as the Pijaos. I move away from interpretations of the Pijaos as a pre-Hispanic people who temporarily halted the Spanish conquest to argue that theirs was a political project that expanded in opposition to Spanish colonialism. The Pijaos went from being a few hundred people around the Saldaña River in the 1550s to thousands of people spanning the central Andean range. They spread a message of freedom from the New Kingdom of Granada and waged war against everyone who did not join their cause. To understand the historical construction of this Indigenous sovereignty and its expansion over half a century, we need to reflect critically on the Spanish stereotypes of the ‘indios caribes’ (cannibals), which abound in colonial archives. I show that the Pijaos mobilized Spaniards’ own stereotypes and fears of cannibals against them. What the Spaniards saw as a massive feast of bodies was in fact the incorporation of new peoples and groups into their political framework.

Designing Truth between Manuscript and Publication: The Eighteenth-Century French Vision of Peru in Marmontel’s Les Incas (1777)

This essay interrogates the tensions between historical fact and colonial fiction in Jean-François Marmontel’s Les Incas, ou le destruction de l’Empire du Pérou (1777). Through this study of deleted passages and publisher notes in the 1776 manuscript of the novel (Houghton Library, Harvard University), Marmontel’s concern with verisimilitude, truth, and objective reality belies the fantasy of conquest and the myths of American Indigeneity that are central to eighteenth-century French understandings and imaginings of the Inca Empire and the American continent as a whole. Politically, the novel served a dual purpose: to vehemently denounce the Spanish conquest of the Americas and to subversively critique the “fanaticism” of the ancien régime in the years leading up the 1789 Revolution. Across the Atlantic, the novel was read by generals of the Latin American Wars of Independence, and it shifted from an allegorical text to a direct call for revolution. Despite Marmontel’s aim of creating a philosophical and historical novel, Les Incas perpetuates the hegemonies and hierarchies of colonialism, falling back onto well-established tropes. In choosing what was considered in Europe as “exotic” as a vehicle for political critique, Les Incas maintains and reinforces the very systems against which the revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century fought.

“From Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization”: (North) American Historians, Spanish Conquistadores, and the Fate of the Amerindians in the New World, 1840s–1960s

This article looks at the (North) American historiography on Spanish America with a particular focus on the fate of the Amerindians from the 1840s to the early 1960s. For over a century, (North) American historians routinely romanticized the Spanish conquest, while also routinely scorning the indigenous population (as well as mestizos and blacks), and embracing the rising pseudo-scientific Anglo-Saxon racism of the day. Down to the 1960s, (North) American historians by and large viewed Amerindians as savages and barbarians, while they interpreted the history of the Spanish conquistadores and their successors in ways that held Western civilization itself up as the main colonial heritage in the Americas (north and south).

Town in the New World During the Spanish Colonization of the Americas

Town in the New World During the Spanish Colonization of the Americas

Investigating Pre-Columbian Gold and Copper in Costa Rica – Ores, Mines and Artefact Production

The wealth of pre-Columbian gold, copper and guanín (an alloy consisting mainly of gold and copper; also tumbaga) artwork of Costa Rica suggests that exploitation of its abundant ore deposits goes back way before the Spanish conquest. The name of Costa Rica itself in fact alludes to the large numbers of golden metal objects worn by the indigenous peoples upon arrival of the conquistadors. Up to now, however, very little is known about pre-Columbian mining in the country or the raw material provenance of these artefacts.In a transdisciplinary project, we aim to reconstruct the metallurgical process chain by combining (mining) archaeological research with geochemical analysis of local ores and metal artefacts using a combination of different techniques. We identified four major gold and copper districts with different mineralisation types, which are the focus of our fieldwork-based research. They are surveyed for potential signs of pre-Columbian metal production and sampled for ores and their processing remains. On the other side of the process chain, we focus on the metal artefacts in museum collections. They are systematically registered in a database, which serves as a basis to identify correlations with the geochemical signatures of the artefacts, and to retrace potential links to possible areas of origin or different workshops. Once the necessary basic data have been collected, we will focus on economic and socio-cultural aspects of metal production and circulation. The results from Costa Rica will be put into perspective of New World early metallurgy and can provide a starting point for future research between Mesoamerica and the Isthmo-Colombian region.

Испанская конкиста как культурная травма: легитимация травмирующего события в испанской прессе

The article examines the process of legitimation of the conquest in the Spanish mass media political discourse. The study appears to be relevant due to the recent intensification of controversy surrounding the justification of Spanish colonization, as well as the process of delegitimization of this historical event in the Latin American media. The scientific novelty of the paper lies in that it provides an analysis of cultural traumatization and legitimation as interconnected sociological processes that are linguistically represented in the Spanish political media discourse. The study is carried out on the basis of written and oral discourse of Spanish politicians and public figures legitimizing this traumatic event. In the course of the work, it was established that the process of legitimation of the conquest is most clearly manifested at the stage of theorization of the object of legitimation aiming to objectify its adequacy and is implemented through the strategy of moral assessment and the substrategy of analogy: the unpleasant facts of Aztec imperialism are described, there are references to the British, Arab and Dutch conquests, the expediency of which is not questioned by society. Where the Conquest is rationalized with the use of a predictive substrategy and a result-oriented substrategy, there are indicated potential negative consequences of the absence of Spanish conquest as well as the benefits of civilization that appeared in the conquered territory after the arrival of the colonizers. At the promotion stage, a strategy of appeal to authority is implemented – there are presented opinions of authoritative political and public figures and historical figures legitimizing the conquest and denying all accusations as well as the need to apologize to the former colonies. At the stage of final rooting, the conquest becomes a habitual social context.

What did 16th-century tomatoes look like?

Soon after the Spanish conquest of the Americas, the first tomatoes were presented as curiosities to the European elite and drew the attention of 16th-century Italian naturalists. Despite their scientific interest in this New World crop, most Renaissance botanists did not specify where these „golden apples” or „pomi d’oro” came from. It is likely that tomatoes were brought to Europe after the Spanish sieged the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City) in 1521 and after they conquered the Peruvian Inca emperors in 1531. Tomatoes and other New World domesticates must have been brought to the Spanish court, and were probably planted in the royal gardensin Madrid, after which they were likely shipped from Sevilla to Italy, but no written evidence have been found so far for these events. The debate on the first European tomatoes and their origin is often hindered by erroneous dating, botanical misidentifications and inaccessible historical sources. So, who saw the first 16th-century tomatoes that entered Europe? What did they look like? Who made the first botanical description, collection and/or illustration? And where did these tomatoes come from?

Mountains in the Worldview of the Nahuas of Central Mexico

Mountains as reservoirs of water have always been an immanent and crucial part of the Mesoamerican ritual landscape. Considered living beings, mountains are an important component of the core part of the Native worldview, which is particularly observable in Central Mexico, a region dominated by the highest peaks in Mesoamerica. Long before the Spanish conquest, the Nahua people who live in the area adopted and developed the ancient Mesoamerican tradition of sacred mountains, ritual landscapes and the agricultural cycle and have preserved it to this day, despite the efforts of Spanish missionaries after the conquest. This paper deals with the position of mountains within the framework of Nahua ritualism, as it has been preserved in Nahua communities in Central Mexico. The aim is to point out their central role as the structural axis of the Nahua worldview, as places where rituals associated with rainmaking, fertility and the agricultural cycle are performed.

Music and society in colonial Asunción

The singing Indians of Paraguay: musical practices and dynamics of mobility in colonial Asunción (16th-18th centuries) (Buenos Aires: Editorial sb, 2020), written by musicologist and historian Laura Fahrenkrog, won the 2021 Clarence H. Haring Award » awarded by the American Historical Association every five years to a historical study on Latin America. In turn, the author's doctoral thesis, which gave rise to the book, obtained the Miguel Cruchaga Tocornal Award in 2018 from the Chilean Academy of History. Being very unlikely that a work with such distinctions is of low quality, it is not surprising that it is one of the most relevant investigations in recent years on the musical life of colonial Spanish America.

The Rival Freedoms of Don Quixote

I view Don Quixote as a representative of Eric Nelson's 'Greek' view of freedom and Sancho Panza as an embodiment of Quentin Skinner's 'neo-Roman' view. Each has their worldview challenged by their adventures such that their view- points become reversed by the climax of the novel. I point to the Greek tradition's entanglement in the Spanish conquest of the Americas as a reason Cervantes would wish to divest his main character of the Greek view. Accordingly, I suggest that the concept of penance plays a crucial role in how the author positions the rival traditions in relation to Spanish history.

The Roots of Spanish Racialized Thinking in Colonial America, 1400–1600

This paper explores the double standard evident in the attitudes of sixteenth-century Spanish conquistadores towards Native American culture. The study investigates why the conquistadores condemned Native rituals as barbarous while perpetrating their own brutal acts against the Natives. It is argued that this inconsistency stemmed from a racialized worldview rooted in ethnocentrism, shaped by the historical influence of Islam on the Iberian Peninsula, Spanish culture including Catholicism, and their encounters with Native Americans. This racialized thinking, although distinct from modern biological racism, justified Spanish imperialism as a holy mission. By examining relevant sources, the paper reveals the complex factors that contributed to this discriminatory mindset and highlights its significance in understanding the success of the Spanish conquest of Indigenous peoples.

As the Digital <i>Teocalli</i> Burns: Mesoamerica as Gamified Space and the Displacement of Sacred Pixels

Intricately concocted temples—seemingly historically accurate down to the pixel—flash across the gamer’s screen, as the player-conquistador re-creates the downfall of the so-called “Aztec Empire,” circa 1521, a keyboard at hand instead of a cutlass. Playing the Spanish Conquest has never been easier or more exciting for the victor. Today’s recreational sundering of Indigenous-American sacred spaces and cultural monuments repeats disturbing patterns in colonialism and cultural imperialism from the Early Modern past (Carpenter 2021; Ford 2016; Mukherjee 2017). What are the lessons gamers learn by reducing digitized Mesoamerican temples, such as the grand teocalli of Tenochtitlan, to rubble? This article explores sacred landscapes, archaeology, and art relating to acts of conquest and sixteenth-century Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica. This study of Mesoamerican sacred environments supports my interpretation that careless approaches to early-modern contexts and virtual geographies created by game designers reduce the presence of Mesoamerican place-identity. I highlight empire-building games based on historical events and situate gaming experiences, old and new, as interventions in sacred architecture. The study draws in ethnospatial considerations of settings and ornamentation to furthering the recent Game Studies critiques on cartographies, narratologies, and play mechanics, here focusing on the geo-spiritual components of playing out aspects of Mesoamerica’s encounters with Spanish military and cultural conflict (Lammes et al. 2018). I reveal the importance of place attachment, ethnohistory, and archaeology in making more meaningful experiences and argue that current art history-adjacent gaming agendas create fun and profit at the expense of iconic structures of Mexico’s heritage, such as the Postclassic single- and double-topped teocalli (temple-pyramids). The final thoughts call for increased interventions from scholars upon developer-player negative feedback loops that repurpose inaccurate mythos from historiography of the “Spiritual Conquest” paradigm.