Felipe Guaman De Ayala's Drawings and the Wider Purpose behind Them

Braving a new world, punishing barbaric people, spreading the influence of your king and gaining riches. These are just a few things that Juan De Onate writes in his letter published in For the Record, “Letter from New Mexico”. Juan is writing to a rich and powerful Lord in hopes that he will grant him help and protection that he needs badly. Everything in Juan letter is influenced by his knowledge that if he is going to succeed that he needs more money and help, and he uses his experiences and how strong his morality is to convince this Lord to give him more money.

He got to do a lot of extraordinary things. Las Casas became a bishop of Chiapas in Guatemala and began to set sail in America. When he arrives, he issued the “Admonitions and Regulations for the Confessors of Spaniards,” the famous Confesionario, in January 1545, which he denied exoneration to be given to the individuals who held Indians in encomienda. He later became an influential figure at court and at the Council of the Indies. He also maintained the teachings of Aristotelian principles, that the Indians “are inferior to the Spaniards just as children are to adults, women to men, and, indeed, one might even say, as apes are to men” (Castillo 28). Even though his book was somewhat over exaggerated it was not expected to convey absolute accuracy. All he really wanted was to advocate justice and have an equal amount of universal human rights for the Indians. Since he became a bishop, he knows what is right and what is wrong. He was not biased at all when writing The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies but to protect the innocent souls. Las Casas turned into the early voices for the solidarity of mankind and the universality of human rights. During his days it appeared that his voice was solitary, yet his voice still echoes several years after the fact that the poor and indigenous people relentlessly suffer exploitation and the refusal of fundamental human

Convinced of the superiority of Catholicism to all other religions, Spain insisted that the primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from heathenism and prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism. The aim was neither to exterminate nor to remove the Indians, but to transform them into obedient Christian subjects of the crown. To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the Americas were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be organized to extract gold and silver that would enrich their mother country. Las Casas’ writings and the abuses they exposed contributed to the spread of the Black Legend-the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. This would provide of a potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominance in the New World.

In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolomé de Las Casas vividly describes the brutality wrought on the natives in the Americas by the Europeans primarily for the purpose of proclaiming and spreading the Christian faith. Las Casas originally intended this account to reach the royal administration of Spain; however, it soon found its way into the hands of many international readers, especially after translation. Bartolomé de Las Casas illustrates an extremely graphic and grim reality to his readers using literary methods such as characterization, imagery, amplification, authorial intrusion and the invocation of providence while trying to appeal to the sympathies of his audience about such atrocities.

Leon-Portilla based the stories told in this book upon old writings of actual Aztec people who survived the Spanish massacres. The actual authors of the stories told in this book are priests, wise men and regular people who survived the killings. These stories represent the more realistic view of what really happened during the Spanish conquest. Most of the history about the Aztec Empire was based on Spanish accounts of events, but Leon-Portilla used writings from actual survivors to illustrate the true history from the Indians’ point of view.

While many native hybridized Christianity into their own beliefs, others resisted Christianity in order to maintain traditional beliefs. In the Huejotzingo letter, the town council mentioned that, “(The People of) many towns were forced and tortured, were hanged or burned because they did not want to leave idolatry, and unwilling they received the gospel and faith.” (236). Under colonial mindset and the concept of “just war” via the Requerimiento, the Spanish forcibly converted natives into Christianity. The Tlaxcalans, for example, hybridized European practices, such as baptism, into their religious beliefs because of their defeat against the Spanish. In the paintings shown through the Lienzo de Tlaxcala (125), governors of Tlaxcala are being baptized in order to emphasize their conversions and loyalty. Throughout the painting, tropes of military technology, through the drawings of iron lances, and Christianity, through the cross with Jesus crucified and the picture of

Spain sought out to colonize the New World and, most importantly, influence Christianity. This writing is historically significant because it validates the interactions of the aggressive Christians doing and the innocent Indians, which is eventually revealed to the Spanish public. Certain use of pathos in Cabeza de Vaca’s perspective is the most persuasive tool in his journal. His own experience in land where he too was enslaved, like how the Indians were to the Spanish, justifies his own thoughts and empathy for the victims. His accounts as a witness prompt readers to believe his word. Cabeza de Vaca’s insight onto how the foreigners treated the natives and why they were inclines to retaliate, was intended to reveal the truth. This line stated directly to his audience explains his betrayal, lastly exposing the Spanish men: “This clearly shows how the design of men sometimes miscarry. We went on with the idea of insuring the liberty of the Indians…when we believed it to be

separate how De Las Casas might have been an outspoken critic of the Spanish’s treatment of indigenous people, and how he was still a part of a repressive institution. Finally, I

Poma thought that the indigenous people were treated unjust with hatred and believed that the Spaniards were arrogant in the ways that they treated them. Poma believed that the indigenous people would no longer exist in the next twenty years because of the way that they were brutally being killed off. Married and unmarried people men and women were separated in order to make sure that they were unable to reproduce and carry on their lineage. It was a genocide, they want to make the indigenous people extinct. He wrote about how the Spanairds didn’t understand how hard the indigenous people worked, and that was the reason why their empires had become so great. They

“The moment I understood her hatred, my family had not been personally hurt by Trujillo just as before losing my baby. Jesus had not taken anything away from me. There was the Perozos, not a man left in that family and Martinez Reyna and his wife murdered in their bed and thousands of Haitians murdered at the border. Making the river they say still red. I had heard but not believed. How could our all loving father let us suffer? I looked up challenging him and the two faces merged” (Alvarez 53).

Juan Ponce de Leon was born in Spain in 1460. Looking for fame and fortune, he started his career as an explorer by assisting in Christopher Columbus’s second expedition. Later on, he started his own expeditions to search for gold. On his various expeditions, he is known for building settlements in Puerto Rico and finding Florida while on the search for the fountain of youth.

Representation” by Michael Schreffler argues that “ . . . early modern rhetoric and iconography . . . constructed a distorted view of painting in Aztec Mexico and entangled it in the conventions of colonial historiography” (407). This essay is effective because of its thorough examination of the accounts that explain a painting made by the Aztec’s at San Juan de Ulúa on Easter Sunday of 1519.

During Spanish conquest of Peru, conflicts between religion and war started. Before the Spanish started to raze Peru, Pizarro wanted to give Atahualpa a chance to be a brother in Christ with him. Following as an effect, Pizarro sent a Christian Priest to try to convince Atahualpa to accept the Christian religion. The Spanish were piqued by Atahualpa's action of throwing their revered bible to the ground. Some may have different opinions to as what may have really happened one may ask consequently, “Did Atahualpa hold the Bible to his ear?”.

You have probably learned about Christopher Columbus and how he discovered North America, but do you know about Hernándo Cortés? Hernán Cortés was a famous conquistador who caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. Hernándo, was an amazing conquistador, had a hard early life, and is very important to our world today. Hernán brought large portions of Mexico under the King of Castile. He started many cocoa bean plantations. He had a rough early life and his parents wanted him to be a lawyer, but he went his own way. He was very wealthy and successful. Without him many things would have been different.

Márquez provides a religious and political commentary through the comparison of independent action and duty to fate and religion, when Father Amador is ordered by Colonel Lazaro Aponte to