natureofleft's Blog 2010-02-06 21:31:51

First of all when looking at these selections of speeches and documents, one must keep in mind that all of these were transcribed or written down after the Spanish conquest.  This is important because it is known that the Spanish were in the business of spreading Catholicism.  So of corse, after defeating the warriors, the peninsulares began their reign of political, ethnic, and cultural domination.  This is evident in the speeches most notably in the dialogues and the testaments at the end.  In the dialogues their is talk of “the Lord.”  This Lord can only be taken as the christian god, Christ, which would have been taught by the friers.  Greetings include the lord’s blessing, common again with teachings by missionaries.  The fact that the christian god is seen as the lord shows the domination of the spanish culture on the natives of meso-america.  The testaments at the end of the pdf show much more in terms of the cultural domination.  Amerindians have taken christian names, such as Martin, Maria, augustine, etc.  The presence of the christian god is also seen in these testaments.  The testament of Maria interests me as it is an amerindian women clearing her and some of her husbands’ debts.  First, the notion of debt in this testament is one imposed by the Spanish, or at least I presume it is.  This is due to, first of, the testament was made to Spanish executors, Miguel Garcia, Martin de Santiago, Anton Jacobo, and Juan de San Pedro, and secondly that the debt is to paid out in a monetary, peso.  Maria proclaims the debts as hers, even though some were acquired by late husbands.  None the less, Maria assumes these debts are hers and in order to make good on the debts, she is forced to sell her house.  Questions that come to mind, If not for the Spanish, would the Amerindian society have the notion of debt? and How far could a woman go to pay or rebuke a debt?