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Columbus'
Role in the Dramatic and Deadly
Cultural Transformation of the Americas
By Rubi Mendoza
"O
Adam, you may have whatever you desire"
(Humanism's liberating idea, expressed in an essay by Pico della
Mirandela)
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In
early allegorical images, "America" was sometimes portrayed
as a noble, native woman submissively awaiting European
arrival. Out of the doomsday mentality caused by the
Black Death, emerged new ideas about the individual
human subject, which fostered European exploration in
the 15th and 16th centuries. Spawned by humanism's liberating
ideas, Christopher Columbus set into motion a chain
of events that altered human history on a global scale.
The
interactions among various cultures produced a complex
mosaic of relationships with varying forms of resistance
and adaptation among Indian, African, and European peoples.
Europeans were at the top of society, and Native Americans
and Africans were at the bottom. All of these encounters,
some brutal and traumatic, irreversibly changed the
way in which peoples in the Americas lived.
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Roughly
three hundred years after Columbus introduced the
Americas to the Europeans in 1492, Mexico became the
first Spanish-ruled nation in Latin America to gain
freedom from conquest. The Aztec empire was less than
a century old when it was conquered by Spain. The
interactions Columbus had initiated between Europe
and the Americas led to disease, forced labor, invasion,
and conquest. Europeans caused the deaths of millions
of indigenous American peoples, including the Aztecs,
in what can only be described as one of the greatest
dramatic cultural interactions.
The
Spaniards introduced slavery and brought in enslaved
Africans as early as 1502 to replace the dwindling
labor supply as Native Americans died from being forced
to work and from European diseases. As a result, a
strict social structure emerged in the Spanish colonies.
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Diego
Rivera mural showing Spanish Conquistadors branding
Indian slaves.
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By
the end of the 18th century, these new Americans began
to rebel against their European masters. Independence
movements spread, creating many separate nations. While
colonial languages became widespread, millions of people
continued to speak their own native tongues. Today,
distinct peoples from throughout the world continue
to come together in the Americas and many hold onto
or reclaim their uniqueness.
The
process of cultural exchange and adaptation can be seen
in religion, ceremony, and daily life. However, the
tensions between tradition and change, prosperity and
poverty, tolerance and intolerance in the Western hemisphere
continue to create turbulence.
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