Latin America: A Legacy of Oppression Essay -- essays research papers

Latin America A Legacy of OppressionWhen the Europeans first arrived in Latin America, they didnt realize the immensity of their actions. As history has proven, the Europeans have enforce many things on the Latin American territory have had a hanker, devastating effect on the autochthonal people. In the centuries after 1492, Europeans would tone down much of South America and impose a foreign civilisation upon the already established civilizations that existed before their arrival. These imposed ideas left the continent wobbly and resulted in the loss of acculturation, the dependence on European countries, and a long standing ethnic tension between primevals and settlers which is evident even to this day. The indigenous people of South America, which included the Aztec, Olmec, and the Maya cultures of Central America and the Inca of South America, had demonstrable complex civilizations, which made use of calendars, mathematics, writing, astronomy, the arts, and architecture. Unfortunately for them, the Europeans cared little about the culture they would be obliterating, and cared more about their own ulterior motives.Before the regularise of the Europeans, the different tribes scattered throughout Latin America would be viewed by western standards as somewhat barbaric. The European friars were horrified by autochthonal practices and felt obligated to eliminate them. (Gibson 72) An extremely Christianized view of the natives was formed which viewed them as ignorant pagans. Some accounts reported that, The natives were so savage and stupid as to be beyond belief. For the say, these early tribes were bestial, and that many ate human design others taking their mothers and daughters for their wives, besides committing other great sins, having much intercourse with the devil, who they served and held in high esteem(Hanson 29). This extremely biased thinking was common in the era of colonization among settled Europeans and sparked a crusade of Christianity on the pristine tribes to westernize their civilizations. The Europeans felt free to do this because they found no native tradition worth preserving and where the Indian element was absorbed almost unnoticeably into the alien (Salas 42). The European powers hid under a veil of Christianity to gain financial support for the underlying atrocities they were committing to the people of Latin America. The European governments primary(prenominal) goal ... ...s, 1966Hanson, Earl Parker. South from the Spanish Main, Delacorte Press, 1967"Latin America." Encarta. CD-ROM. Seattle Microsoft, 2001.Leon, Juana Ponce de. Our Word is Our Weapon, sevensome Stories Press, 2001Liss, Peggy K. and Liss, Sheldon B. Man, State, and Society in Latin America, Praeger      Publishers, 1972Lyon, Patricia J. Native South Americans Ethnology of the Least cognise Continent, Little,      Brown and Company, 1974McDonald, Ronald H. and Ruhl, J. Mark. Party Po litics and Elections in Latin America,      Westview Press, 1989 The Peace of Latin America. National Geographic October 1905 479-480Picon-Salas, Mariano. A Cultural History of Spanish America, University of calcium Press,      1963Radin, Paul. Indians of South America, Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1942Ribeiro, Claudio de Oliveira. Has Liberation Theology Died? The Ecumenical Review Jul. 1999 304Toplin, Robert Brent. thrall and Race Relations in Latin America, Greenwood Press, 1940Veliz, Claudio. The Centralist Tradition of Latin America, Princeton University Press, 1980