Spring 2005

History 482/582 Latin America ’s Indigenous Peoples: Conquest, Colonialism, and Survival

Professor Robert Haskett

Tuesday/Thursday, 10:00-11:20
Office Information: 355 McKenzie Hall, 346-4836
Email: rhaskett@darkwing.uoregon.edu
Office Hours: Mondays and Wednesdays, 10:00-11:00,
Thursdays, 1:30-3:30, or by appointment.

Thus they ruined and depopulated all this island which we beheld not Long ago; and it excites pity, and great anguish to see it deserted, and Reduced to a solitude. [Bartolomé de las Casas]

It is a cherished truism in history to say that the Spanish invasion of the Americas destroyed cultures like the Aztecs, the Mayas, the Incas, and many others. Yet how can that really be? Today when one travels to Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia what seems to be “indigenous” culture and “Indian” people are everywhere, from the kinds of foods people eat to the ways in which Latin Americans worship God. The truth is that with some exceptions neither indigenous peoples nor their cultures were ever completely wiped out in what we call “ Spanish America.” The societies and cultures we encounter in the region today emerged from a dynamic process of conflict, survival, adaptation, and change in which Europeans and indigenous peoples came to terms with the New Worlds confronting them. Even if the empires of the Aztecs and Incas were eliminated by Hernando Cortés, Francisco Pizarro, and the conquistadores, the citizens of those empires endured despite the incredible odds against their persistence, the military defeats, devastating epidemics of introduced European diseases, and dehumanizing Iberian prejudices.

History 482/582 investigates this fascinating process of cultural evolution. We will focus on the sedentary peoples of Mesoamerica (comprised today of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and other parts of Central America) and the Andes ( Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, northern Chile, and northwestern Argentina). Our goal is to understand Mesoamerican and Andean cultures prior to the Spanish invasions of the early sixteenth century, and they to examine the impact of those invasions on indigenous life and culture during the long colonial centuries. At the end of the term we will also take a very brief look at the state of the survivors of conquest in modern Mesoamerica and the Andes. Whenever possible, we will be coming at things from an indigenous, rather than European, perspective thanks to a number of sources produced by the supposedly “conquered” peoples themselves. Transcriptions of some of these documents will be posted on the HIST 482/582 Blackboard site.

Books:

 The following books are required for the course. You may purchase them at Mother Kali’s bookstore, which is on 13 th avenue next to the Dairy Queen. It may be possible to find a few used copies at Smith Family Books, too. A copy of each of these books will also be found on reserve for our course in the Knight Library.

John E. Kicza, ed. 1999. The Indian in Latin American History: Resistance, Resilience and Acculturation. Lanham: SR Books.

Alfredo López Austin. 1996. The Rabbit on the Face of the Moon: Mythology in the Mesoamerican Tradition. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Gregorio López y Fuentes. 2002. El Indio: A Novel. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, Inc.

Matthew Restall. 1999. Maya Conquistador. Boston: Beacon Press.

Susan Schroeder, Stephanie Wood, and Robert Haskett, eds. 1999. Indian Women of Early Mexico. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

The following books are recommended for the course. They will be found on reserve for our course in the Knight Library, and you may be able to find used copies in places like Smith Family Books if you decide to purchase your own.

Juan de Betanzos. 1996. Narrative of the Incas. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Inga Clendinnen. 2003. Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570. New York: Cambridge University Press.

David Frye. 1996. Indians into Mexicans: History and Identity in a Mexican Town. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Miguel Léon-Portilla. 1992. The Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. Boston: Beacon Press.

Other recommended titles may be added to this list as the course unfolds. These will be posted on the HIST 482/582 Blackboard site.

Assignments

 Course grades will be based on several elements: Participation and attendance (25% of your grade), including input during in-class discussions and a few brief document and image exercises utilizing materials posted on our Blackboard site; written work in the form of a take-home exam (35% of your grade) and a final paper (40% of your grade, taking the place of a final exam), the details of which will be announced in class and posted on the Blackboard site.

Course Calendar

 The following calendar is provisional. Exact days and topics, complete with keyed in reading assignments, will be found on the HIST 482/582 Blackboard site.