The Spanish Colonization of Latin America

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I wrote this for Colonial Latin America class.

The experiences of Spanish colonization in Latin America varied between the core areas of Mexico and Peru and the fringe areas of the Yucatan Peninsula and Paraguay. Whereas there was a firm colonial infrastructure in place in Mexico and Peru, the colonization of the Yucatan and Paraguay didn’t go as fast. It took longer for these areas to become firmly colonized.

The ability of the Spanish to dominate indigenous societies was a result of the different circumstances regarding geography and other facts in each region.  They were easily able to conquer the Aztecs because they lived in the Valley of Mexico, which obviously was a low-lying area. It was easy to get there from the coast. Peru on the other hand has a mountains terrain in the Andes Mountains. This among other facts made the conquest of Mexico much easier.

The military tactics in Mexico and Peru were similar. Both conquests focused on capturing and dominating the cities of the natives with the military leaders being set on demonstrating military strengths and capturing the native leader while making alliances with other native peoples. The two conquests differed in that it took longer to conquer Peru, not just because of the geographic features, but because the Peruvian natives actually could fight back with a good military resistance. While it may not be true that the Aztecs didn’t put up a fight because they thought the Spanish conquerors were the long awaited “return of the Sun G-d”, this was not the case with the Incas in Peru, who on their own turf, were able to put up a good guerilla warfare campaign. Not only that, but “internal divisions “prevented the victorious Spaniards from immediately following up their [military] advantage”  . The fact that Francisco Pizarro’s men fought each other in a civil war, making the Spanish camp un-unified, further hindered overall success in the conquest. In addition, the Peruvian conquerors fought against the Spanish Crown while the Mexican conquerors accepted the Crown, enabling Hernando Cortés and his men to go off and conquer other areas for Spain. However, both Mexico and Peru eventually had a centralized colonial government with a culturally significant leader.

The Yucatan Peninsula proved to show a variance in conquest. The fact that it was a peninsula enabled easy exploration of its costs via boats from the Caribbean Sea. However, the initial reaction of the Mayas was hostile between 1517 and 1519 so the Spanish explorers moved onto to Mexico Proper and conquered the Aztecs. It wasn’t until 1526 that the Spanish under the commands of Francisco de Montejo returned to the Yucatan Peninsula with permission to conquer. The conquest was not successful, however, and by 1535, there were was not a single Spaniard left on the peninsula. The success of the Maya’s resistance was a result of the fact that that the Spanish horses were no use to the Spaniards, forcing them to be foot soldiers, exposing them to Mayan guerilla warfare. In   addition to that, the Mayas took advantage of the Yucatan being a limestone shelf with little water and poisoned the wells, thereby depriving the conquerors of the necessary water they needed to survive. It wasn’t until 1540 that the Spanish returned, this time under the command of Montejo’s son.

When the Spaniard succeeded in conquering Paraguay, they attempted to transplant Spanish culture into the new colony. They attempted to take the native culture and incorporate it into the Encomienda. The Encomienda was “a grant of authority over a group of Indians. It carried the obligation to Christianize and protect them in exchange for labor services and/or tribute.”   Many Spanish agricultural additions to the life of these Indians were never that popular. For example, “most of the European garden vegetables apparently never found favor in Paraguay, even in modern times, although the country is well-suited to many of them, nor was rice adopted in the early colonial period.”    As we see, despite the attempt to transplant a Spanish culture into Paraguay, it was not successful.

All these various experiences of Spanish colonization in Latin America show the diverse situations between the different Spanish colonies in the New World. Each one proved to be unique and is its own story. These specific example serve to illustrate the diversity of the Latin American Spanish experience.