First and foremost, I would like to say shoutouts to Jon’s haircut in this one. It looks nice.Re: Religion as WeaponIn one of our previous classes, we discussed (briefly) the use and implementation of religion re: the new world. In my group, we discuss…
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta paintings, colonialism, cultural appropriation, ethnic cleansing, indoctrination, problematic, religion, Spain, spanish
First and foremost, I would like to say shoutouts to Jon’s haircut in this one. It looks nice.
Re: Religion as Weapon
In one of our previous classes, we discussed (briefly) the use and implementation of religion re: the new world. In my group, we discussed that religion has the ability to be used as a weapon intended to indoctrinate people. One of my classmates in the discussion called himself a “recovering catholic”, and never have I found a term with more relatability than that one. Upon leaving this discussion, I wondered if there was any room for spirituality in religious institution. It seems to me that in history (such as the Philippines, which was also a Spanish colony at one point), religious institutions are primarily used to instill certain morals and ideas in the best interests of the colonizers. The term “ethnic cleansing” comes into play in the lecture in pertaining to this, with the King and Queen of Spain made it clear that an unwillingness to concede to their religion would be punishable by death. I find it really tough to come up with a response to this aside from silence and a lot of lingering thoughts all pointing to “that’s so wrong.” Really depressing stuff.
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Re: Casta Paintings
Casta paintings are an interesting breed, as they function as art pieces, as well as a potential piece of anthropological and historical research for a shifting culture. I kind of see a lot of relevant contributions that casta paintings. The first being the aforementioned potential piece of anthropological and historical research of latin american culture during colonial rule. It allows us, as people who are looking into history and culture, to contextualize and peer into the ideals and societal perceptions of the spanish colonial elite on the growing society they are a part of, as well as how they perceived groups of people. However, that component is dedicated more to the future (us as observers) as opposed to the present of the casta paintings. I feel like casta paintings have the capacity to be construed as blueprints for to literally box in certain groups into certain stereotypes. And even as anthropological and historical research, they can get pretty unreliable at certain parts, like having certain groups of people labelled as “I don’t know understand you are” or “a step backward”. There are points when looking at and reading about casta paintings where it’s remarkably easy to say “that’s problematic”.
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta paintings, colonialism, cultural appropriation, ethnic cleansing, indoctrination, problematic, religion, Spain, spanish
I hadn’t thought of the colonial experience as a Spanish (or European) crisis of identity before. I had pictured the colonizers as eagerly consuming all the land they were able to, and exploiting those resources and people who lived there. … Continue reading →
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta paintings, colonialism, disease, europe, gender, hierarchy, indigenous, mixture, race, Spain
When learning about history, what seems to stick with me the most is how historical events and ideas manifest themselves in the present day. When reading about casta paintings this week from Susan Deans-Smith’s article, I kept thinking about how these … Continue reading →
Posted in Blogs, Videos, Week 3 | Tagged with casta, casta paintings, colonization, diversity, ethnicity, hierarcies, history, identity, immigration, Peru, race, Venezuela
After reading about the Casta Paintings, the deconstructionist side of me wonders what Jacques Derrida would have to say about them and everything they stood for. I find it fascinating that the separation of society is so fastidiously depicted in the paintings right down to what was worn by whom; and I suppose they had […]
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta, de Erauso, gender roles
This week we have looked at casta paintings and the colonial experience. I found the casta paintings really interesting because they represented the social hierarchy found in Latin America at the time. At first, I tried to search for any signs that casta paintings might’ve had the intention of celebrating diversity by showing the different […]
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta paintings, Catalina de Erauso, colonial experience
This week we have looked at various casta paintings and how they reflect the ‘colonial experience’. At a first glance, through the lecture video and just by viewing the casta painting I have attached, it is easy to see that the colonial experience was NOT easy to navigate and had many more levels of social […]
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with casta paintings, colonialism, identity
1492 was the fall of Granada brought to an 800 year of Muslim war. The Alhambra showed how Jews were all evicted, and how this can be described as ethnic cleansing. The new world claimed that the people were natural slaves whereas the Las casas saw them as potential Christian converts.
This was by far the most interesting video I have seen to date from taking this class.
It was shocking to see how the population of indigenous populations of the Americas had been halved in 1550. This then caused importing of slaves from Africa- it was interesting to see this as in high school in Kenya, we had been taught the history of slavery from the African perspective, reading textbooks that show how Africans had been exploited and to what degree. The lectures and videos showed me an entirely different lens to what had been going on the complete other end of the world in regard to African slaves and how they had been used on sugar plantations as well as why they had been imported and this had been due to a huge drop in the number of slaves that were already living in America at the time.
I previously had no knowledge that countries like Brazil had some of the highest numbers of slaves, this was a country that I would have previously never associated with the notion of slavery. It was because of this that the “Casta paintings” evolved. This was a hierarchy drawn out into dived boxes or grinds. Each grind representing or assigning racial combinations to names and a series of attributes such as clothing, occupation, land and housing. Casta painting were always almost always multiple and are a series of 16 scenes of racial mixture represented in a family group. It showed groups of:
Mestizo: white and indigenous
Chino: indigenous and black
Brazil at the time had significant black populations of: 35% Ameridian and 28% Mestizo. Again, this had been new to me, I had no idea Brazil had African’s in their country at the time.
It makes me question however, who classified all these images and where did the names for the racial ethnicities like “Mestizo” come from?
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with africa, Brazil, casta paintings, chino, christian, clothing, granada, import, land, mestizo, mulato, muslim war, racial, slavery
1492 was the fall of Granada brought to an 800 year of Muslim war. The Alhambra showed how Jews were all evicted, and how this can be described as ethnic cleansing. The new world claimed that the people were natural slaves whereas the Las casas saw them as potential Christian converts.
This was by far the most interesting video I have seen to date from taking this class.
It was shocking to see how the population of indigenous populations of the Americas had been halved in 1550. This then caused importing of slaves from Africa- it was interesting to see this as in high school in Kenya, we had been taught the history of slavery from the African perspective, reading textbooks that show how Africans had been exploited and to what degree. The lectures and videos showed me an entirely different lens to what had been going on the complete other end of the world in regard to African slaves and how they had been used on sugar plantations as well as why they had been imported and this had been due to a huge drop in the number of slaves that were already living in America at the time.
I previously had no knowledge that countries like Brazil had some of the highest numbers of slaves, this was a country that I would have previously never associated with the notion of slavery. It was because of this that the “Casta paintings” evolved. This was a hierarchy drawn out into dived boxes or grinds. Each grind representing or assigning racial combinations to names and a series of attributes such as clothing, occupation, land and housing. Casta painting were always almost always multiple and are a series of 16 scenes of racial mixture represented in a family group. It showed groups of:
Mestizo: white and indigenous
Chino: indigenous and black
Brazil at the time had significant black populations of: 35% Ameridian and 28% Mestizo. Again, this had been new to me, I had no idea Brazil had African’s in their country at the time.
It makes me question however, who classified all these images and where did the names for the racial ethnicities like “Mestizo” come from?
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with africa, Brazil, casta paintings, chino, christian, clothing, granada, import, land, mestizo, mulato, muslim war, racial, slavery
1492 was the fall of Granada brought to an 800 year of Muslim war. The Alhambra showed how Jews were all evicted, and how this can be described as ethnic cleansing. The new world claimed that the people were natural slaves whereas the Las casas saw them as potential Christian converts.
This was by far the most interesting video I have seen to date from taking this class.
It was shocking to see how the population of indigenous populations of the Americas had been halved in 1550. This then caused importing of slaves from Africa- it was interesting to see this as in high school in Kenya, we had been taught the history of slavery from the African perspective, reading textbooks that show how Africans had been exploited and to what degree. The lectures and videos showed me an entirely different lens to what had been going on the complete other end of the world in regard to African slaves and how they had been used on sugar plantations as well as why they had been imported and this had been due to a huge drop in the number of slaves that were already living in America at the time.
I previously had no knowledge that countries like Brazil had some of the highest numbers of slaves, this was a country that I would have previously never associated with the notion of slavery. It was because of this that the “Casta paintings” evolved. This was a hierarchy drawn out into dived boxes or grinds. Each grind representing or assigning racial combinations to names and a series of attributes such as clothing, occupation, land and housing. Casta painting were always almost always multiple and are a series of 16 scenes of racial mixture represented in a family group. It showed groups of:
Mestizo: white and indigenous
Chino: indigenous and black
Brazil at the time had significant black populations of: 35% Ameridian and 28% Mestizo. Again, this had been new to me, I had no idea Brazil had African’s in their country at the time.
It makes me question however, who classified all these images and where did the names for the racial ethnicities like “Mestizo” come from?
Posted in Blogs, Week 3 | Tagged with africa, Brazil, casta paintings, chino, christian, clothing, granada, import, land, mestizo, mulato, muslim war, racial, slavery
