Skirmish of 1692 essays

Skirmish of 1692 essays The elitist Spanish accounts make an attempt to put the Indians at the center of conflict, and accuse them of behaving ungratefully at a time in which the viceroy had tried to alleviate the corn shortage in good conscious. Don Juan de Escalante y Mendoza, the court attorney who had to prepare a report for the incident, insisted that the Indians were primarily to blame and it was necessary to contain the unrestrained boldness of a people who have betrayed the faithfulness and loyalty of vassalage with an action as unjust as it was unforeseen. He also insisted that the castas were to blame, for they had intoxicated the Indians with alcohol. Cope notes in Chapter 2, that the Spaniards had believed the racially mixed plebeians were capable of doing great harm and being malicious; therefore, they were immoral and capable of doing wrong for no apparent reason. Using this common social sentiment of the other races, Spaniards made the assumptions that such behavior was natural to the Indians and inherent in their own race. Siguenza y Gongora follows the same suit, insisting that the harvests were abundant; the Indian women were actually profiting, and that in an act of ungraciousness they (the Indians) brought about unjust uprising. Much of these statements sent were sent to the king, whom the Spanish colonials did not want to think that the non-Spaniards were being treated poorly, and supposedly this riot occurred because the Spanish colonials were unfit rulers. According to Cope, the Spaniards could provide no other explanation for this other than adopting the stereotypical view of the Indians as being savage and barbaric, and, therefore, ungrateful and very much capable of showing spontaneous resentment towards Spanish rule. This view of Indians explains why the elitist accounts are very much biased and reveal the Spanish prejudices of Indians. What did the authorities do to help? Authorities did indee...