Remember who you are

Where did we come from? This is one of the questions that perhaps characterize the LDS culture when we talk about the Plan of Salvation and the search for answers to the questions of the soul. They are answers to the question that help us recognize who we are and the role that we have in life. The difference between this eternal principle of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and the search for the identity of Latin America is that there simply is no answer to this question.  

There have been many theories that have been formed about this question. One of them we have studied in class and is probably the most popular is the proposal by Octavio Paz who theorizes that the conception of the Latin American essence came about through a rape, through the abuse and disillusion of the union between Cortes and Malinche.  Another theory was planted by José de Alencar in his work Iracema.  In this work he expresses with detail the history of the love between a beautiful indian girl and a soldier. These are said to have given origin to the Brazilian identity. 

Because of so many theories and given that they are all subject to each individual country’s history, it is really quite difficult to identify which would be the most adequate, the one whose truth is more absolute, or the one that is capable of explaining what has been the burning question of all Latin Americans, “What is my origin?” Even though it can be confusing to try and find out whose theory is correct, it is an essential question to be able to understand who we are and what the purpose is in our lives. This reminds me a lot of the Disney movie “The Lion King”.  We see perhaps the connection of the Latin American people the search for their identity to when Simba is lost and trying to find his place in the circle of life and at the same time we can see that after talking with his father, he understands his place and purpose and knows exactly where he belongs.  I believe as Latin Americans we will just have to continue researching and looking for the theory, a Mufasa, that best explains who we are and where we come from to learn our true identities.

Trojan Horse in Tenochtitlan

          As I mentioned in my first blog, I am a Mapuche descendent, the Indigenous people in the Americas that resisted the Spanish during hundreds of years.  I have always felt proud of that heritage because even though the crown had the obvious advantage in war instruments and gear, the Mapuche people were capable of causing the Spanish crown grief through their cleverness and strategy in the battle field.

          In my last blog I openly criticized the way in which the Spanish conquerors acted towards the Native American people. Even though I do not take back or regret what I said, I fell as though I should also give credit where credit is deserved. It was a very subtle and smooth strategy for the Spanish to dissolve the Tenochtitlan Empire.

          In one of the readings it said that “the final stage of the military conquest of Mexico took place in roughly one year” (Schwartz, Stuart;  Victors and Vanquished, p. 82).  An entire empire was taken down by the Spanish Crown in just about a year.  This speaks of an exceptional war strategy which I would like to focus on in my blog in order to be more objective in my comments and be able to add something positive to the Spanish combatants.  It is from this idea that I can also see a similarity between two completely different worlds whose history has barely been told in this way before.  Both of these groups of people used this same war strategy. The Mapuche people used this strategy on several occasions to beat the  Spanish Army that not only conquer the Americas but also the Aztec Empire.

          This really reminds me of one of the most famous war strategies, the Trojan horse.  From my personal point of view, the connections that the Spanish people had with the Indians contrary to the supremacy of the Aztecs and their translators (like Malinche) who were familiar with the military forces of their rivals were their “Trojan Horses” in order to defeat Tenochtitlan.

Soulless Justification.

“…we told them that we were Christians and worshipped one true and only God, named Jesus Christ… and that the death and passion which He suffered was for the salvation of the whole human race…”

-Victors and Vanquished by Schwartz and Stuart, page 138

It is interesting to notice that said that they believed that salvation was for the whole human race, yet used this as only an excuse to justify their acts to conquer.  Every conqueror tries to justify his conquest to hide or reduce the exploitation and excesses that they exercise over the conquered people.  The most convenient justification of treating a people so badly is that they are considered inferior to the people that are overthrowing them.  This thinking process reminds me of Aristotle who in his well-known book called Politics talks about barbaric people, people that were slaves by nature, whose destiny was nothing more than to be defeated and enslaved to work and serve the Greeks.  This thesis was spread about and served for the expansion of Rome.

This way of thinking was brought over to the Americas by the Spanish where it was taken to an extreme when they not only said that the Indians were made to be enslaved, but further, had no soul, and did not belong to the human race.  The Pope had to intervene and say that they did have souls, and therefore also were men.

This declaration from the Pope was urgent and essential to justify the Christianization of the Indians in order to continue on with their conquest. It was obvious that if the Indians did not have souls, the evangelization (or saving of their souls) of its people made no sense. If it was true that there was no life after death for inhuman creatures, then why was the effort put forth to Christianize them?  I do not believe that the abuse and treatment that the Indians had to endure can be justified in any way, not even to say that it was to Christianize them.

This song is about the experience of the Chilean Indians during the Spanish conquest to our day.

Who says a Mapuche can not have a blog?

Perhaps when most people hear the word Chile, the first thing that comes to mind is Mexican food, and I won’t deny that stuffed chilis are really good. However, there are few that associate Chile with a Latin American country and maybe we need the help of a map to find out where it is actually located.

Chile was a scene where the Spanish troops had some of their largest battles in order to accomplish their goal to conquer all of South America.  These battles lasted for over 400 years. This was due to the strong rival that was found between the tribal people of the land, the Mapuches.

One of the main qualities that characterized the Mapuche people during the time of the Spanish Conquest was that they did not know how to lose, and so no one could beat them. It may be for this characteristic that when I started this IHUM 260 class and heard words like “twitter” and “blog” that I thought that this would be the cause of an exception and the technology would beat me. I thought, how would I, a descendant of these Indians who uses the same email address since I was 12 years old, be able to accomplish this task.  In my desperate search for what to do, I remembered who I was and the legacy that I carry in my blood from my ancestors and I said to myself, “ this will not be the moment in which I disappoint my ancestors!”

Who would have thought that one day a Mapuche would be using twitter or expressing himself through the means of a blog? Well, here I am the first of my kind.  Some of you may be thinking that I am just an indian using technology, but the truth is that because of the fact that I am Mapuche, I do not know how to lose and I will not let a little blue bird named twitter beat me. I will tell you all how things are going in all my battles with this bird in my next blog. However, I hope that these battles do not last 400 years this time.