2. Colonial Latin America- Chapter 1
Gaspar Antonio Chi
• Gaspar Antonio Chi- Maya nobleman
viewed himself as key contributor to legal
development and maintenance of Spanish
colonies
• He developed pensions, royal rewards all
under the probanza de merito
• Political divisions set context for Mayan
accommodation or resistance to the
Spaniards
• Chi decided to accommodate which
contributed to his achieved status later in
life
• In 1565, Chi took up post as choir master
and school teacher in Mayan community
• The native elite shaped colony policy by
providing insight regardless of tribal support
in Americas
• This shows how the Spanish depended on
the noblemen and could not colonize on
their own
3. Colonial Latin America- Chapter3
Dona Isabel Sisa
• Dona Isabel Sisa- A sixteenth century
Indian woman resisting gender inequalities
• Dona fell off her horse and was hurt bad
enough for a scribe to write a will and
testament
• She tried to obtain her rightful share of
the property accumulated during her
marriage to don Domingo Itquilla
• She was however subordinate to her
husband in a male dominated society
• She tried to control her destiny by using
Castilian inheritance laws to resist
prevailing gender inequalities of society
• Andean elite enjoyed political power
through writing
• Wealth prevailed over traditional values;
money and prestige were more important
than what was fair during the sixteenth
century
4. Colonial Latin America- Chapter 4
Domingos Fernandes Nobre
• Fernandes Nobre was deep in sertao, or
wilderness, living on the coast for trade of
Indian slaves to the Portuguese
• This was the essential supply for sugar
plantations
• He was labeled as a Mameluco who were go-
betweens- men who lived both in wilderness
and costal settlements, initiating sale of
Indian slaves
• He supplied Indian slave who labored on the
first sugar plantations in Brazil
• Portuguese were reliant on the Mameluco’s
• Disastrous decline in Indian population forced
sugar planters to search for other laborers
• Led to reliance on African slaves
• Go-betweens paved the way for the
Portuguese colonization of the wilderness but
could not survive past the initial stages of
colonization
• Indians were exploited just as the go-
betweens
5. Colonial Latin America- Chapter 5
The Mysterious Catalina
• An Indian was called Mestizo
• Spaniards and blacks were markers of caste
which were identities assigned at birth and
remained fixed throughout a persons
lifetime
• Ethnic Lords who traced ancestry to Inca,
Maya or Aztec nobility did not become
“European”
• “Tainted”- conversos or moriscos(Jews or
Muslims who converted to Christianity)
• Court case of labeling Catalina as Indian or
Spaniard unclear
• Historians usually get descriptions from
people of authority which display a bias
that is the reason for uncertainty
• In a male dominated world, she was at the
hands of powerful men
6. Colonial Latin America- Chapter 6
Ursula de Jesus
• Ursula de Jesus was a Afro-Peruvian
religious servant- donada
• She was a mystic who meditated to
communicate with Jesus Christ
• Ursula inherited the status as a slave from
her mother
• Concerns with racism and race relations
were constant in Ursula’s life
• Ursula found herself caught between her
position as a visionary and a freed black
woman
• According to Ursula’s visions, all souls were
capable of ascending to heaven
• She served as a model for women of color
in Lima; showed that social class structures
were not divine
7. Colonial Latin America- Chapter 7
Zumbi of Palmares
• Zumbi of Palmares challenged the Portuguese
colonial order
• He brought about the idea that the colonial
system had inequities and disorder of slavery
of the black man
• Ancestor’s who began Palmares forged a new
society in the mountain fortress
• They reconstructed its “golden age” before
the 1670’s
• The basis of economy was agriculture,
therefore slavery was a main resource
• The traded surplus foodstuffs for guns, salt,
and manufactured goods
• He was one of the heroes of Afro-Brazilians
who celebrate his courage, leadership and
heroic resistance
• He saw both worlds: slavery and freedom
which give people hope for equality
regardless of color
