Colonial Ranches (week 10)

During XVI colonial ranches were getting bigger and better but very few of them lasted until XVIII, this make other companies join and make more ranches it also started to spanned all over the country, Popayan, Santa Fe, Cali, Honda and Mariquita. In the XVIII other ranches were used and the control of Negroes, Indians affects this so the ranches started to popularize this new form of develop the country.

They harvest cacao in lots so it was very important because lots of companies started to sled this and the country began to grow, but how did they make the cacao? Its very difficult it requires an special care for the first 4 years and then it began to produce, they have to maintain it vey cline, in the book (Imagenes de Su Diversidad pg 107) explain very well how they harvest “En estas fincas los arboles de cacao se siembran en hileras, con intervalos de tres o cuatro metros y como es necesario protegerlos de los rayos directos del sol, se siembran al mismo tiempo, alternadamente, otras hileras de Plantain y de Lerityne que crecen muy rapido y dan magnifica sombra. L”Eritryne protégé la plantacion despues del segundo a;o, y el Plantain el primero, al mismo tiempo que produce sus propios frutos. Generalmente produce dos cosechas anuales, una en Julio y otra en diciembre y se requiere gran ciudado para la recoleccion y el secamiento de la fruta. El grano se extrae de la vaina y se coloca sobre hojas o caneyes para secarlo.”

The ranches where considered the patrimony of healthy, richness, and power.

These ranches had lots of conflicts because they work with Indians and Europeans so they fight very often. They also have another problem, if they don’t have a good climate the harvest will never show the cacao, so what they had to do was in the good climate work very hard and produce as much as they can of cacao and when there’s bad climate they don’t harvest. Could they probably pay all the workers of the ranches? No they couldn’t, so what they did was to give food to all the workers including slaves, so they could jump the salaries.

The Black Slaves(wk9)

During 1550-1792 the black slaves began to enter Nueva Granada, they were customized to do all kinds of works: miner, agriculture, fishing, and domestic works.
The conditions for the slaves life, was very hard, they didn’t live in big houses, they had to share with other families and other persons. They also had to join the church, so they became very religious. The houses were they life where very a parted from the cities, and they had to be very honest with the work, because they weren’t architects and they never had classes or any experience. The houses had to have a very good space because in only one house had to life like 45 persons or more.


The slaves had another problem, they were exposed to any kind of sickness, this was a problem for them, because the people that buy them for be slaves only wanted people without any kind of sickness. The 28% of the negroes had viruses such as: craziness, blind, Leper and Gallic.
They get sick, because of the things they eat and also because all the problems and traumas that they develop being slaves. This phrase of the book “Imagenes de Su Diversidad pg 98”: “ invalidos (eran) calificados asi por sufrir afecciones respiratorias y traumas fisicos derivados del coto y otros males”. This show us how were the black slaves.


So the life for them was very hard and dangerous, this was so cruel with them, that if the Spaniards soldiers wanted something like a house or food they will look for a slave and take all what belong to him, so this shows very clear how was the life for the slaves in Nueva Granada during this years.

Aguirre and The Wrath of God(7-8)

The movie was made in the Amazon river, the main charaters of the movie: Don Lope the Aguirre, Brother Gaspar de Carvajal, Don Pedro de Ursua, Don Fernando de Guzman, and Gonzalo Pizarro, and it was made by Werner Herzog.


The things I like about this movie are that it was filmed in Colombia and in the real place, so that make the movie more interesting because it seemed to be true, other thing that I like was how they show the Spaniards, they were lost and desperate by the illusion of finding El Dorado. And the things that I didn’t like about this movie was that the Spaniards look pretty well while they were in the middle of the jungle they should look exhausted and with out hope of keep looking for El Dorado.


I rally like the movie because it was very old and it had lots of good things like those that makes you fell like if you were at the jungle with the Spaniards soldiers, and I can recommended to other people because it gives you ideas for your works of the Colombian history and also helps you discover things that you didn’t know they happened during the colonization. The best part of the movie was: The end because it shows how Aguirre dies alone, crazy, and with nothing of hope because the Indians eliminated him.


The movie is very related to history, because it shows the people more details of the colonization and also shows how did the Spaniards maintain their religions things during a war, also shows the armament of the Spaniards and how they dress.
They always had like a king, a queen, a general and other positions in all of they’re missions, and we can conclude of this movie that the producer wants to show us the difficult it was for the Spaniards to realized something that they wanted in Colombia because they never knew if an Indian could appear.

The Indian Extinction(wk6)

The Indian extinction was evident during the XVI, The Spanish soldiers and government was taking advantage of the Indian people, and this also happened with the black people.
The urbanism was destroying the Indians homes and was obligating them to live in other part, so this was very difficult for the Indians because they had all their stuff in their villages. So they had to look for another place, where they well do all of the things they need like the food.

The Indians didn’t only have to live in other places but they also have to work all day long so that was a product of the Indian extinction, some of them were so tired that they died during a trip to work. They also had to be sold like food and other things the Spaniards sell Indians and negroes, but this was very bad because the more Indians they sell more did the people want so they increased the prize, so the live for the Indians was very difficult. In the book (Imágenes De Su Diversidad pg86) describe us perfect how tired the Indians were, “cuando pasamos los religiosos vimos a ojos vista canoas a donde llevan indios bagado, morirse los cuatro y canoa que había salido con diez, volver con solo dos, muertos del incomportable trabajo de bogar todo el día y en estas canoas se han consumido los indios del Río Grande con ser antes muchos en cantidad si no se remedia en breve quedara ninguno”.

All of this make the Indians began to extinct. They pass from 9 million to 803 thousands, this numbers are incredible but they are true and that’s one of the reasons today we can only see them in the most hidden places, because they are still afraid of the people that lives in the cities, the damage was so big that its still a problem.
That is also why we dont see much indians in Universities and schools, because of the same and also because they don’t have enough many but they don’t have because of the same problem so we can see that the problems didn’t happened in this century but it has bean growing up form the colonization to this days, but my question is, are we capable of fixing this problem?

The Importance of the Cities(wk5)

The cities were or are one of the most important things of a country, the cities ruled all the urban, power and community of a country.
The cities began been small and with the time they started to grow up, the blocs that were of two street long became 10 times bigger and that’s why the cities were so important.


The power of the cities depended on the place they where for example Cartagena is in the Caribe so it was a military city. The cities didn’t have only this responsibility of maintain the city but also give a good image to the people that came visiting it, and they have to make the citizens happy so they had to do lots of projects like: evacuating the black water and all of those things.


And we also have to talk about the community, the conquers brought with them slaves, Indians, and black people and put them hard work to became the little cities into big cities.The cities are the places were the rich and poor people mixes so the cities had their places to do it organize, they had places for rich people and for poor people, but this is a big mistake to a society put restrictions to the poor people, In the book (imagenes de su diversidad pg 57) tells a very interesting phrase “si no fenescieran sus dias viniera un gran daño a la tierra por las malas manias que tenia”.

The Spanish Colonization (wk4)

The colonization was not only about the war, but also the Spanish taught us all the traditions they had and all the food they ate.
They also were surprised with the cloths the Indians used, because they had lots of gold and precious things they had.


So all of this shows how Colombia and Spain were during the colonization, we all think the colonization was only about all those wars they had but also the tings the two nations think of each other, how they felt seeing each other.
We also can say that all of this traditions of the Spanish we’ve being using them for all this years because they change almost all the Indian traditions, so that makes us like a mix of Spanish and Indians.


The Indians also were surprised because of the cloths the Spanish wear. And like the book (Imagenes De Su Diversidad pg43) shows us how the Indians think of the Spanish “por todas partes cubren su cuerpo, solo aparecen sus rostros, muy blancos, tienen rostros como de yeso; tienen cabellos amarillos, sin embargo algunos tienen cabello negro; su barba es larga y amarilla también, son barbas-amarillas; son crespos, rizados”, this also show that they were afraid of the Spanish.

The Spanish in Colombia (wk 3a)

When the Spaniards reached the land now called Colombia and were trying to conquer it, they started to organize the territories and lands of the cities and places they reached. They took the cities by killing the man in charge and then controlling the rest of the population.

This was how the territories were divided


Dominating Community
Territory Tribal

Individual
Territory Tribal

Individual
Territory Tribal

Individual



They passed through many cities before reaching the most important one: Santafe de Bogota. They wanted to take it because it was the most important of all and if they reached and ruled, they would be showing the Colombian people that they would win and conquer them.


One of the main reasons why they were doing that was to take all the gold they found, because Colombia had lots of it. They used the Indians to help them find it. The people of the country told them lots of stories like it was the treasure of El Dorado.
El Dorado was a legend with the story of South America tribal chief who covered him self with gold dust and would dive into a lake of pure mountain water, so the Spanish had that dream of reaching El Dorado and became rich.

But one thing the Spanish don’t know was all the trouble they would have in the trip to El Dorado, they didn’t know about the jungles and rivers they had to pass to find out that it was only a legend.