B: Worldviews in Conflict 11. Conflict p. 236 Flashcards
What was the Franciscan order?
A group of Monks that went to convert Aztecs to catholism.
Cortés wrote to King Carlos asking him to send religious persons of goodly life and character. Three years after the conquest, priests dressed in the plain grey robes of the Franciscan order came off a Spanish ship at Veracruz. Franciscan priests vowed to live in the poorest conditions, never to get married, and always to obey their superiors without question. Thin from fasting they walked 500 km through the jungles to reach former Tenochtitlan (Mexico City). Cortés showed appreciation to them when they arrived.
Encomienda system
The same economic system the Spanish set up in all their colonies in the Americas
With each piece of land, the settlers were alloted a number of Aztec workers. Although the Spanish did not pay these workers, in theory, they had legal rights.
The landowners were supposed to treat them well and educate them in the Christian religion.
However, many landowners abused their workers. The Spanish Crown passed laws to stop the abuses, but due to the distance between Spain and former Tenochtitlan, the laws had little effect.
Spanish were at the top and the Aztecs were at the bottom.
What does the Spanish crown get from New Spain?
Takes 20 percent of gold
What does the governor or viceroy get from New Spain?
Collects taxes that support him, the colonial government, and the Spanish crown
What do the Spanish conquistadors and settlers get from New Spain?
They are given encomiendas with Aztec workers. After paying taxes, they kept remaining profits.
What did the Aztec people do under New Spain? Did they get anything in return?
Did the actual work on farms in return for basic necessities (food, clothing, and shelter)
Cortés had sent much of the gold back to Spain. How did he pay his army who fought with the promise of gold in the new lands?
Cortés wrote back to Spain asking for gold with little effect.
Then he started the encomienda system allowing Spanish people in New Spain to have an Aztec worker.
Cortés also mentioned that the encomienda would be lost to any man who did not either bring over his wife from Spain or marry an Indigenous woman. Basically they had to marry to keep their worker slave.
In this way he shifted their short-term goals from getting gold to the long-term project of colonizing New Spain.
Mestizo
the children of Spain colonizers and Indigenous wives
Governorship of New Spain was taken away from Cortés just as the soldiers were turning into settlers. Who became the new viceroy of New Spain?
Don Antonio de Mendoza appointed by King Carlos.
King Carlos may have feared that Cortés would want to separate New Spain from Spain since Cortés was cunning.
A steady stream of gold had to be paid back to Spain with this new leadership. The people of New Spain became angry.
When did Mexico become independent from Spain?
1821
