I am grateful for this blog. It allows me to write things down before my head can explode. I also don't have to be an expert at what I'm writing about. Simply another journeyer through life asking questions.
In my current series of posts about Latin America, Gentle Reader, I am hoping that I do not come across as authoritative on all matters Latino. To anyone who actually knows about these things, they are going to be well aware of my ignorance. I only wish that more of my Gentle Readers would take advantage of the comments section on this blog and please share with the rest of us your insights and wisdom. Questions, too, but don't expect me to answer them with any skill.
So, as I am reading and studying more about Latin America and the collective trauma that plagues many of the wonderful people who live in these countries, I could best call my essays a process of asking questions. There isn't a lot that I know about those countries or their history, but I am writing anyway in order to put forth the questions. This, I believe, is key to the whole process of learning.
I am writing today about hierarchy. Both cultures, the Spanish and indigenous had this in common, along with the brutal atrocities practiced in their respective religions. They were both hierarchical societies, with class structures so rigid and unyielding as to be more like caste systems.
At the very top of the social pyramids were the ruling classes and the priests. Then there were the various levels of aristocracy. At the very bottom languished the slaves and prisoners. Everyone else occupied the middle rungs, though the vast majority always seemed to hover near the bottom. Upward mobility was unknown, unheard of and inconceivable. It was a concept for treason. The rulers were at the top by divine fiat. Everyone stayed within their particular rigid category because that was the will of God and the gods. Education, especially for the Spanish, was limited to the upper echelons. The Aztecs, unlike the Maya, were universally unlettered as they did not have a written language. The Spanish would never have looked kindly on a literate and well-educated peasantry.
You always had to know your place in society, or you could be writing your epitaph. If you were gifted above and beyond your station in life, you especially had to keep quiet and invisible. You would otherwise end up getting burnt at the stake or getting your heart cut out of you while you were still breathing and conscious.
In the case of the Spanish, the greed and avarice of the ruling and mercantile classes made Latin America a perpetually open jugular vein as they parasitically sucked all the wealth out of the lands of conquest, leaving nothing for the indigenous population nor their Mestizo offspring. This has been especially true for Mexico. Of course, upward mobility has increased exponentially and the Mestizaje has become the true people of Mexico, as in many other Latin American countries. There remains an almost pure Caucasian elite, redolent with old money, and still lamely boasting of the near total absence of indigenous blood flowing in their blue little veins.
I believe the nations of Latin America are in many ways lurching forward, but the legacy of colonialism may always hang heavily like a stolen tombstone from around their necks. The legacy of social and economic inequality and historically entrenched poverty is still a long way from being eradicated.
On the other hand, these people remain among the world's most resilient, toughest, and joyous. I am especially inspired by the Mexican Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) where everyone literally laughs death in the face, picnics and parties and gets drunk on the graves of their loved ones, and dance the night away, knowing full well that they could be next, yet not caring a broken tortilla.
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