For my substantive blog post this week, I dwell further into the background behind how marginalization began in Andean regions of Latin America. Daniel Gade (1992) discusses the positive and negative affects Spanish colonization had on Andean communities, one of which was social transformation. There is a possibility that the social transformation he discusses helped form the foundation of the marginalization we see in those areas today.
Spanish conquest over several Andean regions, including Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia, forced various ideologies and structures to those areas, planting the seed that shaped the marginalization we see today. Although there were some positive outcomes to Spanish colonization, such as the introduction of new crops, animals, and land practice techniques, the negative consequences were extreme. The Spanish not only required native laborers to accommodate their agricultural practices, but they also reshaped architecture to mimic that of western culture, which dominated over the sustainable systems Andean peoples had skillfully developed over centuries. Additionally, Spanish colonization introduced unfamiliar diseases, wiping nearly “90 percent” residing in the Andean regions across Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador (Cade 1992:465). Further, it is possible that marginalization of Andean women began with the forced paradigms of western nucleation.
Nucleation was a Spanish idea that was forced on Andean people upon conquest to shape the social structures into appearing more westernized. According to Juan de Matienzo, a Spanish lawman settled in Peru during the 1500s, Andean men would not be considered ‘men without being together in towns,’ meaning their social dynamics needed to change for them to establish “order” (Cade 1992:472).
Source: Gade, Daniel W. 1992. “Landscape, System, and Identity in the Post-Conquest Andes.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82(3):460-477.