Week 3: The Colonial Experience

This week has once again proven to provide fascinating insight to the colonial world. Firstly, I believe that Catalina De Erauso’s story should be more recognized within the educational system, that is, within the junior and high school curriculum, for its reference to gender identification. In these progressive times regarding gender, there needs to be more historical references to transgressive stories as the human race naturally uses history as a catalyst for cultural evolution or at least attempts to. Aside from my personal opinion, her story is as remarkable as it is entertaining. Most readers enjoy a good rebel and Catalina was as rebellious as you can get. The fact that she defied her preordained fate of being a nun at an early age is a great start to life full of cascading adventures and transcendence. I use transcendence because it would seem to me that that is what her actions purpose, he recognized her state and decided to conquer her life by her will and her will alone. Some people have such a strong will that it almost seems to they almost escape death by confronting it with no remorse, and Catalina seems to be one of those people. It is interesting to think of Catalina and Joan of Arc. Both committed crimes against the church in certain respects, both fought for their country and God, but both had different outcomes. They would be a good juxtaposition to analyze if there was a moment to discuss transgressive women.

On the hand, the casta paintings are fascinating just as they are ridiculous in an ethnogenetic sense. It was important to for the conquistadors to segregate and divide the colonies and its people as to attempt to disempower the colonies greatest power: unification. Many of the colonizers were scared of bringing massive amounts of slaves at once because of the high risk it preposed in them revolting; therefore, the established hierarchy of the casta system was effective in deeming that risk as the people saw each other as more or less than. It is more so an effective example of the state’s heteronomy influence on the people. At the same time, it is very dehumanizing and horrible start to the people’s ethnogenesis, as a key part of enthogenesis is the race’s own recognition of self, without or with very minimal, outside or heteronomic influence.

I wonder how every class in the casta paintings during the times that the original paintings were produced, would paint the others classes using only their idiosyncrasy? I think that would give us more insight into the totality of the colonial world.

1 thought on “Week 3: The Colonial Experience

  1. jenniah minchin

    I think you’ve posed a really interesting question that boils down to how did these people see themselves? Unfortunately, I think that even if the classes had the opportunity to paint their own versions of casta paintings, the hierarchical orders of the paintings would remain relatively the same. I think the racial and social hierarchy was made very clear from the beginning of the colonial process, meaning that in a way, it was forced into everyones brains. I do, however, feel that if the different classes had a chance to paint themselves in their own version of a casta painting, I think they would have represented their culture differently, and their families differently. The casta paintings as we know them, make all sorts of assumptions about how ones race affects their family life, and I agree with you in saying that different versions of the casta paintings would have perhaps provided more insight to what life was like during the colonial times. I think we lose a lot of a story when only one perspective is heard.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *