Although I had learned about Spanish colonization and the conquistadors briefly in junior high and high school, I didn’t really know much about the Casta paintings until doing this week’s readings. \u00a0What surprised me about the article of the Casta paintings was that these artifacts were controversial even in their day, albeit the controversy was probably significantly smaller than if the same thing were to happen in this day and age. \u00a0But even so, the fact that there was dissent in how these paintings portrayed people of different races by attempting to create and represent a social hierarchy through art proves that we cannot make sweeping generalizations about Latin America or the people within it because there will always be another opinion\/voice waiting to be heard.<\/p>\n
Another thing that I found interesting this week was the notion of Spain having an identity crisis, namely its attempts to unify its peoples under a common culture and set of values – a venture that (in my opinion) ultimately failed due to the extreme diversity that colonization contributed to it. \u00a0What fascinated me about this was that in attempting to construct itself into a unified political entity, Spain produced identity crises for those it colonized – people who were ripped from their cultures and heritages and socially ranked over their ancestry; something that they had no control over. \u00a0Looking at this from a modern perspective, I believe that we can see the detrimental connotations that labels like\u00a0\u201cno te entiendo,\u201d (\u201cI don\u2019t understand who you are\u201d) and\u00a0\u201csalta atr\u00e1s\u201d (\u201ca jump backward\u201d) would have had as the phrases themselves denote a dismissive attitude towards individuals without a purely European heritage.<\/p>\n
I found Lieutenant Nun to be an easy and engaging read! \u00a0The translations were extremely well done in my opinion and the fact that the account was given in first person really piqued my curiosity. \u00a0Having the firsthand account of what she (or he, if he was transgender – not sure what the proper pronouns are in this case, so I apologize in advance) experienced as a conquistador, although a little unconventional at times, gave me insight on what life was like from that perspective. \u00a0I also very much appreciated the note written by one of the translators of the text reminding readers to take caution in putting her on a pedestal because of her status as a transgender person – what she did as a conquistador is no less abhorrent and cannot be excused under the circumstances in which she lived her life both while as a woman and then as a man.<\/p>\n
A question that I think would be interesting to discuss is how\/if at all art within the time period of colonization (such as the Casta paintings) reflects and\/or shapes the values and impressions of the people during that era.<\/p>\n
Thank you for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Although I had learned about Spanish colonization and the conquistadors briefly in junior high and high school, I didn’t really know much about the Casta paintings until doing this week’s readings. \u00a0What surprised me about the article of the Casta paintings was that these artifacts were controversial even in their day, albeit the controversy was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44761,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2074],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-3"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44761"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/learnsome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}