This was another interesting week of information. The Casta Paintings are strange but fascinating. The amount of work that went into trying to detail each and every possible combination of races and mixes seems almost insane, and shows the deep motivations the Spanish must have held for making them. I like the quote, “It attempts to provide a place for everyone, and mark sharp dividing lines… but it is needed because those lines are, in practice, blurred.” This, I believe, shows how the Casta paintings were never going to succeed.

There were some numbers from the video that I found quite staggering. The indigenous population of the Americas by 1600 was only 1/5th of that which it was 100 years earlier, due mostly to newly-introduced European diseases. Also, by 1800, six times more Africans than Europeans had come to the Americas, showing the huge amount of slavery that was taking place.

The reading on the “Lieutenant Nun” was pretty cool, and it is truly an amazing story. Catalina de Erauso showed great daring, bravery, and willingness to follow her feelings/instincts in escaping her convent in Spain, and coming all the way to America to start a new life as a conquistador. She had many crazy stories to tell, both from America and back in Spain, before she left. These included living with her brother, him unknowing of her identity, before eventually killing him in a duel where she did not realize it was him whom she was fighting. She was a great fighter, and definitely not unwilling to use her sword. And later, once she revealed her true identity, she was met with a relatively good reception, which I found somewhat surprising.