Friar Juan De Zumarraga Summary

By the end of the sixteenth century, the new colonies in Mexico were thriving under Spanish control. The once vibrant and busy city of Tenochtitlan had become a distant memory, which the Europeans ensured to suppress by removing remanence of Aztec representation throughout the land. Moreover, the Spanish made every possible effort to impose its traditions on the conquered natives and rule in the manner, which favored the crown, primarily thorough the spread of Christianity. Moreover, European culture was not a matter of choice for the natives to adopt, in fact, entirely the opposite transpired. Upon arrival to the new world, the Spaniards expressed negative sentiments regarding the native’s religious affiliation and customs, which prompted

Zumarraga’s and other activists actions, over time, pushed for the removal of such practice except for northern parts of Mexico, after all, the lands were not going to work itself to produce the wealth the Spaniards required. The newly acquired lands needed to produce profits sans high cost of production, resulted in the most logical alternative: free labor, and who better than the native Indians and in the later later years, Africans, who were eventually imported by the masses, to carry out these functions?
The Spaniards undoubtedly enjoyed the authority they were granted providing their share of profits be made to the crown. They felt a sense of entitlement and invisibility, as they were men, part of a society of conquerors, and in some ways regarded themselves as “owners of the known world”. In Sor Juana Inez de la Cruz poem ‘Arraignment of Men” points out the duplicity regarding men’s innate need to control and condemn others for the same fallacies they themselves exhibit, “You men are such foolish breed, appraising with a faulty rule, the first you charge with being cruel, the second easy you decree”