Spanish Colonialism in Latin America

Paper Summary:

This paper attempts to show that the Spaniards tried, through many means, to convert the native peoples of their conquered lands to Spanish language. It looks at how these means, which included the destruction of codices, the teaching of Spanish to indigenous children, and the misinterpretation of communication and recordkeeping systems, all contributed to the gradual loss of native modes of communication and recordkeeping and their replacement by the Spanish forms of these systems.

From the Paper:

"There is evidence that indigenous peoples authored many codices, but the Spaniards destroyed most of them in their attempt to eradicate ancient beliefs (Fitch, 2003). Moreover, we can gain little sense of how their production was shaped by interaction with the Spaniards, since the fourth Mexica King, Itzcoatl, apparently destroyed most earlier manuscripts during his reign from 1426-1440, in order to preserve his vision of how he constructed the Mexica empire; still others simply disappeared, without being published or preserved (Fitch, 2003)."

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