Native Americans

Historias que no son todavнa historia

The histories of the native peoples of Mexico are inappropriately termed "histories": they are not yet complete, though Europeans have thought them so since the eve of colonization.

When Europeans first came to the Americas they saw the landscape, opportunities and inhabitants through their own presuppositions, derived from the Middle Ages and, for the Spaniards, the recent unification of all Spain into one nation. The Spaniards wanted to and succeeded in including the Americas in their plans of a more global unification under Spain.

In order to achieve this goal, the Spaniards found they must conquer the native peoples both physically and ideologically. Colonial domination requires more than the use of force, both the oppressor and the oppressed must eventually believe in moral justifications of superiority and inferiority to the extent that no one challenges the new social order. Colonists convinced themselves and the natives that the natives were inferior, perhaps even soulless.

The colonists views of the natives and moral justification for their subversion can be summed up in a few points:

(a) The natives were seen as one people and the defining characteristic of that people was that they were not European, and because they were not, they were inferior and incapable of leading their own lives.

(b) Prior to the colonization, the natives lived in a single evil pagan empire. Real differences between groups of natives were only comprehensible to a heretic.

(c) The only acceptable categories and ways of understanding were European

(d & e) Native history ended the day European colonization began.

In the 18th century, precolonial history was recovered and used as an argument of legitimacy for Indians and persons of mixed heritage. Eventually, this past was considered a common past which all Americans had the right to claim a part of. Later, it was used as one of the fundamental rationalizations for the freedom of Latin American countries from European rule. However, there has always been and continues to be a tendency to conceptually separate now respected precolonial Indians from modern counterparts. Mexican culture eventually came to believe that all Mexicans were children (at least culturally) of Cuahtemoc, except the backwards, still pagan, unintegrated village dwelling Indians.

The colonization of native history doesn't end with political independence from Europe. Written histories of Mexico follow the history of the dominant social, racial, linguistic and economic classes of people, either ignoring or distorting native histories to their own purposes. The dominant classes compose a cultural concept of Mexico and Mexican history which accepts native history as a national theme, but rejects the private history of the native peoples. Mexico prizes its own private and separate national history, but will not allow its native peoples to possess the same concept about their own history.

Historical Conscience and Indian Liberation

Each village is conscious that its history has been controlled and written by the colonists and their counterparts. They know that their true history is obscured, but that a history does exist for each town.

An appropriate self history is necessary not only to explain the present, but also to form a future of freedom and the right to determine one's own destiny. An inappropriate history destroys the possibility that the future will be free from external domination.

Why