Week #2 Reading Responses

"Captives and Cousins" was pretty difficult to read, but I think I understood most of it. I guess it was about how some men went around performing a dance, and it sounds like a very interesting dance. And then it sounded really weird how they dragged a little girl around with them, but I guess that is the culture. I don't know, this just seems like a very strange ritual/dance. I also find it interesting how know one really knows where this came from and there is no exact origin of where it started. It seems pretty important because there is a lot of honor involved, and that seems pretty important to these people. It also seems like the women are not treated with a lot of respect and don't really participate in the ritual, but the sword battles seemed pretty cool.

I thought "Letter to Charles V" was an interesting read. I guess its an account of what Cortes sees when he is exploring the new world and you can definitely tell he is probably exaggerating a little bit from what we know today. He talks about how there is so much hunting to be done and how there are as many riches as Solomon had in his temple, which is not true. It also seems like he spends a lot of time talking about how bad the native people are with all their sacrificing and cutting out the hearts of their own people while they were still alive, but the Aztecs write how they just sacrificed their enemies. Cortes really stresses how they need to force Christianity on them and I'm not sure if this account can be trusted because it seems like Cortes was just trying to get permission to attack the natives.

The next reading was a poem titled "The Fall of Tenochtitlan" and it seemed like there was a very sad and depressing tone. The author seemed to be writing this with absolutely no hope, but the Spanish were so much more powerful and there was probably little the people could do. I still think its amazing how the Spanish were able to conquer an empire in a matter of a few days, I mean the Aztecs weren't stupid or anything. The Aztecs weren't even doing anything bad to harm the Spanish, but the Spanish just had to attack. And the poem ends with how the Spanish are going to end up slaves, which is probably even worse than dying for them. And the poem says that the Aztec people would look up to their king, but the king wasn't able to do anything. It seems like the Aztecs are upset with how they can't fight back.

The last reading was from the "Codex Mendoza," and this was just a history of Mexico, but in paintings. It was interesting to see the social rankings and political system of the people and I also thought it was cool to see the duties of the priests and the rankings of the warriors. The shape of the land drawing were also pretty interesting, they weren't made with the topography in mind, but the important political, social, and economical events. I guess Philip II had the right idea when he wanted to better understand the culture. And the regular maps where also drawn very well and had a lot of detail.

Week #1 Reading Responses

The video talked about a concept that I did not really know or have heard about much, orientalism. It focused on the views of a man that had been studying the concept for a while, Professor Edward Said. From the video, I was able to figure out that orientalism is knowing what a certain person or population is based on the color of their skin and where they live. Its an interesting concept and it probably needs to be taught more, I mean had never heard of it. It's probably pretty controversial though because it seems to be similar to racism in some way. I definitely agree there is some sort of orientalism in our culture today, but I'm not sure to what extant. I mean, who doesn't look at someone with brown skin and think, that person must be from the middle east and takes part in middle east culture. Its definitely present, but I'm not sure if it is a good or bad concept to have in our society.

The poem that was assigned for reading was called "The White's Man Burden" and it took a surprising view. Now I can't really tell if this poem is trying to be sarcastic or not, I would have liked for someone to read it to me. It was written after the Spanish-America War, so I figured it was referring to what the white man was doing during that time. It talks about how the white man has caught people, tried to gain profit, and mark roads with the dead and living. I also figured this poem takes place in the new world. If its not sarcastic, then I would say this is a pretty harsh poem about all the bad things the white man has done in its history. Its not something I like to be reminded of. If its sarcastic, I would say this poem is saying how stupid the white man has been in conquering the new world, and how could have done things different to avoid all the violence.

The last reading was "Discourse of Colonialism" and it was a pretty intriguing to see what the author had to say. The author really seemed to focus on how people are so easily able to avoid a lot of the bad things that are going on in the world. And the author says Europe was built on these principles. It is a good idea for civilizations to come in contact with each other, but not in a violent way. The author also refers to Hitler and Nazism a lot here and said that people were saying it would just pass with time. Well it didn't pass and the Nazi's were still doing very bad things to people just because of the color of their skin, and people would just shut their eyes. People finally stepped in when it Hitler's plan was hurting them as well. The author also says Hitler was a humiliation for the white man, which I have to agree with. The author also said that colonization has destroyed some great civilizations because of what the white man wanted. This is a pretty harsh reading, but I have to say that I agree with what the author is saying here. The white man has made some horrible mistakes.