Religion and Problems in Latin American History
Religion and problems in Latin American history can be traced can be traced into colonialism that created a multiethnic population on the region. A multiethnic population was created by colonialism and many people who survived contest became part of the population. The presence of the wealthy Catholic Church in colonial Latin America and its close alliance to the state ensured that the church ran virtually all the important economic activities in Latin America. Then soon afterwards the protestant reformations followed.
The conquest, occupation and administration of Latin America led to construct Europeans constructing an unjust community: of whites and non-whites, free and unfree and taxed and untaxed community. Furthermore, the Europeans later introduced another factor, race of the African Negro that was a melting point for the problems. Due to a low number of Negroes, they intermarried with the local Amerindian people but it took a few years for the interracial contact to become evident. A two class society was created as a result. The racial mixtures were neither accepted by the Amerindians or whites and they had to survive by becoming aggressive.
Chasteen (2009, p.8) attributes poverty to its gendered limits especially in church. Duringthe time, nuns used to worship celestially but many lived poorly. The church controlled much of the wealth and they gave out money and receive interest on loans. According to the ideology of the Catholic Church, money was the root of usury prohibition and therefore the issue of giving money and earn interest was against nature.
But then, how come some nuns became major lenders? The nuns were in dire need to elicit income and relied on controversial means to make money while the Spanish crown determined the annual rate of return.Protestant churches claimed that the medieval church were corrupt and were unbiblical. Begging from 1517, Martin Luther led the way and this was strengthened by the likes of other reformers like Andrea’s Bodestein and Ulrich Zwingli. They blamed the catholic clergy for the sorry state of affairs and they believed that the Christian ritual was nothing but thinly disguised paganism. Thus Protestants were ready to purify Christians. This led to Christian reforms in some parts of Latin America like Mexico.
In many more ways, the Europe scramble to convert many Americans brought binary structures into higher relief but resulting in Europe’s interwoven dichotomies and their subjects. Nesgiv, p.27, talks off false religions and the devil being everywhere in many dimensions. The other problem on the part of religion was women; women were known to be problematic in very many ways and there place was not defined clearly. They were not allowed to be priests but the fate of such royal families like the queen was not clearly spelt out. Another murky area in religion concerned quality and quantity of religion.
How was religion to be measured? Boundaries between religion and superstition were not clearly defined and therefore the concept and religion subject got murkier.Another problem in the Latin America was the mullato children born between the local Amerindians and the Europeans. The whites knew that they were superior to others especially Africans or their sbiblings (even mixed siblings like the mulattoes, zambos). The descendants of the black slaves had a hard time making ends meet. The European arrogance saw pardos form militias that meted violence to the black slaves. Pardo soldiers were protected by all means, some of them sunk in poverty engaged in heinous activities and never paid tax to the king.
This was done in expense public. But the remedy for these activities was arrogance and hatred to the whites. The state lost effective ways of controlling and imposing taxation.
