There’s Better Words than Conquest

Conquest might not be the most appropriate term to describe what happened in Mesoamerica and the Andes. There is properly no one word that can describe everything that happened there. For starter the word conquest implies that there were two armies in Latin America who fought each other and one emerged victorious and subjugated the loser. There were no army and conquistador weren’t even soldier. The conquistadors are more like bandits or raiders. Also the Native American and the author suggest that the fighting was more of an internal conflict. With the Aztec for example the other Native American wanted to take it down and the Conquistador was just in the right place and in the right time to capitalize. The Native American believe the conquistador were just minor player. That just not something you would see in a conquest.

According to the author the Native American are highly localize so even after beating the big player it doesn’t mean that they had taken over all of Latin America. The conqueror should have complete or near complete control of the population but many tribes weren’t under the Spaniard control and Spaniard had to set up a puppet governments which suggest that their rule wasn’t consolidated. Also a conquest usually means that the winner will exploit the loser. But in this case both sides exploited each other. They exploited the Spaniard for regional interest. This was more like a corrupt partnership. Several Native American “manipulate the Spaniard to improve their status” (115). Also the native never claim defeat. In a real conquest there suppose to be clear winner and the loser cannot deny that they were defeated. The native never accept the idea of “native defeat” (123).The Native said that they still continue their way of life and just they adopted some of the Spaniard style government or they just “only appeared to create a Spaniard style” (127). Word assimilation is better suited or a partial conquest would work too.