AboutDaniel Hogan Expertise I am knowledgable about Mexican history, especially the Mexican-American, and Revolutionary wars. I am also fluent in Spanish. Furthermore, I have primary knowledge about the Mexican Revolution of 1910 due to my grandfather participating in it. I am also a Mexican-American War reenactor. can ONLY answer q`s about Mexican history.
Experience Have traveled extensively in Mexico, gone to all the major archaeological sites, museums, and some out-of-the-way places only locals go to. I am also a bilingual school teacher and I help translate official and technical type documents.
Question Are you knowledgeable about the forms of religion brought upon the Mexican culture along with the Spanish conquest? And if so, how did the bringing of Catholicism oppress the culture of the native people? And in any form does it still affect them negatively today?
Answer This question is a very complex, and to answer it properly, it will take a very long and involved answer. Therefore, I will have to briefly summarize, and if you still need further assistance, you can ask more questions, but remember to ask one at a time.
The Spanish Catholic Church was not just a religion, but an institution unto itself, and consisted of a political, clerical, hierarchy, who claimed to be mediators between God and man, and which promised that obedient disciples prosperity in this world as well as salvation in the next.
The success of the Church in controlling the Indians was caused largely by the fact that they did not introduce very new or novel ideas. In fact it was very similar to the pagan religions of the natives. The Spanish version of Catholicism and its constant invocations to the Virgin and to the countless saints, was virtually polytheistic, with its ascription of supernatural powers of relics, bones of saints, and sacred images, was a survival from even older layers of thought. This faith blended perfectly with the paganism of the Indians.
Although the friars smashed the idols and forbade the worship of false gods, they adopted nonetheless whatever old rituals and legends could be reconciled with Christianity. Therefore in becoming Christians, the Indians did not cease to be pagans.
According to the book "A History of Mexico" by Henry Bamford Parkes, the doctrine of the Spanish Catholic Church, " . . . was a barbaric compound of ritual and legend which, contrasted with the more elevated forms of Catholicism in Europe, was scarcely recognizable as belonging to the same religion. Its ideal-or that of many of the clergy-was a despotic government, a privileged priesthood, and an ignorant laity."
In this aspect, not much has changed in Mexico in 500 years.
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