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Black Legend

A term popularized by the Spanish historian Julián Juderías in his 1914 book La Leyenda Negra that referred to the unfavorable image of Spain and Spaniards found in the works of many Protestant historians. The Black Legend, primarily associated with depictions of 16th century Spain ruled by King Philip II, equated the country with repression, brutality, religious and political intolerance, and intellectual and artistic backwardness.

Casta Paintings

A genre of paintings that emerged in 18th-century Mexico, illustrating an orderly hierarchical society where socio-economic status depended on skin color. In the scenes, men and women from different races are shown with their offspring and ranked according to their place in the social structure. The paintings were very popular in Spain and other parts of Europe.

Creoles (criollos)

The term used by the end of the 16th century to distinguish people of Spanish descent who were born in the New World from peninsulares, people who had been born in Spain. Over time, policies were put in place in many parts of the Spanish New World favoring peninsulares over creoles for the most important political and ecclesiastic appointments.

Castizo

A term used during the Spanish colonial period to describe the child of a Spaniard and a mestizo (a person who was half Spanish and half indigenous). These categories were fundamental to Spanish colonial society where the percentage of 'pure,' or Spanish, blood ostensibly determined a person's rank within society.

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Encomienda

A system used by the Spanish to colonize parts of Mexico and Central and South America. Under this system the King granted a person, usually a conquistador or colonist, a specific number of natives whom they were to instruct in the Catholic faith. In return, the grant holder could extract payment from the natives in the form of labor, gold, crops, and livestock. Essentially, conquistadors were granted trusteeship over the indigenous people they conquered. Although the New Laws of 1542 sought to abolish the system after a few generations, in parts of Spanish America, the encomienda persisted well into the eighteenth century.

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Holy Roman Empire

A system used by the Spanish to colonize parts of Mexico and Central and South America. Under a political realm that covered a large portion of Europe, centered on Germany, from 962 to 1806. The empire comprised much of present day Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, and parts of eastern France, northern Italy, and western Poland. In 1519, King Charles I of Spain was elected Holy Roman Emperor, becoming King Charles V.

Inquisition

A Roman Catholic tribunal created to seek out and punish heresy. The Spanish inquisition, which was sanctioned by the Pope in 1478 and not officially abolished until 1808, was marked by arrests, torture, and death sentences as the crown attempted to sort out false converts--Muslims and Jews who pretended to convert to Christianity but still practiced their former religion. Over time, the institution expanded its activities to identify and punish Christian moral offenses and political dissent.

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Latin America

The former colonies of Spain, Portugal, and France in North, Central, and South America, as well as in the Caribbean.

Liberal leaders

A term used in the 19th century to label politicians and intellectuals who embraced the separation of church and state and supported secular education, individual/private land ownership, and dismantling corporate rights (i.e., the special status or privileges that the church, army, and indigenous communities had enjoyed under Spanish colonialism). To modernize their countries, they tended to support eliminating indigenous communal lands and saw both communal land structures and the natives' traditional ways of life as obstacles to their nation's progress.

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Mesoamerica

An ancient indigenous cultural region that ran from Central Mexico south to Honduras and was one of the two major centers of innovation in the New World prior to European contact. (The other major center was centered in the Andes Mountains in present-day Peru.)

Mestizo

The term used during the Spanish colonial period mainly to refer to children born from the unions of Europeans and indigenous peoples. The meaning of the word has varied over time and from place to place; sometimes it has been defined by ancestry and at other times by culture. For example, today in Peru, indigenous people who speak Spanish and wear European dress may be called mestizos.

Mestizaje

The "mixing" of indigenous New World people with Africans and Europeans. Mestizaje also encompasses the great ethnic and cultural blend that continues today, created by Spaniards, Africans, and indigenous people, and by generations of immigration and social interaction in Spanish America.

Mexicas

The most powerful culture in central Mexico in the years before Spanish conquest. As part of the Triple Alliance with Texcoco and Tlacopan, they eventually ruled a realm with at least 5 million people from central Mexico to the Yucatan and from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. By the time the Spanish arrived in the early 1520s, the Mexican capital Tenochtitlan, built on an island in Lake Tezcoco, was the most populous city in the New World. In popular use, they are known as the Aztecs, a term that was invented in modern times.

New Laws

A group of laws signed by King Charles V in 1542 and 1543 to ensure better treatment of the indigenous people in the New World, keep Spanish colonists from taking over their lands and enslaving them, and curb the power of the encomenderos. The King signed the laws, in part, as a response to Bartolomé de las Casas’s charges of Spanish brutality toward the indigenous people. Some Spanish colonists violently resisted the laws, which led the Crown to water down some provisions.

New Spain

A Viceroyalty created in 1535 by King Charles V to administer Spain’s new colonies in the Americas. Its capital was in Mexico City. New Spain’s original territory ran from the Isthmus of Panama north through Mexico, but its area was later expanded to include what is now the southwest and southern United States east to Florida, as well as a number of Caribbean islands. The Viceroyalty lasted until 1821, when Mexico won its independence from Spain.

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Protestant Reformation

A 16th-century religious movement in northern Europe aimed at reforming the Catholic Church. It began when German monk Martin Luther spoke out against clerical abuses in The Ninety-Five Theses, published in 1517. The religious wars that pitted Protestants against Catholics lasted for more than a century, embroiling Catholic Spain in battles against the Netherlands, England, and Germany that debilitated Spain’s economy.

Repartimiento

A Spanish system requiring native peoples to provide free or low-paid labor on Spanish farms or in the mines of Peru or Bolivia for several weeks or months each year.

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Spanish America

The name given to the former Spanish colonies in the New World.

Tahuantinsuyu

The word in Quechua, the language of the Incas, that means "the Land of the Four Quarters" or the "Four Parts Together." It was the name the Incas gave to their empire, which was divided into four regions that met at Cusco, their capital. At its peak in the late 15th century, Tahuantinsuyu was the most extensive empire on earth, running from present-day Ecuador south through Peru and Bolivia to parts of Chile and Argentina.

Triple Alliance

An alliance formed in the early 15th century between three city-states in the Valley of Mexico: Tenochtitlán, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. Although originally conceived as an alliance of equals, Tenochtitlán, ruled by the Mexicas, eventually became the dominant power. As this powerful alliance conquered neighboring states, they engendered great animosity by requiring all subjects to make tribute payments. The Alliance eventually controlled most of central Mexico from coast to coast but never managed to defeat the Tlaxcalans and Tarascans. In 1521 the Tlaxcalans and Tarascans were some of the native peoples who allied with Hernan Cortés and his Spanish forces to destroy the Alliance.

Tonantzin

Revered by the Mexica and other Nahuatl-speaking peoples in the central highlands of Mexico as a mother goddess or earth goddess. In the 16th century, as Spanish missionaries struggled to convert the indigenous people to Christianity, a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe was built on the old shrine to Tonantzin, facilitating the process of religious syncretism and conversion.

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There are no glossary terms for these letters