The time frame of the fifteenth to sixteenth century was very significant as a result of Western European expansion. This was a time when an old world’s perspective was being transformed through discoveries of new land, new people, and new concepts into a broader, larger new world. With discovery, follows a need to claim what is discovered, and then a transformation of the originally discovered object. In this case, this sort of transformation can generally be related to “transculturation” in which a dominant culture marginalizes, or oppresses another culture, and that other culture selectively takes in aspects from the dominant culture (Pratt 6). A perfect example of this discovery, conquest, and transformation is through Cortes’ story. The Spanish discovery and conquest the Aztec Empire in the 15^th to 16^th century forced a brutal transformation of the Aztec identities through means of faith, government, and customs.

                The European desire to find new trade routes to the Far East was in high demand during the 15^th century, and the Spaniards were no exception to this idea. Colombus came and discovered the islands in the Bahamas and began the major exploration of the Americas, or the New World, while Hernando Cortes had shortly followed thereafter. Cortes was an explorer coming to the New World on behalf of King Phillip II of Spain. The King’s high esteem for Hernando Cortes was not unfounded, since the explorer ended up discovering the Aztec Empire of Mexico, bringing high hopes of wealth. At the time, Montezuma was the Aztec emperor and was unsure if Cortes was a figure of a prophecy being fulfilled,

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 or if he was supposed to be treated as an enemy, so as a result, Montezuma gave the benefit of the doubt and allowed Cortes within their capital, Tenochtitlan’s, walls. The physical qualities of the two

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kinds of men alone were different enough as was, but so were many other things, especially the differences in faith, which created many problems down the road.

                The Aztec religious practices were first witnessed by the Spaniards in Tenochtitlan where there were Aztec priests sacrificing innocent people by the thousands to their sun God to keep Him 

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appeased.  Their belief was that the blood of those sacrificed would feed the Sun God’s thirst and prevent Him from taking his wrath on their people, but would instead bring life and warmth to help their crops grow. However, the Spaniards did not agree with these practices, nor did they agree with the Aztec faith at all. They took a hegemonic view, meaning the Spaniards felt the need to impose their religious beliefs onto the Aztec society and force them to change their ways. (Abu-Lughod 14) The Spanish ideology of a Catholic faith and the need to serve as missionaries to spread and enforce that religion in their territories resulted in a lot of problems for the Aztecs. Aztecs created codices that served as maps, stories, or sometimes religious messages, and the Spaniards would come into the temples where these codices could be found, destroyed them along with any other religious artifacts and replaced those symbols with Catholic icons of their own . With the pressures of more murder and destruction on the Spaniards behalf, the Aztec peoples had to make a choice to either keep to their old ways and die with them, or take 

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in this Catholic belief and adapt with the culture. As a result, many Aztecs were killed and only a small few were taken back to Europe or taught in the New World by missionaries how to fuse in with society and learn their faith. These few remaining Aztecs though, had their identities transformed, in which they were still Aztec in heart and spirit, but outwardly appeared to be more westernized in a European sense.

                The changes in government within the Aztec society played a major role in transforming the identities of the Aztec people as well. In 1521, Cortez had reached Tenochtitlan and began his 

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strategy to rule over the capital, which resulted in complete control and destruction of the. Cortes threatened Montezuma, who then became his puppet as the Spanish explorer took charge behind the scenes (Tignor 97). Cortes began his true exploits of the empire at this time by working through Montezuma to force the Aztecs to retrieve its gold and riches to deliver to him so he may bring them  

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back to King Phillip II in Spain. Eventually Cortes killed Montezuma, took the crown for himself and began enforcing his own laws as ordered by the Spanish King. Once Cortes was in place, King Phillip had official authority over the entire Aztec empire, and became a form of imperialism, in which a foreign authority extends control over another empire or country. These laws were based off of colonialist concepts, particularly that Spain was governing over the territories of the New World; and all of them had essentially the same sort of punishment if the laws were broken. Aztecs were again, by brute force, required to follow 

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force, required to follow new ideologies consisting of a new system of government in which if a person were to break any of these new rules, they would face almost certain death. By observing the above image, one can note the severity and harshness of the law, while there is Mary in the background, supporting the idea that the Spaniards believed their system and way of keeping order was backed by religious ideologies. However the Aztecs stare at this foreign method and are expected to understand and immediately obey the system. Redundantly so, they have the option of obedience or death, and while some took the hard route and lost their lives, others allowed the transformation of their identity to occur through following a new leader, a new god, and a new system of government which caused them to change who they were. Through this new figure being placed in power in Aztec society, and a new government being enforced, new customs were also in order.

                Aztec customs and practices were seen as barbaric and violent by the Spanish conquistadors, specifically any of those having to do with killing for sacrifice, or similar violent acts in general.

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Other unique characteristics about the Aztecs involved what they wore, which were considered odd and inappropriate by the Spaniards as well. While many men wore simple loincloths and only robes 

 for religious purposes, females mainly wore their own sort of loose fitting robes adorned with simple patterns and jewelry of their own. To understand the extremities of the two cultures, juxtaposing the

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two together can show the differences quite easily. The angle of this camera shot from “The Other Conquest” is done so purposefully to allow the viewer to see the split between the Aztec woman and the European male where it gives it a feeling of two different worlds meeting, clashing, and exchanging customs to create a transformation. This transformation is conveyed through the movie’s character

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Tepiltzin (above) who goes back to Europe and learns the white man’s customs, then outwardly transforms his identity. He no longer has his long,wild, and unkempt hair, it is now shaven to be that of a friar’s. And he is now staring at the face of Mary, whom represents the Spanish religion, and religious worship was an important custom of their culture, rather than the Aztec looking at the statue of another God. There is also a split indicating the differences between the two as well as the beginnings of the process of the Aztec’s identity through this custom of worship. In the end, the Aztecs were forced to hide away or reject their customs in exchange for those of the Europeans.

                In many cases with each of these types of transformation, there may be complete or only partial changes in identity, but it is there nonetheless. By just about all cases, they have been conducted through Spanish coercion and control because of their inability to try and understand and tolerate the Aztec ways. The Spanish had their own way of viewing the world, which had been “scalped by their society”, or rather, decided and shaped by their own society – which was very different from that of the Aztecs, making it difficult for them to tolerate it (Zerubavel  61). Unfortunately this led to the demise of the Aztec empire whereafter, it and its remaining people were transformed through religion, law, and common practices. The Aztec race had been so demolished however, that it was quickly becoming a “vanishing race” (Fusco 367). It was vanishing either in a physical form of the population dying out, and also in a spiritual sense that their identity had changed into a Spanish-Aztec mix. However, this was the mark of the collapse of a once great empire.

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Works Cited

Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony, in The Atlantic World in the Age of Empire.

                Oxford University Press Inc. 1989.

Fusco, Coco. The Other History of Intercultural Performance. Routledge Publishing. U.K. 1998.

“Image 1”. Painting. Latino America Online. 1 Feb. 2008. <http://www.latinoamerica-online.info/cult

                05/montezuma.jpg>.  

“Image 2”. Drawing. UNCP. 1 Feb. 2008. <http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/cortezh3.jpg>.

“Image 3”. Drawing. UNCP. 1 Feb. 2008. < http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/aztecs-sacrifice.gif>.

 “Image 4”. Movie Screencap. “The Other Conquest”. Carrasco. 2 Feb. 2008. <http://images.rotten

                tomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1178081/photo_01_hires.jpg>.

“Image 5”. Painting. The Library of Congress. 1 Feb. 2008. <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/kislak/images/

                kc0026s.jpg>.

“Image 6”. Painting. NPS. 1 Feb. 2008. <http://www.nps.gov/casa/historyculture/images/philipII_1

.jpg>.

 “Image 7”. Movie Screencap. “The Other Conquest”. Carrasco. 2 Feb. 2008. <http://www.rotten

                /images/movie/gallery/1178081/photo_05_hires.jpg>.

“Image 8”. Movie Screencap. “The Other Conquest”. Carrasco. 2 Feb. 2008. <http://www.rotten

                tomatoes.com/m/other_conquest/gallery.php?page=6&size=hires&nopop=1&>.

 “Image 9”. Movie Screencap. “The Other Conquest”. Carrasco. 2 Feb. 2008. <http://images.rotten

                tomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1178081/photo_04_hires.jpg>.

“Image 10”. Movie Screencap. “The Other Conquest”. Carrasco. 2 Feb. 2008. <http://images.rotten

                tomatoes.com/images/movie/gallery/1178081/photo_14_hires.jpg>.

Pratt, Mary Louise. Introduction: Criticism in the Contact Zone, in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and

                Transculturation. Routledge Publishing. 1994.

Tignor, Robert. Worlds Together Worlds Apart. Chapter 3. W.W. Norton Company. New York, 2002.

Zerubavel, Eviatar. The Social Lens, in The Fine Line Making Distinctions in Everyday Life. Chicago, 1990.

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Part II: Question

Through Eviatar Zerubavel we learned that society constructs things that which do not truly exist, such as gender and race, from a reality in which everything blends into one and cannot be compartmentalized. If more people learned and came to accept Zerubavel’s outlook of how society simply invents these things, would issues such as racism or discrimination be as much of a problem? Why or why not?

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Part III: Competency Section

               My fluency in the Effective Citizenship competency has expanded significantly from working in Unit III thus far. Through the readings of Zerubavel and Pratt, I was made more aware of the flaws of human classification / categorization and how it can lead to hatred or misunderstanding toward others based off of foundationless standards. For instance, things such as race and gender are only categories created by society in order for us to compartmentalize and understand the world, but sometimes we lose track of that, and discriminate others for such differences because of ethnocentric blinders as Pratt puts it, which we have created ourselves and our not actually there. Coming to these realizations, it helps me make sure not to stereotype or discriminate against people different than me, and as a result, helps me become a better citizen.

                However, my fluency in  the Aesthetic Awareness competency has also greatly increased because of my activities in this unit thus far. Attending the field trip to the National Gallery of Art allowed me to see canon art and take time to admire and appreciate its beauty. Also, architectural appreciation was something I developed in this Unit after reading Diepeeven’s piece on museum’s and how their structures match their purpose. Now I’ll never look at a building in the same way again, instead of simply admiring it, I’ll also take into consideration why it was built with the structure it has, and what meaning and symbolism the building is trying to convey.