Conflict: the Basis for Latin American Change (Born in Blood and Fire: a Concise History of Latin America)

The expansive empires of the Aztecs and Incas, came crashing down, upon the arrival of Spaniards in the New World. The birth of colonial nations came about in the same stride that death came to indigenous populations. Modern Latin America has conflict built into its system because that is what it has mostly seen for the past five hundred years. In Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, John Charles Chasteen supports the argument that Latin America's problems developed due to its violent origins and history of conquest. From the conquest, through colonialism and revolutions, to modern day, violence has always been a main player in the advancement of Latin America. Chasteen has left me with a greater comprehension of our neighbors' history and our influence in its maturation from colonial seed to what we have today. Cortes and Pizarro were both the masterminds of conquest of the largest empires in Latin America. Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs was rife with luck, due to local legends and biological reasons unbeknownst to him, and violence. Through a capture-the-leader strategy that was very popular with the Spanish, Cortes and his men were able to topple the empire that at the time, its capital had a larger population than Madrid or Lisbon (Chasteen 31). Pizarro also had the same results with the Incas, killing tens of thousands with his miniscule arrangement of conquistadors. But once their swords were sheathed and their guns holstered. The native populations continued to disappear due to their vulnerability to foreign germs. This decimation of the New World's population would not end Western Europe's tyrannical exploits in the New World but would only shift their focus to another socially despicable act, slavery. The purpose of settling these lands was for profit, so with no large working force available from indigenous populations the Europeans turned to African slaves. Any country that has had slavery, as our own, sees that even after