How Did The Spanish Influence Latin American Culture

Spanish and early indigenous interactions from the mid 1500’s until the early 1600’s played a significant role in how Latin American culture is shaped today. The Spanish conquests of hundreds of indigenous tribes such as the Mayan, Aztecs, and the people of the Andean mountain range led to an inevitable clash of traditional indigenous cultures and what Europeans considered to be an established and civilized culture of the Spanish Empire. Through primary sources such as Catalina Erauso’s, Lieutenant Nun, and secondary source Peru’s Indian Peoples and the Challenge of Spanish Conquest, by Steve Stern, we are able to piece together how the indigenous tribes and the Spanish Empire shaped the culture of one another. Europeans called them, caused unrest and unwillingness to co-exist in a peaceful manor. As the Spanish continued their conquest through Andes Mountains up through modern day Mexico they began capturing and exploiting the works of the indigenous tribesmen and women. Members of tribes were now doing the hard manual labor that did not want to be done by the wealthy Spanish Lords. Intensive work such as farming was a contributing factor to the unrest between the indigenous and Spanish.
Originally a Spanish born female, Erauso decides to change her ways as she buys male clothing and begins her travels to the new world, where she becomes a nun, and even a soldier at one point. This memoir was particularly important because it depicts first hand how this young girl was able, as a young European girl, to travel to this unfamiliar new world as a man. She mentions later in her memoir that, “persistence and hard work can perform miracles” . This quote exemplifies the ability for any Spanish traveler, let alone a young female, to travel to the new world and have anything become possible, from becoming a nun to enlisting in the army and roaming the hills of