A History of Latin America

4 PART ONE backwardness; political arbitrariness, corruption, and nepotism; and a hierarchi- cal social order with feelings of c ...

THE COLONIAL HERITAGE OF LATIN AMERICA 5 Since the sixteenth century, defenders of Spain’s colonial record have charged Las Casa ...

6 PART ONE it relied on them for security against internal and external threats, and this dis- posed the crown to make major con ...

FOCUS QUESTIONS How did different local environments affect cultural development in Ancient America? What were the distinctive ...

8 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA ago. Revisionists point to discoveries, especially in Chile and Brazil, that suggest a much earlier ...

ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE IN ANCIENT AMERICA 9 Where agriculture became the principal eco- nomic activity, its yield depended on s ...

10 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA villages. These villages had lost their autonomy and were ruled from an elite center by a para- mou ...

ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE IN ANCIENT AMERICA 11 What were the decisive factors in the qualita- tive leap from the chiefdom to the ...

12 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA friar Bartolomé de Las Casas, but those high fi gures had long been regarded as the exaggerations o ...

ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE IN ANCIENT AMERICA 13 ists have attempted to reconstruct the history of Nuclear America. The framework f ...

14 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA peasant revolts caused by excessive tribute de- mands are among the explanations that have been adv ...

ENVIRONMENT AND CULTURE IN ANCIENT AMERICA 15 imposing temples and other buildings. The stone sculpture used to decorate the tem ...

16 Guadalajara Puebla Veracruz Oaxaca Mérida Mexico City Cholula Malinalco Zacualco Autlán Los Ortices Chupícuaro Tamuín Tajín R ...

THE MAYA OF CENTRAL AMERICA 17 also a true city. One of their achievements, prob- ably of Olmec origin, was a complicated system ...

18 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA collapse accompanied by widespread depopulation through warfare, malnutrition, and disaster, until ...

THE MAYA OF CENTRAL AMERICA 19 evidence of some genuine urbanization in north- ern Yucatán during the Postclassic period, pos- s ...

20 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA penance by bloodletting, the burning of incense, and human sacrifi ce. Human sacrifi ce on a large ...

THE MAYA OF CENTRAL AMERICA 21 Maya writing was not narrative used to re- cord literature but the large body of Maya myths, lege ...

22 CHAPTER 1 ANCIENT AMERICA MAYA DECLINE AND TRANSFORMATION OF MESOAMERICA By 800 CE, the Mesoamerican world had been shaken to ...

THE AZTECS OF MEXICO 23 the Toltecs took place. Tula itself fell into the hands of barbarians in about 1224. The fall of Tula, s ...