Hemegony in Latin America

Since the very beginning of time, strong nations have taken over weaker ones while entirely disregarding and having zero consideration for the indigenous people of those lands. A common claim, or excuse for that matter, is that many of these people were intellectually and physically inferior to the conquerors. This led to the belief that due to this inferiority, these people were slaves by nature and were “better off” under rule of the conquerors.

According to natural law, all men are equal, and therefore liberty is equally entitled for all. What�s more, this law states that all men have the right to defend themselves. With that said, regardless of any attempt to justify conquering the land of the “intellectually inferior”, the native people are granted the right to defend and hold sovereignty over their land. Of course, as history shows, resistance is often detrimental to one group or even both. Therefore, the dominant groups have resorted to specific means, often involving deceit, when conquering land in order to receive the most cooperation as possible. These processes by which dominant groups maintain their power is known as hegemony.

In simplest terms, hegemony is the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group over a weaker group. When we consider how the colonizers exerted their control over the indigenous people of “Latin America”, we see that it can be summed up by the concept of hegemony itself. The Spanish forced an unwanted lifestyle upon the indigenous people of whom the land rightfully belonged to in the first place. There was resistance, usually consisting of the people refusing to plant for the Spanish, and sometimes abandoning captured towns. However, the resistance grew physically violent, and the Indians resources were no match for those of the Spanish.

Columbus used the resistance as an excuse to wage war and to completely conquer this race which he now firmly believed to be inferior and unintelligent. The indigenous people had no choice but to comply with the power being exerted upon on. If they refused to do so, the only option was suicide. Refusing to call it slavery, Columbus resorted to “forced labor” of which cooperation was ensured by a punishment system. However, with all of the horrible things that Columbus did to these people, perhaps the most devastating was the disruption of their culture.

After hundreds of years of colonization, most Latin Americans began to sincerely accept Catholicism and the rule of a Spanish or Portuguese king (Chasteen,