STRUGGLE AND SURVIVAL PART 2

By: Heather Rocca

INFORMATION & BEATRIZ DE PADILLA An important aspect of the struggle

for survival within the colonial social order was the effort merely to get by, or to get ahead slowly but surely accommodating to the colonial system as it stood.

Many people in the colonial world found it possible not only to survive but also to inch their way upward or even to advance rapidly in the social order despite the structural inequalities built around class, race, and sex

Beatriz has been accused of poisoning a priest & then driven the lord mayor of Junchipila crazy through magic

Beatriz never married & brought 2 sons & 2 daughters into the world

People have been jealous that the lovers of Beatriz had all been important men who were crazy about her

ISABEL MOCTCZUMA SQUANTO

By 1520 the Aztec emperor & his family had unwillingly fallen captive in his capital of Tenochtitlan to a small force of Spaniards & Indian allies led by the conqueror Fernando Cortes

June 26,1526, Cortes granted to Dona Isabel & her descendants the revenues & income from the important town of Tacuba, as well as from the several smaller villages that were subject to Tacuba

As the wife of a prominent conquistador, Dona Isabel would become a model of Hispanicize Indian women, and Cortez expected other to emulate

Squanto rescued the Pilgrims from the wilderness by teaching them to plant corn & introducing them to other friendly natives

His life reached a sudden & dramatic turning point with Hunt’s visit. Smith had returned to England, leaving Hunt in charge of his fishing crew to complete the catch & carry it to Malaga, Spain.

Hunt tried to sell the Indians as slaves When Squanto returned he found his

own village completely vacated. Most of his inhabitants had died, but some had fled in land to other villages, his hopes were shattered

MIGUEL HERNANDEZ

Was a free mulatto who lived a good full life in the 16th century Mexico. He married, raised a family, and lived to see his children find their own placed in the world

He was neither a spirited rebel nor an adventurer; he simply was a diligent and persistent man who gradually expanded the horizons of his own world

When he arrived in Queretaro he joined a small group. Since he was free, literate, & skilled as a muleteer, he became one of the leading mulatto citizens

Many of his relationships crossed racial & social boundaries

JUAN DE MORGA & GERTRUDIS DE ESCOBAR

Were both young mulatto slaves who lived in central Mexico during the middle years of the 17th century

Morga wrote a heartrending letter in 1650 with no notion of basic spelling or punctuation, & he wrote with the urgency of one’s suffering from a profound anguish that he was guilty of many sins

Juan was born a slave in the city of Oaxaca in about 1627 & was a son of a European secular priest

He was a slave yet tried to make money on his own but quickly ran out

When Gertrudis first came before the court oh the inquisition in 1659, she was a free young mulatta woman of only 14 years

There is no information how Gertrudis a daughter of slaves was born a free woman

Having failed once to complete her day’s quota, she failed yet again and was flogged again with great cruelty, she ran away through the canfields & took refuge at the nearby plantation of Santa Ines where she thought no one would know her but she was wrong & was put to work in Santa Ines

CRISTOBAL BEQUER

Little in Bequer’s family background foreshadows his quarrels with church or accounts for his irascibility. He was born in Lima in 1693, the son of Captain Guillermo Bequer & dona Juana Barraza .

People wondered about Bequer’s decision to embrace a life in the Church.

Bequer kept on the move for several years , as though to keep one step ahead of his past, by the early 1720’s he was in the city of Cuzco & in 1728 he surfaced in the diocese of Cuzco as assistant to the parish priest of Puno

In January 1739, Bequer was back in Lima & had been accepted by the cathedral chapter & the archbishop & installed in his new post.

As a holder of Media racion, Bequer was at the lowest level of the chapter hierarchy; nevertheless his post was an enviable lifetime benefice that carried with it prestige of membership in the principle group of secular priests in the colony.

Bequer’s victims were to be avenged, but before the dispatchers reached Lima, the wayward prebend had died. Although confined in his last months to the Franciscan monastery he had successfully avoided prosecution, remaining to the end a law unto himself