Transcription
[Music] So [Applause] [Music] Standers, this is Flo once again with another topic that I consider very, very important for our community. Uh, in regards to history, in regards to identity, this one to me was very, very important, like I said, simply because again, it falls in line with the conquest and some things that are not really told in our history. Right? Again, we're always told that the Spanish came into the Americas and just completely destroyed everything and had no resistance whatsoever, right? But this specific story here is something that challenges that, right? And it has to do with the Chichimeca resistance; the Chichimeca Wars that took place for about 40 years. Okay, so the Chichimeca are a group of people from different, different, uh, groups. Uh, you have the Guachichiles, you have the Bamas, you have the, uh, Guamares and Zacatecos. Right? You have a number of different groups that are considered, uh, Chichimeca. Right? And these specific groups lived in the northern part of, or more central part of Mexico. So, for example, you have San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Guanajuato, and Zacatecas. And this specific group of natives challenged the Spanish and had a lot of success. Right? So when the Spanish discovered silver in what is now Zacatecas, they began to encroach and they began to try to take over the area, just like other areas. The problem was the terrain; it was not as easy to conquer like it was in other parts of Mexico. And immediately the Chichimeca people began to challenge them. Right? When the Spanish began to just take over without consent, as they had done for the last, you know, 20, 30 years. So, off the bat, they were met with resistance. And the difference between the other conquests that the Spanish had was that they were facing a semi-nomadic people, and again, the terrain made it difficult for them to actually try to, to beat them. Right? And the Chichimeca were also very, very fierce warriors; they were known as the best bow and arrow warriors in all of Mesoamerica, according to other Spaniards and other natives as well. Right? Uh, so this helped out again, and also because they knew the terrain and the Spanish did not, they had an advantage over the Spanish. Okay? And because the Spanish were so accustomed to getting goods from other parts of New Spain, the Chichimeca understood that. So what they would do is they would raid these, you know, carts full of goods and they would destroy them and kill the people that were going to supply them. So essentially what they ended up doing is cut the supplies, and the Spanish would suffer from that. Right? Not only were they, were they attacking the [Music] the carts, but they were also began to attack the settlements that were near these roads, and the Spanish were not able to, to, to counter that. Again, because the Chichimeca knew the terrain; they were, um, fierce warriors; they, and again, also again, the Spanish had native allies like the Tarascan and the Mexica and other natives, and even they were afraid of the Chichimeca because of their war tactics. Right? They were not attacking like other, other natives; they would basically do a lot of attacking and then they would retreat. So it wasn't head-on combat; it was more ambushes, and they would also attack the livestock, the cattle, the horses, and that made it even more difficult for the Spanish to defeat them because they were so accustomed to being on horses and, and fighting them on horses that when they did not have their horses and they, they struggled. Right? And then also the, the bow and arrow that that Chichimeca, uh, possessed was specifically designed to penetrate the Spanish armor, which was even more effective. Right? And this continued for a very, very long time. So what the Spanish ended up doing is they tried to, uh, push back more and obviously try to suppress this, but they had no luck. From, uh, 1575 to about 1585, the Spanish lost about 4,000 men and also native allies. So they just had no luck; they could not defeat the Chichimeca. Chichimeca kept pushing back. And what angered the Chichimeca more was that every time that the Spanish would defeat the Chichimeca, you know, battle whatever, they would take the kids and the women obviously to do horrible things to them, so that only motivated them to attack them even more. And it wasn't until the late, excuse me, 1780s that the Spanish decided to try a different approach, and it was this was actually, um, [Music] something that not the Spanish soldiers tried to use, but actually churchmen. Right? You had a specific, uh, mestizo, uh, captain that was of Chichimeca descent and Spanish descent; his name was, uh, Miguel Caldera, and one of the, he was one of the advocates of using this different approach. Right? Buying peace, because the blood and fire approach did not work for the Chichimeca like it did with other native peoples, native groups. Essentially what ended up happening is that once they tried this approach, they began to buy land up in Chichimeca by peace, like they said, and one of the trade-offs was that they would have to convert to Catholicism, and a lot of them did, not by force, but because the Zacatecan natives that were allies of the Spanish moved into the, into the regions and basically said, "Look, try this out." Right? It worked to some extent; some natives, you know, took it upon themselves to convert; some still did not, obviously, but the majority of the population eventually did convert into Catholicism and into Hispanic culture. And that's why today you have Chichimeca who are close to being pure blood, I guess if you want to call it that, who are mainly, um, who still practice these things. Right? But again, you have very, very small groups of Chichimeca today that still practice their real beliefs because they were not defeated; they eventually the Spanish gave in to this. And again, the only way they were able to conquer them, I guess if you want to call it that, is by having them assimilate. And this thing was so effective that the Spanish began to reconsider how they approach other natives, especially semi-nomadic or nomadic groups, because they understood that it was a lot harder to defeat these people because, one, they did not live in one specific place; they knew the terrain; they were accustomed to living off very, very little things. So the Spanish began to try this by peace or assimilation method for other natives they encountered up north, and, um, [Music] you know, I wanted to share that because again, the conquest was not as simple as the sword or forcing people to do stuff; they had to, had to negotiate many times in Spanish, because if it did not negotiate, they would not be successful. This war lasted about 40 years. Right? The weapon they had, the weapons they had, the horses they had, even native allies, but in this case, I guess, you know, the diseases were not as effective to the natives, and I would say that the Chichimeca won the war, but obviously, uh, they did assimilate, and that contributed to them not, you know, um, I mean, I guess full-on Chichimeca pushback, you want to call it that, but again, some of them still, still practice their culture. That's all I wanted to say today about this. Again, look it up; I have the links and the books in the sources description section. On that note, this is Flo Rasa. Stan, take a stand to understand peace. [Music] So a liar [Music]