Susan Elizabeth Ramírez – författare

A History of Colonial Latin America from First Encounters to Independence is a concise and accessible volume that presents the history of the Iberian presence in the Americas, from the era of exploration and conquest to the disruption and instability following independence.This history of the Iberian presence in the Americas contains stories of curiosity, vision, courage, missed communication, miscalculation, insatiability, prejudice, and native collaboration and resistance. Beginning in 1492, Ramirez establishes the context for the era of exploration and conquest that follows. The book then surveys the activities of Cortes and Pizarro and the impact on native peoples, Portuguese activity on the eastern coast of South America, the demographic collapse of the native population, the role of the Catholic Church, and new policy initiatives of the Bourbons who inherited the throne in 1700. The narrative involves Spaniards, Native Americans of innumerable ethnic groups, Moorish, native, and black slaves, and a whole new category of people of mixed blood, collectively known as the castas, acting in the steamy tropics of the lowlands, marching across parched deserts, trekking to oxygen-low mountain summits, and settling all the ecological niches in between.The book includes important primary documents and maps to provide students with even more context to this important part of Latin American history. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American history and culture.

A History of Colonial Latin America from First Encounters to Independence is a concise and accessible volume that presents the history of the Iberian presence in the Americas, from the era of exploration and conquest to the disruption and instability following independence.This history of the Iberian presence in the Americas contains stories of curiosity, vision, courage, missed communication, miscalculation, insatiability, prejudice, and native collaboration and resistance. Beginning in 1492, Ramirez establishes the context for the era of exploration and conquest that follows. The book then surveys the activities of Cortes and Pizarro and the impact on native peoples, Portuguese activity on the eastern coast of South America, the demographic collapse of the native population, the role of the Catholic Church, and new policy initiatives of the Bourbons who inherited the throne in 1700. The narrative involves Spaniards, Native Americans of innumerable ethnic groups, Moorish, native, and black slaves, and a whole new category of people of mixed blood, collectively known as the castas, acting in the steamy tropics of the lowlands, marching across parched deserts, trekking to oxygen-low mountain summits, and settling all the ecological niches in between.The book includes important primary documents and maps to provide students with even more context to this important part of Latin American history. It will be of interest to students and scholars of Latin American history and culture.

The old saying that "history is written by the victors" certainly applies to most of the history of European colonialism in Spanish America. However, in recent decades scholars have begun to study the Spanish conquest and early colonialization of America from the point of view of the native Americans in an attempt to right this imbalance. Taking the perspective of the vanquished, the author aims to determine and explain some of the general principles on which the pre-Hispanic Andeans' lives were based.The book describes how the imposed Spanish colonial system altered the organization and belief systems of the native inhabitants of northern Peru during the first fifty years or so after the Spanish conquest. By centering on an area that was incorporated into the Inca empire relatively late (1460's-70's), the book offsets the Cuzco focus of much of the existing literature in Inca history and culture. It explores the impact of expanding colonialism on indigenous ideas about leadership and legitimacy, the supernatural and morality, land tenure, service and allegiance, and wealth.

This book reexamines the structure of Inca society on the eve of the Spanish conquest. The author argues that native Andean cosmology, which centered on the idea of divine rulership, principally organized the indigenous political economy as well as spatial and socio-kinship systems. Ramírez begins by establishing that the phrase "el Cuzco," picked up from the native peoples by the Spanish invaders, referred not only to a place but also to the Inca leader. This leader acted as the center of the Inca universe, connecting the people to their ancestors, nature, and each other. From this starting point, the author revisits the Inca cosmology and looks at the way in which the ruler and other authorities connected the people to the gods and bound a diverse polity together under divine protection. Next, the book shows how rituals immortalized these leaders and connected the people to past generations. Finally, the author examines how a cosmology, centered on the divine nature of the king, defined the community and identity of the Andean people.

This book reexamines the structure of Inca society on the eve of the Spanish conquest. The author argues that native Andean cosmology, which centered on the idea of divine rulership, principally organized the indigenous political economy as well as spatial and socio-kinship systems. Ramírez begins by establishing that the phrase "el Cuzco," picked up from the native peoples by the Spanish invaders, referred not only to a place but also to the Inca leader. This leader acted as the center of the Inca universe, connecting the people to their ancestors, nature, and each other. From this starting point, the author revisits the Inca cosmology and looks at the way in which the ruler and other authorities connected the people to the gods and bound a diverse polity together under divine protection. Next, the book shows how rituals immortalized these leaders and connected the people to past generations. Finally, the author examines how a cosmology, centered on the divine nature of the king, defined the community and identity of the Andean people.

Apart from collective memories of lived experiences, much of the modern world’s historical sense comes from written sources stored in the archives of the world, and some scholars in the not-so-distant past have described unlettered civilizations as “peoples without history.” In Praise of the Ancestors is a revisionist interpretation of early colonial accounts that reveal incongruities in accepted knowledge about three Native groups.Susan Elizabeth RamÍrez reevaluates three case studies of oral traditions using positional inheritance-a system in which names and titles are inherited from one generation by another and thereby contribute to the formation of collective memories and a group identity. RamÍrez begins by examining positional inheritance and perpetual kinship among the Kazembes in central Africa from the eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Next, her analysis moves to the Native groups of the Iroquois Confederation and their practice of using names to memorialize remarkable leaders in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, RamÍrez surveys naming practices of the Andeans, based on sixteenth-century manuscript sources and later testimonies found in Spanish and Andean archives, questioning colonial narratives by documenting the use of this alternative system of memory perpetuation, which was initially unrecognized by the Spaniards.In the process of reexamining the histories of Native peoples on three continents, RamÍrez broaches a wider issue: namely, understanding of the nature of knowledge as fundamental to understanding and evaluating the knowledge itself.