Blog #3: Greg's thoughts on Monte Alban

December 28, 2008:

                  Today traveling to Monte Alban was yet another very eye opening experience. Seeing the ruins of the Zapotec people and the culture they posed was an amazing experience. The landscape surrounding the ruins was truly amazing. Understanding the history of the conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards and connecting this with pre colonial times was at first very difficult. However once I realized that if the many different groups of people stood as one given the landscape that they posed, Spanish conquest would have been nearly impossible. Seeing the civilization of Monte Alban which had with stood being taken over by outsiders for approximately a thousand years, proves that such a task was possible. One the major factors that helped the Spanish succeed in colonializing Mexico was the internal struggle which took place between many of the different ethnic groups that inhabited Mexico. John Charles Chasteen the author of, Born in blood and fire: The encounter, states “Neither the Incas nor the Aztecs could have been defeated without the aid of the Spaniards indigenous allies.”From seeing the large structures and buildings in which the people of Monte Alban built, it is very obvious that these people took pride in their work and were very hard workers. It seems only normal for the inhabitants of this nation to compete with one another in order to prove who had the best traditions and culture. The Spanish conquistadors played on this aspect greatly when colonializing Mexico even though this took place thousands of years after the Zapotecs inhabited Monte Alban.

                  Yet another problem the indigenous people faced against the Spanish conquistadors was disease. Monte Alban is a Rugged and isolated place. Due to the Sierra Madre mountains this seems to be a prominent theme of the terrain throughout Mexico. Due to this, the people of Mexico were protected for a very long time from the diseases throughout other parts of the world. But with the arrival of the conquistadors so came the arrival of diseases like small pox, syphilis, and many others. John Charles Chasteen: The encounter, later states “Particularly lethal were European diseases against which indigenous people had no natural resistance; contagion ran rampant among Tupinamba slaves in the close quarters of plantations. Any gathering of native population facilitated this “demographic catastrophe.” It seems as though the landscape of Mexico set the indignious up for later major problems as soon as the Spaniards arrived.