The harbor has a narrow inlet and any ships can be seen from miles away. Cuba is a very fertile land perfect for cash crops such as sugar and tobacco. For a little background information, Native Americans first inhabited Cuba before Christopher Columbus claimed it for Spain in 1492. In the 1500’s it was then colonized by Spain. Cuba was Spain’s stepping stone to the new world.
Death was rampant at this time. Diseases such as smallpox, measles, malaria, influenza, and yellow fever were transferred from the old wold to The Europeans had been exposed to these sicknesses before and had different cures and ways of fighting it. But when the Indians caught wind of these illnesses they were devastated by the effects. There tribes were very susceptible, through the air and through touch. They were a more isolated human, so when the Europeans came and took over there immune systems were not at all prepared to face and fight back al;l the diseases that came there way.
However, when they arrived on the island known today as Puerto Rico it had already been inhabited by the Taíno tribe for centuries. While the two groups tried to keep the peace, eventually that attempt ran out, leading to the Spaniards enslaving the Taínos. Taking away their rights and forcing them to perform hard labor such as; working in the gold mines, in thesugar or ginger industry or performing domestic work. Due to this, many Taínos committed suicide out of resistance or became victims of the small pox disease that the new settlers had brought over. This unfair treatment eventually led to the attempted revolt of 1511 and the escape of many Taínos.
The original inhabitants of the island, Arawaks (Taino Indians), were treated badly and enslaved by the Spanish and as a result most of them perished from the treatment and the diseases brought to the New World by the Europeans. Many historic sites still remain from the original settlement of Santo Domingo. The Spanish legacy continues in the form of personalismo, the worship of leaders and this is often given as a reason for the difficulty in true democracy taking hold in the country. Dictators, throughout most of its history, have ruled the Dominican Republic. About 60% of the Dominicans are of mixed Caucasian-Black descent, about 35% are black and 5% are white (Pariser, 1998, p. 55).
Sabine River Spanish Dialect When discussions of the Spanish influence in Louisiana arise, most of the focus is centered around Isleño dialect spoken by descendants of the Canary Islands living in the southernmost part of the state. There is no mistaking their influence on Louisiana's culture; however, there exists an older dialect of Spanish from the Ebarb-Zwolle area that has an interesting history. The Zwolle and Ebarb areas trace their origins to 1721 through an expedition led by Marquis de Aguayo. These communities prospered on both sides of the Sabine River. Although common folklore among Sabine Spanish speakers states that original settlers were decedents of the isleños, the original settlers came from Coahuila, west-central Texas, and Mexico City.
Immigration policy's effect on the labor force should be carefully considered, but the vast majority of immigrants are not admitted based on education or skill level. In 2009, the U.S. admitted over 1.1 million legal immigrants, just 5-8 percent of whom possessed employment skills in demand in the United States. By contrast, 66.1 percent were based on family preferences, or 73 percent if the relatives of immigrants arriving on employment visas are included. 16.7 percent of admissions were divided among refugees, asylum seekers and other humanitarian categories, while 4.2 percent of admissions were based on the diversity lottery (which only requires that winners have completed high school). Some family-based immigrants may be highly educated or skilled, but the vast majority of admissions are made without regard for those criteria.
Frank Moya Pons, a Dominican historian documented that Spanish colonists intermarried with Taíno women, and, over time, these mestizo descendants intermarried with Africans, creating a tri-racial Creole culture. 1514 census records reveal that 40% of Spanish men in the Dominican Republic had Taíno wives. [44] Ethnohistorian Lynne Guitar writes that Taínos were declared extinct in Spanish documents as early as the 16th century; however, Taíno Indians kept appearing in wills and legal records in the ensuing years. [44] Anthropologist and archaeologist Dr. Pedro J. Ferbel Azacarate writes that Taínos and Africans lived in isolated Maroon communities, evolving into a rural population with predominantly Taíno cultural influences. Ferbel documents that even contemporary rural Dominicans retain Taíno linguistic features, agricultural practices, foodways, medicine, fishing practices, technology, architecture, oral history, and religious views.
The Columbian Exchange The term Columbian Exchange refers to the transfer of peoples, animals, plants, and diseases between the New and Old Worlds. Old World diseases that entered the Americas with the European immigrants and African slaves devastated indigenous populations. These dramatic population changes weakened native peoples’ capacity for resistance and facilitated the transfer of plants, animals, and related technologies. I. Demographic Changes o Because of their long isolation from other continents, the peoples of the New World lacked immunity to diseases introduced from the Old World. As a result, death rates among Amerindian peoples during the epidemics of the early colonial period were very high.
Sailors inadvertently introduced these diseases in 1492, including smallpox, measles, mumps, whooping cough, influenza, chicken pox, and typhus, to the Americas. People who lived in Africa had developed some immunities to these diseases because they had long existed among Europeans and have been exposed to them. However, the Native Americans had no such immunities due to their isolation. Adults and children alike were stricken by several epidemics of the listed viruses, which caused a massive decrease in populations throughout the Americas. In Mexico and Peru, many millions of people died.
How it affected their people and some of the surrounding people and justification by the Spanish for war against the Aztecs. Secondly, what the Aztecs believed to be the return of the god Quetzalcoatl, the Spanish conquistador, Cortes and his Spanish army. Disease played a huge part in the fall. Small pox brought upon the Spanish spread quickly to the people and no cure for the disease was known therefore leading to many deaths. Lastly, the skillful tactics used by Hernan Cortes that leads to the surrender of the last Aztec emperor.