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Why the Sun? No matter where our ancestors came from-Mexico, Central, the Caribbean or South America- there is one constant in the beliefs of our indigenous forefathers, Mayans, Toltecs, Aztecs, Incas, or Taino.. and that is the presence and cultural signifigance of the Sun.

Latinos---How the heck did this all happen, and why are we all separate?
I know we all hear about our origins in Spain, indigenous folk (also known as "American indians") and African settlers and slaves.. but how exactly did it all go down?

Well.. of course the best place is to start would be in Europe, so that you could understand why Spain came out west in the first place. In 711, Spain was taken over by the very educated and advanced North African Muslims , called Moors. These dudes ruled for a mighty long time, almost 800 years ( dayum!).. Let me tell you about the Moors though..
In 711 A.D., General Tarik, accompanied by 100 horses and 400 African soldiers, crossed over into Spain on an exploratory mission. Tarik's small army ravaged several Spanish towns and returned to Africa laden with spoils. Later that same year, Tarik took an army of 7000 Africans, crossing from Africa to Gibraltar (named after him), defeating King Roderic and conquering most of the Iberian Peninsula. Thus began the Moorish domination of Spain, which was not fully ended until 1492.The Moors built magnificent cities in Spain. Cordoba, in the tenth century was much like a modern metropolis. The streets were paved, and there were sidewalks for pedestrians. At night it was said that one could travel for ten miles by the light of lamps along a continuous strip of buildings. This was several hundred years before there was a paved street in Paris or a street lamp in London. The population of the city was over one million. There were 200,000 homes, 800 public schools, a number of colleges and universities, and many royal places surrounded by beautiful gardens.The Tanneries of Cordoba and Morocco City were the best in the world. Cordoba was the most wonderful city of the tenth century. It was served by 4,000 public markets and 5,000 mills. Public baths numbered in the hundreds. This amenity was present at a time when cleanliness in Christian Europe was regarded as a sin.The mineral wealth of the land was not disregarded. Copper, gold, tin, silver, lead, iron, quicksilver, and alum were extensively mined. The sword blades of Toledo were the best in Europe, and the factories in Murcia turned out the finest of brass and iron instruments.Education was universal in Moorish Spain, available to the most humble, while 99% of Christian Europe was illiterate—not even the kings could read or write. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, public libraries did not exist in Christian Europe, while Moorish Spain had more than seventy, of which the one in Cordoba contained over six hundred thousand manuscripts. There were more than seventeen great universities in Moorish Spain, while Christian Europe had only two universities of any value.Scientific progress in astronomy, chemistry, geography, mathematics, physics, and philosophy flourished in Moorish Spain. Scholars, artist and scientists formed learning societies, while scientific congresses were organized to promote research and to facilitate the spread of knowledge. A brisk intellectual life flourished in all Islamic dominated societies.The Moors also introduced the manufacture of gunpowder into Europe, which their enemies later adopted, using this explosive to drive them back to Africa.In 1492, there was an epic battle in Granada (a.k.a the Saddest City In Spain) where the Spaniards won. Thius was in the time of the well-known Spanish Inquisition which is famopus for it's torture and injustices against the Jews and the Muslims across Europe.. Moors either had to go back to Africa, or convert to Christianity. 1492 was the turning point where Spain regained much of their old country which and experienced a demographic boom (More money and more babies), and in Spanish culture it is customary to pass land on to your first born sons. Problem was, they started running out of land!
1492-1550 was the Conquest period where they went around with modern weaponry and diseases like smallpox, and consequently destroyed or made slaves of the indigenous populations with the combination of these and atrocious battle practices. See, we must understand that the indigenous,though mighty and industrious, were now in a situation where they had to concern themselves with protecting their land and families, whereas the Europeans had come with soldiers who would personally benefit from pillaging these lands- and women. In the 1500s, Spaniards hit up Caribbeans and horrifically wiped out our original people who were peaceloving communities.. the Tainos, to Mexico and battled the Aztecs, to South Mexico, Yucatan and Guatemala where the Mayas fell, to Peru where they got to the Incas
. So many of our women were raped and children produced.
-Shedding Light-
In 1552, Bartolome de Las Casas, formerly Bishop of Chiapas, began what became known as the -Black Legend- by publishing a powerful and lasting indictment of Spanish behavior toward Indian populations in the New World.
(Here is the thing though... de Las Casa thought it wise to replace indigenous labor with African slave labor!)At the Legend`s core are two intertwined stereotypes: that of the peaceable, childlike, innocent Indian and that of the cruel, rapacious, self-serving Spaniard.
What gave the Black Legend its strength and resiliency was not Las Casas himself, but the printing press. By the third quarter of the 16th century, Las Casas`s writings had been translated into French, Dutch, and English, while other accounts like that of Benzoni were also in circulation.
For Protestants, Las Casas condemnation of his own people and catalogue of their injustices allowed them to quote the Catholic devil against his cohorts and to argue for a greater non-Spanish European presence in the New World. .. and thus began the slicing up of the Americas. This happened also at the time that the African Slave Trade was going on around the world,(in a second I will also argue that Africans were here before the Slave trade) and thus, all three elements were now present in what is today known as Latin America.But wait... the big question- How did the Native American get to the Western Hemisphere? There is no concrete, scientifically proven answer.. all we have are ideas, my friends! Some native cultures do believe that they have always been here, and we respect that belief. However i must also outline some of the ideas bought forth over the centuries, mainly the idea that Siberian hunters came from south east Asia to the region that is now Alaska, and that Africans arrived via currents that took them straight to these lands.One belief is this- much of the world's water was frozen in gigantic ice sheets. The floor of the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska was solid enough to travel across. Siberian hunters known as "Clovis" turned south, spreading out through the Great Plains and into what is now the American Southwest. Within a few thousand years, they had made it all the way to the tip of South America...leading to the idea that native americans can be traced back to Siberia. (Many native tribes contest these theories. Their oral traditions teach that their ancestors have always been in the Americas)Many scholars generally agree that most indigenous peoples of the Americas descend from people who probably migrated from Siberia across the Bering Strait, 15,000-9,000 years ago. The exact epoch and route is still a matter of debate, and continual challenges are issued to this idea. Based on linguistic research, some 10,000 years ago, a movement of tribes occurred along the Rocky Mountain foothills and eastward across the Great Plains to the Atlantic seaboard. This big game hunting culture was known as Clovis, which is identified with fluted projectile points. It received its name from Clovis artifacts found near Clovis, New Mexico, the first evidence of this tool complex, excavated in 1932. Clovis ranged over much of North America and even appeared in South America. The culture is identified by distinctive "Clovis point", a notched flute in flint spear-points where a shaft was inserted. Water Migration- The Pacific coastal model proposes that people reached South America before North America following a pacific route of water travel. Some archaeologists have proposed that peoples of Oceania or southeast Asia crossed the Pacific Ocean and arrived in South America long before the Siberian hunter-gatherers. These hypothetical Pre-Siberian American Aborigines are claimed to have overspread much of South America before being nearly exterminated by the Siberian migrants coming from the north. Atlantic coast- There are two currents that originate off the coast of Africa and flow west to the Americas. The two currents are the Guinea Current and the Canary Current. The Guinea Current starts about mid-Africa just below the equator and flows to South America just around Brazil. The Canary current originates at the Canary Islands and flows along North Africa to Cape Verde where it runs into the North Equatorial Current. This current along with the N.E. Trade Winds would deliver a vessel at North America around the Bahamas Islands, which was right in the heart of the Olmec civilization. Some sources claim that the facial features of the ancient Olmecs, as seen on their statues, are African, also notice the similarities between the Aztec and Egyptian calendars and pyramid structures. The idea that Africans got here before Colombus is debated by scholoars and academia, but I personally believe this to be the case. I do not have enough space here to detail all of the native american cultures to the extent they should be detailed, so I'll post some information for the central american and south american lands: Mesoamerica is a region that extends roughly from the Tropic of Cancer in central Mexico down through northwestern Costa Rica. The term is generally used to denote the peoples and cultures of that region before the Spaniards. Mesoamerican cultures included the Olmec (1200 - 400 B.C. ), Maya (1000 B.C. - A.D. 1521), Zapotec (500 B.C. - A.D. 1000 ), Teotihuacan (A.D. 1 - 650), Mixtec (A.D. 900 - 1521), Huastec (A.D. 1200 - 1521), El Tajin (A.D. 550 - 1100), Toltec (A.D. 950 - 1150), and Aztec (A.D. 1200 - 1521). Geographical boundaries of the Mesoamerican ancient Maya empire spread through the countries of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, western Honduras and the five Mexican states of Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Campeche and Chiapas. The ancient Maya civilization lasted for 3,000 years, yet they are often dismissed because, even though they built huge stone temples and pyramids, they lacked metal tools and didn't use the wheel or beasts of burden. But they fashioned tools harder than steel, invented numerals and discovered the concept of zero (something that escaped the Greeks and Romans). One of the Maya's unique contributions to architecture is the Korbel Arch, also called the Maya Arch, which was formed by projecting stone blocks out from each side of a wall until they met forming a peak. This technique was a handy substitute for a true arch. The Maya also invented the wheel but, dismissing its usefulness, only used it for children's toys. Mesoamericans also tracked the movement of the sun, moon, planets, and stars. They not only developed a calendar as accurate as our Gregorian but were also highly-skilled astronomers, astrologers, urban planners and excelled as mathematicians. Their grand cities with monumental temples (the word "pyramid" was introduced by the Spaniards) were built without the use of today's tools. Yet, each major city-state was carefully planned with temples and palaces in the center, a nearby ball court for the famous pre-Hispanic team sport and the surrounding adobe houses of the common people at a respectable distance from the ceremonial center of town. South American Incas stretched north to south some 2,500 miles along the high mountainous Andean range from Colombia to Chile and reached west to east from the dry coastal desert called Atacama to the steamy Amazonian rain forest. At the height of its existence the Inca Empire was the largest nation on Earth and remains the largest native state to have existed in the western hemisphere. The wealth and sophistication of the legendary Inca people lured many anthropologists and archaeologists to the Andean nations in a quest to understand the Inca's advanced ways and what led to their ultimate demise. Cuzco, which emerged as the richest city in the New World, was the center of Inca life, the home of its leaders. "The riches that were gathered in the city of Cuzco alone, as capital and court of the Empire, were incredible," says an early account of Inca culture written 300 years ago by Jesuit priest Father Bernabe Cobo, "for therein were many palaces of dead kings with all the treasure that each amassed in life; and he who began to reign did not touch the estate and wealth of his predecessor but .... built a new palace and acquired for himself silver and gold and all the rest." Money existed in the form of work - each subject of the empire paid "taxes" by laboring on the myriad roads, crop terraces, irrigation canals, temples, or fortresses. In return, rulers paid their laborers in clothing and food. Silver and gold were abundant, but only used for aesthetics. Inca kings and nobles amassed stupendous riches which accompanied them, in death, in their tombs. But it was their great wealth that ultimately undid the Inca, for the Spaniards, upon reaching the New World, learned of the abundance of gold in Inca society and soon set out to conquer it -- at all costs. Strictly speaking, the name "Inca" refers to the first royal family and the 40,000 descendants who ruled the empire. However, for centuries historians have used the term in reference to the nearly 100 nations conquered by the Inca. The Inca state's domain was unprecedented, its rule resulting in a universal language - a form of Quechua, a religion worshipping the sun, and a 14,000 mile-long road system criss-crossing high Andean mountain passes and linking the rulers with the ruled.

This, my friends, was just the beginning. In the 1800's came the various revolutions for Independence all across Latin America. I would have to create like 100 more pages to cover our collective histories, but at least this is a place to start.

"You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Somethings must happen but the end is still to Come. Nation will rise against Nation and Kingdom against Kingdom. There will be hurricanes and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginnings of birth pains."
- Matthew 24
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Elevacion, familia!
Due to recent events.. the Immigrant Law Protests and the gov't tragedy in Puerto Rico, I am trying to develop a subcommunity for those of latino origin here on MySpace, hopefully through "Espacio Latino", which will feature news (and hopefully events and gatherings) from across the latino-american diaspora. We are such a diverse people, yet we are grouped together perceptually in the eyes of the others... maybe it's about time we educate ourselves about our brethren and simultaneously, educate the open minded mainstream about our differences, similarities, and solidarity!
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