Intro to A Land So Strange and Creolization

In the introduction in A Land So Strange by Andrés Reséndez he describes how Cabeza de Vaca and his companions transformed how Spain viewed the Indians and how they themselves changed. Before Vaca came back on his adventure the Spaniards did not know if the Native Americans had souls and treated them as lesser humans. Through Vaca and his companions’ description of their adventure the Spanish realized that the Indians really were humans and started to treat them as such. Reséndez also describes how the tale of Cabeza de Vaca was very well known in the 1500s, and still has devoted fans, but it has lost world wide popularity since. Reséndez plans on presenting A Land So Strange as a factual journey and will not embellish.

 

Creolization in the Americas by David Buisseret states that “creolization” is process of two or more cultures merging and sharing ideas to form nearly a new culture. Buisseret belives creolization is a two-way street both the Indians and the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Africans gained something from other. Buisseret shows the easiest for creolization to be shown is in architecture, food, clothing, language, medicine, and music. Buisseret also expresses that how much two cultures creolize it based on; if they need to, if they want to, if the land is similar, and if there is more people of one culture then the other. I find Buisseret’s points very persuasive. To me it is very clear in our food how our culture creolizes. We have pizza, tortillas, seafood, noodles and so much more. Creolization is the right term to use because assimilate sounds one culture is absorbing the other and the “main” culture is unaffected.

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