coldhearted scientist وداد

History shows that surviving cultures are not the ones that isolate themselves but are those that transform themselves according to changing circumstances. Even with this, even when this means abducting cultural limits from another society. Eventually all social structures are worn down and destroyed unless they consciously seek to engage with an emerging dominant culture and adapt accordingly.

As we discussed, Latin American culture has come about as a result of the changes that have occurred since different cultures came to occupy the same territory. The Spanish and the Portuguese conquistadors, of 500 years ago, started these cultural changes by imposing, frequently violently, a European and Catholic way of life in the countries they came to dominate.

In the colonial period of the eighteenth century, the Mestizo culture started to strengthen, demanding distance from European political influence. While basing their social ideals firmly in those of the Enlightenment movement. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw mass immigration from Europe and Asia as people running away regional instability brought vastly different cultures with them. During these whole periods, Africans contributed to Latin American cultural development when even they lived in slavery.

The impact of immigration on Latin American cultures is a function of where immigrants came from, when they arrived, and why they did so. The motivation of the European conquistador of the sixteenth century, was completely different from that of the European immigration or refugee of the nineteenth century. Further, the culture they brought with them was radically different in part simply because there was a 300 year gap during which European culture continued to develop and change.

Africans initially arrived as slaves who were eventually freed and were joined by other African immigrants who came by choice. This plurality of cultures, ethnicities, and different historical moments of encounters, mean that Latin American culture is full of particularities.

Axé.