There is a bit of a blank spot in most people's maps when it comes to Central America. We know about the Aztec and the Inca but what was going on in between? There were actually several advanced societies in the region, with historians even placing one in the same category as the Mesoamerican and Andean cultures. This episode will outline some of them, as well as discussing language families and how they help us work out who is related to who (and how they got to the places they are today). ...
In 1524 a shipwrecked Portguese soldier launched one of the most audacious expeditions in the history of the Iberian conquest of Latin America. Stranded in Southern Brazil, he managed to not just survive, but to carve out a role for himself as a war leader and initiate the first contact between Europeans and the Inca empire. ...
Being the first new world colony that the Spanish established, Hispaniola was a grand experiment. Today we take a look at how it was turning out under the rule of its third governor Nicolas de Ovando. His rule was a time of rapid growth, despite the fact that he had to deal with both a hurricane and an earthquake. This was also a pivotal time for the indigenous Taino. Ovando would go on a campaign of pacification which involved numerous massacres and which saw the population drop by as much as 90%. The remaining Taino also became subject to the new encomienda system which governed their role in this new society they found themselves forced into. ...
