El Indio

A detailed Summary of El Indio

Throughout time, history has always had its conquests. We are told the stories in ways that makes us see them as good accomplishments. Therefore giving the label to the one's being conquered as savages and "uncivilized" people, and the conquistadors as the "civilized" society. Having this in mind we tend to see the so-called "civilized" as the good and the "uncivilized" as the bad. But we are never told how the conquests come about. What the conquistadors do to accomplish their conquest. How they kill and destroy in order to exploit these "uncivilized" societies, therefore penetrating and dramatically changing their lives. An author by the name of Gregorio Lopez y Fuentes tells the other side of the conquest in his novel called El Indio. There we are taken on a journey of how people are tragically caught in the tail wind of a civilization both alien and hostile to them. There we learn how these people (The Indians) are exploited by the whites, how their culture is destroyed, and how they, in the end were able to resist the oppression. These three points are important because they are the structure that holds up the story so the reader can gain a considerable amount of knowledge about what occurred during this clash of c

The white man also brought a disease that would wipe out many Indians hence affecting also their culture by killing most of them. Lopez y Fuentes writes in the chapter titled "Plague", that after a season of excessive heat that destroyed the crops, a smallpox epidemic developed (200). Before the white men's arrival the Indians lived a more calm life with no trouble and they prospered, but we are clearly shown in the novel that after the white man interferes with the Indians, they start loosing their tradition and their culture because they are controlled and bossed around by the whites. For example, before the whites had come, the Indians had more time for their traditional things such as gathering in fiestas and celebrating events. Part of their culture was to work on their lands and live in the village. And after the white man came all these customs were altered.

On the last chapter of the book the author states that the cripple still spies from his hiding place in the brambles. Distrust itself, as he looks out on the highway- civilization (256). The book ends saying that the cripple, who represents the Indians as a whole, is looking down at civilization and although left cripple was able to resist the tyranny the whites had put on the Indians. This all means that the Indians had resisted and still remained, but the culture was left cripple.

Another way how the culture was destroyed was by the bringing of the roads (Highways), the church and the schools. The church wanted to convert them into Christianity, and the Indians had other beliefs. The building of the schools was also influential. Indian kids being used to work at early age were told to go to school. The Indians were being exposed to new things, a different type of culture and were forced to change their ways thus destroying their culture. The cripple Indian represented to an extent a culture destroyed. In the beginning, he was described by the author as a young man who in height, built, and bearing, was a worthy survivor of a race once great and powerful (39). The Indian guide represented the whole Indian race because he was strong and beautiful. When the white man came and took him as a guide, then tortured him and left him crippled, it represented as the whole culture being crippled, which leads to my last point.

Lopez y Fuentes opening line, "Terror swept thro

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Approximate Word count = 1595
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels