The Tarascan: The Tarasco Culture And Empire
The Tarascan (Purepecha also called) are an Amerindian people living in Michoacan and neighboring states in west-central Mexico
. In 2000, the National Indian Institute listing 121,409 Tarascan language speakers (including 103,168 Tarasc bilingual / Spanish). These figures are skewed because a number of Indians trying to pass for mestizos to the investigator.
The reason is that the term Indio retains the current language in a derogatory connotation and that the natives who occupy the lowest level of the social ladder are discriminated against. In addition, children under five years are not listed. The estimates are therefore an error of about 15% (M. Antochiw, J. Arnold, A. Breton).
A temperate climate characterized the Tarascan highlands of the country: the winters are cold and dry, summers hot and humid. The annual temperature variation range between 0 and 22 . The vegetation is dominated by pines, oaks and agaves. A tropical atmosphere prevails in the basin of the Rio Tepalcatepec: annual temperatures that do not descend below 20 allows the cultivation of cotton, cocoa, melon, mango, vanilla, pineapple, the papaya, pineapple ...
Most of our knowledge comes from the Tarascan civilization Relationship of Michoacan. This manuscript dated 1541, now preserved in the Royal Library of the Escorial (Spain), has 140 pages divided into three sections: the first part, almost entirely lost, was dedicated to the deities and religious festivals. The second part tells the story of the Tarascan since the arrival of nomadic Chichimecs in northern Michoacan until the eve of the Spanish conquest. The narrative can not be taken literally since its construction is structured primarily by the religious and political ideology. The third part deals with the coming of the Spaniards as well as the customs of the natives.
The current Tarascs speak for themselves under the term Purepecha. This name appears in the second half of the sixteenth century and means "Men" is the result of cultural misunderstanding between the Spanish and Tarascan. The first sought to know under what ethnonym identified with the latter. However, all the civilizations of pre-Hispanic America knew what a ethnonym. The Indians called themselves as a member of a city and not a nation (Ch Duverger, 2003).
One reason cited is that each pre-Hispanic culture is characterized by great linguistic diversity: the Tarascan Tarascan spoke not only, but also the Nahua (spoken in all of Mesoamerica), Otomi, and the Mazahua the Matlatzinca. Several of these groups could live in the same city but in separate quarters. To complicate matters, the cultural traits of the Tarascan civilization but were Nahua language of power was the Tarascan (structural state of mind was Nahua).
The ethnonym Tarasque appears at the end of the first half of the sixteenth century. It was the Spaniards who gave this name to the Indians of Michoacan. The ethno-historical sources of the colonial era differ as to its etymology:
1. According to F. Bernardino de Sahagan, the term derives from the name of god or Tares UPEM Taresupeme (this is Mixcoatl: Aztec god of the north, hunting and the Milky Way).
2. For the Relation of Michoacan, the Spanish dictionary / Tarasque F. Maturino Gilberti or the Relation of the city of Patzcuaro (1581) BJ Martinez ... the ethnonym designate either the son or daughter-in or step-children of both sexes, the stepfather or step-parents.
The Aztecs called the Tarascan Michoacan country that can be translated as "the land of fishermen. Nahua name is composed of a radical - Mich. - (Mishin of "fish") + possessive suffix-oa-"to which that has ..." + suffix-can-rental. The inhabitants of Michoacan were Michoaque.
The Tarascan state organization was traditional meso-American. The power was held by a board and a ruler called Cazonci. The members of the political and military elite (priests, warriors and close relatives of the sovereign) sat on the board. The decisions that were taken in this body were only under the rule of acceptance of all. The first function of the board was to appoint a new king, almost always a member of the royal family.
Its members could physically eliminate the Cazonci if it was not in tune with their feelings. However, we should not underestimate the power of the sovereign: He accumulated loads of army chief, high priest and supreme judge. He received the ambassadors of the cities vassal or independent territories and presided over meetings of the board.
The Tarascan language does not belong to any known phyla U.S.. Two researchers have attempted to end this situation by appealing to isolate the lexical statistics: You compare the vocabulary of many languages and then to count the percentage of common roots. Mr. Swadesh and discovered an affinity between Tarascan and Aymara (spoken on the shores of Lake Titicaca), Quechua (spoken in all the central Andes) or the Zuni (spoken in the southwestern United States) .
JH Greenberg presents a fundamentally different: the Tarascan language belongs to a phylum called Chibcha-Paez. This language family is divided into two branches: the subgroup Chibcha, which owns the Tarascan language group and the subgroup Paez. The differences in viewpoint between study and Swadesh M. Greenberg JH encourage us to use the results from the lexical statistics with great caution.
by: Laura Steinfield
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