Acculturation vs Transculturation
...lturation than toward transculturation, but twentieth century Mexican society is the strongest exception to this generalization” (41). Mexico was not made up of a single culture; it was comprised of many various cultures. More than half of the country’s people were ‘mestizo’, which referred to a person of mixed descent. In Mexico’s case, it was a mix of white and Amerindian. Mexico brought all of these cultures together and began to call them Mexican in the early twentieth century. All the people of the country began to think about what the Mexican descent really was. This finally led to a great celebration of the Mexican civilization. People were proud of what they were. One did not necessarily have to be ‘Spanish’ in order to be ‘Mexican.’ The cultures united and became one. Brazil has made excellent improvements in their ethnic associations. Their interracial mixing is extremely high. Brazil has a population of 175.2 million people containing just as much diversity as the United States. Brazil is made up of about 8.6 million blacks; 70 million Brazilians with European, African, and Amerindian backgrounds and 96 million are primarily of European descent. There is now also a Japanese population, numbering about one million (de Blij 251-52). This shows how the processes of acculturation and transculturation have come into play in Brazil. Several people from European and African ancestry came to Brazil, which is a country that is already ‘technologically superior,’ and brought their culture into the country. Of course, things did change, but each society kept bits and pieces from their own ethnicity. Bolivia practiced acculturation greatly. When the Spanish entered Bolivia, they realized the amounts of people from numerous different cultures, like Aymara, Guarani, Calcha, and more. They also found large amounts of silver, which they took over from the Indio’s, as they were called. The people native to the country had no choice but to give up their property and become indentured laborers on the haciendas. Many natural Bolivians did everything they could in order to prevent European domination. They were rebellious in their work, they purposely did not do what they were expected to, and many of them were armed. The women of Bolivia were turned into pieces of property owned by the landowner. He and his relatives used the woman for sexual acts. Women also had to change their style. They were forced to wear the skirt worn by Spanish peasant women, named the pollera, in order to distinguish them from the other women (Overview 7). In Bolivia’s case acculturation wanted to be avoided. The indigenous people of Bolivia did not want any other cultures to come in because they knew it was going to get worse for them. The Dominican Republic had several types of people living in their country. Everyone came together and became one country. The vast majority of people in the D.R. are a combination of European and African features. A few examples include: A mulatto, which is a person w...