Where are the Incas and the Aztecs today?

You missed the point. Mr Baker obviously thinks of himself as being rather more than 0.0312% Cherokee.

Domen said:

Yes, but it seems that to be the leader of a Cherokee organization, one needs to prove at least some Cherokee ancestry.

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Says you. Obviously, the Cherokee don't agree.

Domen said:

IMO "being 0,0312% Cherokee" means that out of his most recent 3200 ancestors, 1 was a Cherokee.

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The article states "one-thirty second degree of Cherokee blood". That means 1-in-32, not 1-in-32,000. Some difference, there.

Traitorfish said:

The article states "one-thirty second degree of Cherokee blood". That means 1-in-32, not 1-in-32,000. Some difference, there.

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We have got a true Paul Erdös here!

Well, that wikipedia article says 0,0312% - and this is 1/3200.

So the error must be attributed to wikipedia, not to me.

Says you. Obviously, the Cherokee don't agree.

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Says not me, but the links posted by me.

Quackers said:

With my immense knowledge of this part of the world, ahem, surely the identification with socialism was the best way of posturing themselves against the yankees and tap into that resevoir of distrust and hate of the US in South America; United Fruit a particular in-your-face symbol of that relationship. On the other hand, you also gain an ally in the Soviet Union who, to my knowledge, were very supportive of foreign communist movements during the Cold War. Support, the US wasn't going to give.

I cannot recall many influential indigneous communists although they may be outside of my knowledge. You have your Jose Martis but he was as white as a sheet.
Is Chavez the foremost?
It points to the idea that idealogy wasn't the driving force behind these leaders' convictions but a way of accruing the two benefits i mentioned above.

/mindless speculation over.

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Personally I think this way of thinking is more correct than people realize ^. Nearly every revolution/guerrilla movement in the 20th century in Latin America often struggled actually at gaining indigenous support, because guerrilla movements were typically led by white ideologues with little real knowledge of the backcountry where they tried to set up these movements.

IE in Guatemala when the EGP first came to the highlands, it took them nearly half a decade to really garner any substantial indigenous support partly because people didn't initially believe the revolutionaries had their interests at heart and repercussions. The same played out in Nicaragua where the natives around Matagalpa actively helped the government because despite the FSLN's promises of good will - land, goods, and labor were seized and all the indigenous poor got in return was additional risk. Another example in Peru when the Shining Path was first starting out Marxists believed they could use the isolated area of Ayacucho as their base. The Huaychainos who had no love for the Peruvian government, welcomed these new guerrillas into their homes and then butchered them because they threatened the system of communal law and order in the indigenous dominated Ayacucho.

The point is indigenous support in general was lukewarm for marxist ideologies. Typically where support was given, it often waned quickly among indigenous populations when promises like land reform, equality, etc. often did not really apply to them. And its true that indigenous were most of the time the footsoldiers in guerrilla armies, but they were rarely and if ever officers. And the same actually goes for Government armies. IE in Guatemala hundreds of thousands of Maya fought for the government - so many in fact that there were more indigenous fighters for the government than there were for the guerrillas despite government atrocities [Not to say people agreed with the government, but just showing this because people often acted as footsoldiers for these movements because the alternative was retribution - IE a personal example, someone I am related to had his family shot and head cut open by guerillas in Comalapa. Using their blood the guerillas painted a warning to those who didn't support them fully in the village - Many fought on both sides of the civil war in that village, not because of ideological reasons but for survival]. Typically indigenous people didn't really believe in Marxist ideologies and this is shown by the huge apathy numerically towards guerrilla movements, where possible people tried to use the guerrillas for their advantage - Cases like Zapatista's army and the Cruzob revolution go to show that the armies that enjoyed true indigenous support, were fighting for indigenous causes first and second-hand ideologies second.

If institutionally indigenous had been educated across Latin America, many of the Marxist movements still wouldn't have incorporated natives significantly into leadership. IE when Che was fleeing from Guatemala and came in contact with the Cubans preparing for their revolution, he met a Quiche landlord sympathetic to the new status of exile for communists that wanted to accompany them on their guerrilla training, but was too "strategically focused" and willing to "compromise" that eventually he was dismissed before they even set off to Cuba. The "smart native" made Castro uncomfortable - machismo and subconscious racial distrust would have ensured that the power structure of the guerrilla movements would have put Marxist ideas over indigenous ideas and would have been reflected in leadership even if there had been a "qualified" population for leadership.

Interesting case of Brazil:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardo#Ancestry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardo#History

And also this article:

The Genomic Ancestry of Individuals from Different Geographical Regions of Brazil Is More Uniform Than Expected

I don't know enough about Brazil really - but there are several major cities that skew the distributional uniformity I think

I thought that the failure of the Spanish to colonize South America in the manner which North America was colonized was rooted in factors such as Spain's habit of going broke and a more difficult climate in South American jungles.

Plus a more difficult voyage across the Atlantic.

Other factors included the differing dynamics of religious emigration and differences of social strata in Northern and Southern Europe.

Core Imposter said:

I thought that the failure of the Spanish to colonize South America in the manner which North America was colonized was rooted in factors such as Spain's habit of going broke and a more difficult climate in South American jungles.

Plus a more difficult voyage across the Atlantic.

Other factors included the differing dynamics of religious emigration and differences of social strata in Northern and Southern Europe.

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Spanish colonists tended to intermarry with the locals.

As opposed to English colonists' habits of expelling/exterminating their locals.

I may have read too much Fernandez-Armesto

To be fair, the English didn't always expel or exterminate the indigenous peoples. Sometimes they let the Scots expel or exterminate the indigenous peoples instead.

You know, Scotland tried to go colonial once. It almost bankrupted the country.
A few decades later Scotland married England and we ruled the world together.

Don't make another mistake Scotland.

In the early 16th century, few women accompanied the Spanish men arriving in the Caribbean and Mesoamerica, which quickly created social conditions that favored an extensive intermixing of European and indigenous peoples. Very early on, Spanish men began living with indigenous women, taking native women as mistresses and, later, as wives. The Spanish Crown tried to engineer social policy to protect marriage between Spaniards by banning married men from traveling to the New World without their wives or, if they did go, requiring them to return to Spain or send for their wives within two years. These policies failed since the King had no way to enforce them. For a time, the Crown also prohibited unmarried women from emigrating unless they were servants or traveling with family members, leaving Spaniards in the New World with few available Spanish mates.

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/when-worlds-collide/essays/social-order-in-the-spanish-new-world.html

The Virginia Company of London seemed to agree that women were indeed quite necessary. They hoped to anchor their discontented bachelors to the soil of Virginia by using women as a stabilizing factor. They ordered in 1619 that "...a fit hundredth might be sent of women, maids young and uncorrupt, to make wives to the inhabitants and by that means to make the men there more settled and less movable...." Ninety arrived in 1620 and the company records reported in May of 1622 that, "57 young maids have been sent to make wives for the planters, divers of which were well married before the coming away of the ships."

Jamestown would not have survived as a permanent settlement without the daring women who were willing to leave behind their English homes and face the challenges of a strange new land. These women created a sense of stability in the untamed wilderness of Virginia. They helped the settlers see Virginia not just as a temporary place for profit or adventure, but as a country in which to forge a new home.


http://www.nps.gov/jame/historyculture/the-indispensible-role-of-women-at-jamestown.htm

taillesskangaru said:

Spanish colonists tended to intermarry with the locals.

As opposed to English colonists' habits of expelling/exterminating their locals.

I may have read too much Fernandez-Armesto

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While the Spanish certainly intermarried far more often than the English or French, that's not to say English and French settlers didn't intermarry/rape indigenous people too. Again it goes back to population dynamics, many of the early Spaniards intermarried into powerful indigenous families. In fact intermarriage into these families was sometimes quite a bit more desirable than marriage with Spanish women in order to give Spaniards legitimacy in managing their conquered lands. If you compare Spanish settlement of Peru or Central America to settling of say Chile or Argentina you see a much different dynamic, closer to intermarriage dynamics of the British or French in North America. In both Chile and Argentina indigenous populations were far less dense... and really the answer is that simple, there weren't too many people to intermarry.

As for Jamestown and early settlement in colonial America... there is a reason plenty of Americans like to call themselves 1/64 (or some other ridiculous fraction) indigenous. Relations did happen on the frontiers, but as there were substantially fewer indigenous in the continental US these populations were either quickly eliminated, assimilated, or fled like in the cases of the Delaware or Tuscarora. As for the survival of Jamestown, basically the reason they did so poorly was because of European stupidity. Jamestown had the same problem as Roanoke - far too many people who had never worked the land before were imported into the colony and people died at incredible rates. Frankly the colony's survival has less to do with the gradual increase in importation of women and more so that the colony's administrators finally figured out the people might, you know, need to eat? Farming surprisingly helped - but again, Brits

Quackers said:

You know, Scotland tried to go colonial once. It almost bankrupted the country.
A few decades later Scotland married England and we ruled the world together.

Don't make another mistake Scotland.

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You say "ruled the world" like it's a good thing, and not one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in history. That's a legacy that a great many Scots want no part in, and most are at best ambivalent about.

I'm not scottish but if I was I would be ashamed being part of England for all those reasons you said. I'm all for Scotland getting it independence.