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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Why did the Spaniards not exterminate the Indians after they were conquered?
(a) They respected the Indians.
(b) They needed labor.
(c) Their Catholicism prevented mass slaughter.
(d) They wanted to learn from the Indians.

2. What was an important element of all ancient cultures?
(a) Military superiority.
(b) Historical records.
(c) Religion.
(d) Familial relationships.

3. What happened to the people annexed by greater world powers?
(a) They became passive in the world sphere.
(b) The material gains that they made balanced the loss of voice.
(c) They became more active in the world sphere.
(d) They were forgotten.

4. Which of the following contributed to making colonialism alive and relevant?
(a) Violence.
(b) Catholicism.
(c) Imperial takeover.
(d) Native acceptance.

5. According to Paz, what philosophical fact defines much of Mexico's history?
(a) The people adopted some ideas and invented others.
(b) They overturned several of Spain's philosophical treatises.
(c) They had only two great thinkers.
(d) The people adopted ideas, but did not invent their own.

Short Answer Questions

1. Why does poetry tend to eradicate history? (Chapter Seven).

2. What did positivism do with the ideals of the Reformation?

3. Following the Revolution, why was socialist education not widely implemented in Mexico?

4. Who was Emiliano Zapata?

5. How did the Independence movement begin in South America?

Short Essay Questions

1. What role did religion play in ancient South American cultures? Did Catholicism change that role?

2. How did Catholicism reduce the Indian converts into passive believers? How was that a significant blow?

3. How does Paz define "Mexicanism"? How does it mesh with the individual whom he had described earlier?

4. What role did Catholicism play in the lives of the conquering Spaniards? Was that role contradictory?

5. What happened when Spanish America separated itself from Spain? Given what Paz has stated throughout the book about that moment in history, draw your own conclusions about why that happened.

6. Why could Mexico not have progressed as far as she has today if she were working within capitalism?

7. Throughout his career, what did Jorge Cuesta argue? What are the benefits and downfalls of his argument?

8. What is the role of the Mexican intelligentsia within society? How does it differ from the function of the intelligentsia within the United States and Europe; and which one is a better role?

9. Paz asserts that every revolution attempts to restore the order that an oppressor has twisted or disregarded altogether. How was that true in Mexico?

10. How does Paz explain the suicides of the Aztec people? Is it a reasonable explanation?

(see the answer keys)

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