Research Paper on:
Colonization and its Impact on the Caribbean and Latin America

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
not providing a better way of life for the indigenous people living there. That does beg the question, then. How did European conquest/colonization affect the cultures of Latin America and  the Caribbean and was it beneficial in the long run? Most colonization begins, it can be stated, with a desire for land, goods, resources, and strategic military operations. In a  struggle of strong versus the weak, the might of the invading principality overcomes the weaker culture and as such has an influence from the beginning. A blending of cultures is  almost immediate in that even a culture which rises from the ashes of a decolonized nation is never as native as it once was, but is at best a hybrid.  Such is the case with Latin America. Constantly bombarded with foreign invaders, eventually the cultures were unable to fend them off any longer. The first invasion came at the hands  of the Spanish and Portuguese who not only invaded the Incan Capital, but killed its leader, took the citys resources and hung most of the survivors from the city after  that. What population did manage to survive the ransacking of their city later would die of smallpox which was introduced by the Spaniards. For nearly three centuries after this, the  Spanish would greatly control most of Latin America along with the Portuguese. Huge tracts of land were granted to the wealthy in the European countries. Along with their weapons  and diseases, the invaders also brought their religion. Churches were immediately established throughout Latin America and the religion that had flourished in that place began to fade from the fabric  of their culture to be replaced by Catholicism. In short order the indigenous population was dominated and overcome by the European influence and were forced to work on plantations and