Assignment #8 – Marginalize and Exploit Essay

   Power is the ability to control events and the behaviors of other people. To marginalize is to put off someone to the side, or make them less important.  Exploit means to take advantage of someone for your own benefit. People with power are able to marginalize and exploit people with power by not paying them the amount of money they should get for their labor, by not recognizing others with different identities as people and by making someone do something for their own culture.

 

To begin with, people can marginalize and exploit others because of their different identities by making them work for them, not paying them the well deserved money that they should be earning and taking away things from them like their homes. Document #3 talks about what happened to the Natives once they were conquered by the Spanish. The Spanish introduced the Encomienda System and that’s were the Natives were being marginalized and exploited. The doc is a quote taken from the book called “Colonial America” which was written by Jerome R. Reich in 1994. One quote say that ,” in practice they were bought and sold, worked (literally) to death, and forced into virtual slavery.” Being exploited by someone else takes away your freedom on doing things that could make yourself better and now all your time is being focused on the exploiters. Therefore you can’t live your life in peace but you’re constantly being pressured. From the quote we can say that the Natives weren’t being seen as humans but as objects that could be taken advantage off in any way you pleased.  

 

Furthermore, people are marginalized by people with power because slaves were being chained up and not recognized as people who were the same as their “masters”. In document number 4 it talks about the rules in “The Code of Noir” of what you’re supposed too do if you have slaves. The document is laws that are in “The Code of Noir” which the King of France wrote in March, 1685 concerning about the order in the French American islands. One quote from the document says ,” The masters will have the right, when they’ll estimate it’s necessary, to chain up the slaves and make beat them by sticks and ropes.” This quote implies that people with power are able to marginalize others with different identities because the slaves were being treated like animals and not being recognized as humans and that’s what marginalising is. They were treated like animals because they were being beaten up and being controlled by the French.

 

Finally, people with power are able to marginalize and exploit others because the Aztecs did Sacrifice Rituals when they captured an enemy who was physically perfect as well as being skilled at something. One document talks about how an Aztec Scribe described his impressions about the Aztecs Sacrifice Ritual. The scribe talks about how an enemy warrior can be treated like a god until he gets killed at the end of the Aztecs festival. The person that is being sacrificed is killed publically by having his body dismembered. The document is a note written by an unknown Aztec scribe. It was recorded and told to Friar Bernardino de Sahagun several year after 1529. This quote from the doc says ,” This seasoned warrior, whom we change from a human into the god Tezcatlipoca, … is treated like our most royal family member during the long year leading up to his sacrifice.” This quote reveals that the enemy warrior is being marginalized and exploited because he is used for their own culture and he is killed in the end. Killing this warrior isn’t fit because the purpose the Aztecs are doing it isn’t something the warrior believes and every person has the right to choose what to do with their life. But he didn’t get a choice because he was an enemy and he was a perfect fit for the Aztecs god Tezcatlipoca. Also he isn’t being treated like a human but like an Aztec god which you might think is good but it isn’t because he isn’t being viewed like a person who has a life.