16 October, 2014 (Thursday)

Hello to everyone!

I'm Inés and this is my first journal of the year.

Today in the class of Social Sciences, we have done a lot of things!

Firstly, Paqui has talk about the photo of the students of this year for the blog and she has told us that it's better to do only one photograph with both groups together.

After this, Cristina Mañez has corrected "Colonial society", which is the last part of the squeme "Conquest, Administration and Colonization of the Indies". Cristina has told us that: There were different social groups living in the Indies, and their position depended on their origin:

• The peninsulars: economic and political power and they held the main posts in administration.
• Creoles: descendants of colonists. As time went by they started complaining about their psition.
• Mestizos: mixture between colonists and American Indians.
• Black slaves: slaves from Africa. They were sold in the depopulated territories to work in the plantations.

To explain it better, Paqui has drawn a pyramid explaining Colonial society in grades or estates of population.

Then, we have started to talk about Bartolomé de las Casas because he wrote a short account of the destruction of the Indies.

Source: http://www.datum.org.ar/noticias013.html

To understand the situation, Paqui has explained another situation, that all of us understand really well, she has talked about the Spanish Constitution therefore we have konwn that there are a lot of laws that aren't real.

Later, we have studied the products from American origin like tomatoes, corn, pepper, potatoes, coccoa, tobaco, avocado, sunflowers, pumpkin, peanuts... Also, there are products in America with European origin like wheat, barley, oats, donkeys, horses, cows, chicken, rabbits...

Today, we have finished the point 2 of the unit so we have started te point 3 "The 17th century"  part a) "Demography, society and economy".

We have copied from the blackboard a squeme of the part a) and, at the same time, the teacher has explained the slow population growth, due to high mortality rate caused by wars, epidemics and famines; the society sitll into states privileged and underprivileged people. And then, the economy; agriculture continued to be the main activity; most of the production continued to be made by craftsmen in workshops and controlled by the guilds, in some places, merchants created manufactories to escape the control of guilds.

At the end of the lesson, Paqui has given some homework to us, to complete the scheme that we have started in class because we haven't got time to finish it in class.

Today, like always we have copied some vocabulary: 

• Obey the order, but don't follow it: Obedézcase, pero no se cumpla.
• Useless: Inútil.
• Unfair: Injusto.
• Population growth: Crecimiento de la población.
• Harvest: Cosecha.
• Moratlity rate: Tasa de mortalidad.

Source: www.cossio.net/actividades/pinacoteca/p_01_02/las_lanzas.htm