ABSTRACT
Spain’s new empire encompassed much of the territory from southern North America all the way to the southernmost tip of South America. Colonialism was the product of a new social order that placed Native Americans and mixed races at the bottom of the social hierarchy, and kept a minority of Spanish and Portuguese settlers at the top. The economic control of the New World was perhaps the most significant and important element in long-term Spanish and Portuguese control. Institutions that forced Native American Indians to produce natural resources evolved into forced labor mechanisms that focused on agricultural and mineral wealth for the colonists. In terms of political control, the Iberian kingdoms used a system of political manipulation and overlapping jurisdictions to maintain political power in their Latin American colonies. Religion was one of the driving forces behind Spanish exploration and colonization in the New World.
