Extermination of the Joyas

Extermination of the Joyas
Student Name
University
Course
Professor Name
Date
Extermination of the Joyas
Before the arrival of the Europeans, Indigenous Californians had three genders in their civilization: Male, female, and the joyas. However, the Spanish missionaries and soldiers had firm trust in God. They expected that these accursed individuals, the joyas, would disappear with the expansion of the missions since they believed that this third gender engaged in unnatural abuse of their bodies. Given that the Catholic faith and all other ‘acceptable’ virtues were firmly entrenched there, the Spaniard missionaries and soldiers firmly rooted for eradicating the awful vice to glorify God and benefit those unfortunate ignorant.
Miranda (2022), in her work, Extermination of the Joyas, strongly contends that what the Spaniards perceived as a religious obligation was essentially a plan to eradicate the entire third gender. The author looks at the strategies used to execute gendercide and how unsuccessful the destructive strategies were. In addition, she believes, moreover that two-spirited indigenous peoples seen in modern times represent a resurgence of the joyas.
The existence of more than one identity is a broad topic of discussion and might call for more than just gender to identify an individual. 'I am unable to adopt one identity. Simply put, I'm not up to it. And it took me a long time to realize that it was a component of my upbringing. I grew up in a multi-ethnic community; Laguna is a mix of languages, religions, and races,' as stated by Paula Gunn Allen (Miranda, 2022). However, the Spaniards regarded the third gender and their activities as immoral and against their religious beliefs. In their efforts to politically take over Indigenous California, Spanish colonialism adopted ruthless means of doing it, ...