Cl/Ev/Wa
Paragraph
Example
Using Valdos' Description of
Aztec Society


Sometimes it can be easier to create an argument in response to a question if you have an example by which to guide your efforts.

So, imagine the question before you was:

In Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdos' description of Aztec society, what does he think best explains the poverty of the majority of Aztecs?

You might answer:

(Cl) Valdos blamed the Aztec lords themselves for the poverty of the peasants he observed because the elites took from their vassals whatever they produced above that which was needed for the barest of existences. (Ev) Valdos, for example, noted that the peasants ate "little" despite "fertile" soils that "yield[ed] bountiful harvests" -- a contradiction best explained, thought Valdos, by the fact that the Indian lords "tax[ed] away the greater part" of what the peasants produced, leaving the peasants "only enough to sustain [them] for a year." (Wa) Accordingly, when Valdos contrasted the abundance the harvests brought with the bare subsistence the taxes left, he dismissed the limitations of the natural environment as a factor in the peasants' poverty, faulting instead the cruelty of the Aztec rulers.

 

Things to notice in this paragraph:

A) The claim of the paragraph is not a summary of the evidence; rather, the claims makes an analytic argument from the evidence.

B) The author employs brief quotations from the text for her evidence and weaves those quotations into her own sentence. See here for a longer discussion of how both to reduce quotations and to insert your own words into a quotation.

C) The warrant does not repeat the claim, but instead explains how the evidence supports the claim.

D) The author synthesizes material from many different parts of the original document to craft her response. How she has done so may be more obvious if we highlight in orange the portions she quoted:

The Indians of New Spain, I have been told by reliable persons who gained their information from Spaniards who fought with Hernando Cortes in the conquest of that land, are the poorest of the many nations that live in the Indies at the present time. In their homes they have no furnishings or clothing other than the poor garments which they wear on their persons, one or two stones for grinding maize, some pots in which to cook the maize, and a sleeping mat. Their meals consist chiefly of vegetables cooked with chili, and bread. They eat little -- not that they would not eat more if they could get it, for the soil is very fertile and yields bountiful harvests, but the common people and plebeians suffer under the tyranny of their Indian lords, who tax away the greater part of their produce in a manner that I shall describe. Only the lords and their relatives, and some principal men and merchants, have estates and lands of their own; they sell and gamble with their lands as they please, and they sow and harvest them but pay no tribute. Nor is any tribute paid by artisans, such as masons, carpenters, feather-workers or silver--smiths, or by singers and kettle-drummers (for every Indian lord has musicians in his household, each according to his station). But such persons render personal service when it is required, and none of them is paid for his labor.

Each Indian lord assigns to the common folk who come from other parts of the country to settle on his land (and to those who are already settled there) specific fields, that each may know the land that he is to sow. And the majority of them have their homes on their land; and between twenty and thirty or forty and fifty houses, have over them an Indian head who is called tiquitlato, which in the Castilian tongue means "the finder (or seeker) of tribute." At harvest time this tiquitlato, inspects the cornfield and observes what each one reaps, and when the reaping is done they show him the harvest, and he counts the ears of corn that each has reaped, and the number of wives and children that each of the vassals in his charge possesses. And with the harvest before him he calculates how many ears of corn each person in that household will require till the next harvest, and these he gives to the Indian head of that house; and he does the same with the other produce, namely kidney beans, which are a kind of small beans, and chili, which is their pepper; and chia, which is as fine as mustard seed, and which in warm weather they drink, ground and made into a solution in water and used for medicine, roasted and ground; and cocoa. which is a kind of almond that they use as money and which they grind, make into a solution, and drink; and cotton, in those places where it is raised, which is in the hot lands and not the cold; and pulque, which is their wine; and all the various products obtained from the maguey plant, from which they obtain food and drink and footwear and clothing. This plant grows in cold regions, and the leaves resemble those of the cinnamon tree, but are much larger. Of all these and other products they leave the vassal [that is, the common Indian under the authority of the tiquitlato] only enough to sustain him for a year. And in addition the vassal must earn enough to pay the tribute of mantles, gold, silver, honey wax, lime, wood. or whatever products it is customary to pay as tribute in that country. They pay this tribute every forty, sixty, seventy, or ninety days according to the terms of the agreement. This tribute also the tiquitlato receives and carries to his Indian lord.