History, religion, and mythology must all be taught in public schools and in public universities. And the history of religion must also be taught in public schools and in public universities. This is inconvenient but it’s true. And I’m going to make an argument in favor of this using Latin America.

If you want to study Latin American history, you are studying the history of religion. As someone who is working towards a degree in history and who is Latin American this is a fundamental fact. When you study the history of Latin America, especially it’s early history, you are not JUST studying the history of Mexico, and all of the countries south of it. You are not JUST studying how the Spanish ruled over Latin America. You are studying an immensely complex relationship between the Catholic Church, the Spanish Crown, and tens of thousands of Indigenous people (and their descendants), Spanish conquistadors (and their descendants), Africans (enslaved, and not, and their children), and regular Spanish people who came over because they wanted an attempt at a restart (and some of them were kicked out) (and of course, their descendants). It is not possible to gain an understanding of the history of Latin America without also knowing at least a bit about the Catholic Church. At least bits and pieces of the history of the Church are taught when we learn about the history of Latin America. We learn about the Catholic Church’s debate over whether or not the native people of Latin America had souls and the question of whether or not they could be enslaved. If you want to learn about this specific moment in history, I recommend researching the Sublimis Deus and the Valladolid debate (this is apparently part of a lecture on the topic from, the University of British Columbia and a solid summary of it) in which Bartolome de las Casas argued in favor of (this is a summary) treating the Indigenous peoples with the similar respect to what the colonizers received or were thought worthy of, against (among others) Juan Gines de Sepulveda who wanted to see that the Natives be forced to end their controversial practices and was more than willing to use force to achieve this goal.

I once co-led a club about Latin American culture, language, and dance. This club was located at an elementary school, in Greensboro North Carolina. I was (and am) a college student. I was teaching children about the history of Latin America. My girlfriend was the other co-leader and we decided to watch The Book of Life. A good portion of the film takes place in the world of the dead. This afterlife is set in two distinct places, the “Land of the Forgotten” and the “Land of the Remembered”. I had to pause the movie and explain a bit of Latin American history, in order to teach the children that there are many different beliefs and that the perception of what comes after death isn’t universal. One of them had actually asked Jessica and myself why weren’t the characters in Heaven. This single statement is enough to support the creation of classes around religion, and mythology, but there’s a real need for it. Religion motivates and motivated people (in the present day) and people throughout history. In attempting to teach people about history, we MUST also teach about religion and about religious beliefs because these beliefs did have an effect on kings and queens, and on heroes and “villains” throughout history.

This is a topic that can be approached objectively. And in today’s society it should be approached. I understand that this is controversial, but in order to truly teach history effectively, one cannot afford to forget how religion has molded the world around us. We cannot afford to forget how religion motivated people and how it drove them further than perhaps any other factor. Missionaries from the Catholic Church moving to the New World affected how the Spanish Crown viewed the Native people. Religious persecution drove people to the New World. Religious persecution (both actual and imagined) drove Christians and Pagans to be weary of each other in ancient Rome. In a lot of ways religion has indirectly contributed to the way the world looks even right now. We can no longer act like history and religion exist separately, and if we truly value education we should push for classes centered around religion, mythology, and the history of religion (and why it affects the world even today). Let’s work to improve education as much as we can, and to teach as much as we can, about history. That should include religion and how it evolved.