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"An example of a ballot paper on which the voter has allocated preference according to the order of the candidates listed. In electoral systems which use ranked voting, a donkey vote is a cast ballot where the voter ranks the candidates based on the order they appear on the ballot itself. The voter that votes in this manner is referred to as a donkey voter. Typically, this involves numbering the candidates in the order they appear on the ballot paper: first preference for the first-listed candidate, second preference for the second-listed candidate, and so on. However, donkey votes can also occur in reverse, such that someone numbers the candidates from the bottom up the ballot paper. In systems where a voter is required to place a number against each candidate for the vote to be valid, the voter may give the first preference to the candidate they prefer, then run all the other numbers donkey fashion. Donkey votes are most common where preference voting is combined with compulsory voting, such as in Australia, particularly where all candidates must be ranked on the ballot paper. There are different versions of the phenomenon applicable in the Australian House of Representatives, Australian Senate and in the Australian jurisdictions that use the Hare–Clark single transferable vote (STV) system. Donkey votes may occur for several reasons, including voter apathy, protest voting, simplicity on how-to-vote cards, the complexity of the voting system, or voter ignorance of the voting system rules. Alternatively, what appears as a donkey vote may in fact be a genuine representation of a voter's preferences. Manifestation in compulsory preferential voting systemsAustralian House of Representatives= Preferential voting for a single seat is used in elections for the Federal House of Representatives (since 1918), for all mainland State lower houses, and for the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. It was also used for the Western Australian Legislative Council until 1986, and the Victorian Legislative Council until 2006; it is still used for the Tasmanian Legislative Council. A variant was used for the South Australian Legislative Council before 1973, with two seats per "province" (electoral district) being filled at each election, but by majority-preferential voting, not by proportional representation. The donkey vote has been estimated at between 1 and 2% of the vote, which could be critical in a marginal seat.Malcolm Mackerras, The "Donkey Vote", The Australian Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1968), pp. 89-92 Attempt to reduce the impact of donkey votes In 1983, reforms were made to Federal electoral legislation to reduce the impact of donkey voting including: * listing of party names besides each candidate (as for the examples below for the Divisions of Gwydir and Grayndler); * the order of candidates on the ballot paper being decided randomly by the Australian Electoral Commission returning officer after the close of nominations and the commencement of pre-poll voting – candidates were previously listed by alphabetical order leading to parties nominating candidates with names beginning with A. These reforms as well as an increase in electoral education funding have reduced the impact of donkey voting in Federal elections in recent years. As states have introduced similar reforms, the phenomenon has also been reduced in other jurisdictions. However, donkey voting still needs to be taken into account when assessing the size of the swing or two-party vote in particular electorates. 2005 Werriwa By-Election The by- election for the Federal electorate of Werriwa, held on 19 March 2005, following the resignation of Federal Labor leader Mark Latham, provides a good example for understanding the nature of donkey voting. At this by-election, 16 candidates were nominated. This large number of candidates led to an increased incentive to cast a donkey vote. Every candidate that issued how-to-vote cards used some variation of the donkey vote when instructing his or her voters how to mark preferences, presumably to simplify the task of voting, made onerous by needing to vote for 16 candidates, many with no public profile. Candidates generally allocated their first few preferences and last few preferences to candidates according to their wishes, then numbered the rest of the boxes from top to bottom or bottom to top. For example, The Greens advocated the following preferences: * 15 Woodger, Janey (Australians Against Further Immigration) * 1 Raue, Ben (The Greens) * 14 Young, James (Independent) * 13 Lees, Mal (Independent) * 3 Hayes, Chris (Australian Labor Party) * 12 Vogler, Robert (Independent) * 11 Tan, Greg (Christian Democratic Party) * 10 Bryant, Joe (Independent) * 16 Doggett, Charles (One Nation) * 9 Head, Mike * 8 Sykes, Mick (Family First) * 7 Bargshoon, Sam (Independent) * 2 McGookin, Pat (Progressive Labour Party) * 6 Locke, Deborah * 5 Aussie- Stone, Marc (Independent) * 4 Mannoun, Ned In this case, the how-to-vote card advocated a first preference for the Greens, a second preference for the Progressive Labour Party, a third preference for Labor and a last preference for One Nation. Apart from these preferences, the card advocates a reverse Donkey Vote. The donkey vote was also reflected in the high vote (4.83%) for Australians Against Further Immigration, who probably would normally gain far fewer votes, but were placed first on the ballot. =Australian Senate= The Australian Senate had a preferential system between 1919 and 1949. From 1934, to elect a State's three senators at a periodic Senate poll, voters had to mark their preference order among the candidates listed on the ballot paper against the names of each of the candidates (with consecutive integers beginning from 1). Candidates could be listed in groups, but voters could choose any order of candidates regardless of their grouping, because Section 7 of the Constitution provides that senators must be directly chosen by the people. Within each group, the candidates were listed in alphabetical order, and the groups were listed in what was called 'ranked alphabetical order', which ensured that a group in which all surnames started with 'A' would be at the top of the ballot paper if there were no other group with that feature. The groups were not identified by a party name, but just shown as Group A, Group B, etc. Donkey voters, by definition, marked their earliest preferences against the candidates in Group A, so a group that appeared in that position had an inbuilt electoral advantage. At the election of senators for New South Wales in 1937, Labor's group featured four candidates named Amour, Ashley, Armstrong and Arthur—all of the "Four A's" were duly elected. This prompted the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1940, which replaced that ballot paper layout with one closer to the present layout where the order of candidates' names within each group was determined by those candidates' mutual consent, which in practice means it is determined by the party organization. > "These days, the order of candidates on the voting form is determined by a > draw from a hat. Back then, the Electoral Commission [scil. Electoral > Office, pre-1984] simply followed the alphabet. This led to many interesting > battles of tactics between the Comms (Communist Party of Australia) and > their arch-rivals the DLP (Democratic Labor Party), who were also keen to > get their people at the head of the ticket. The Comms usually won, thanks to > their recruitment of numerous members of the Aarons family: short of re- > christening their own candidates something like Aardvark, there wasn’t much > the DLP could do about it.... Those crucial ballots [in the Queensland > electoral district of Moreton, in the extremely close 1961 House of > Representatives election] turned out to have cast not by Communists but by > donkeys, and as [Liberal candidate James] Killen's name preceded that of the > now-forgotten Labor candidate in the alphabet, they flowed largely to the > Libs."Mungo MacCallum, Mungo: The Man Who Laughs (Sydney: Duffy and > Snellgrove, 2001), pp 64-65. The Chifley Government introduced proportional representation for the Senate in 1948. Candidates were listed alphabetically in party order and the position of the parties candidates on the ballot paper was determined by lot after the close of nominations. In large states such as New South Wales and Victoria, there were at times over 100 candidates on the ballot paper, with voters required to list each candidate in order of preference. Consequently, there was a high percentage of informal votes and donkey votes cast in Senate elections. As a result, electoral reforms were introduced in 1983 allowing voters an alternative of voting 1 above the line for the party of their choice, with preferences being distributed according to a ticket lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission prior to the commencement of voting. This reform has greatly reduced the incidence of donkey voting and informal voting in Australian Senate elections. However, this system has led to a great increase of horse trading by parties in the development of the distribution of preferences as it makes the difference in deciding who fills the final few positions in the Senate representing that State. For example, the election of Steve Fielding of the Family First Party in the Victorian Senate election in 2004 with a party vote of 1.88% resulted from horse-trading associated with this process. States that use proportional representation to elect their upper houses such as New South Wales use a similar system to the Senate. =Hare–Clark elections= Two Australian jurisdictions use the Hare–Clark proportional representation system: the Tasmanian House of Assembly and the Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly (the latter being a unicameral system). Tasmania has used Hare–Clark since 1907, and the Australian Capital Territory since 1995. In Tasmania, candidates used to be listed in alphabetical order within a party column, leading to a donkey vote effect. For their ballots to be valid, voters only need to number as many candidates as there are vacancies to be filled, although they are free to number all the candidates if they wish. However, it was observed that often a candidate whose name appeared below the name of a popular candidate (such as a State party leader) would be elected on the leader's second preferences. As popular leaders such as Robin Gray, Kate Carnell or Jon Stanhope have achieved several quotas of first-preference votes in their own right at the height of their popularity, the impact of this position can lead to candidates being elected on the leaders' "coat-tails". A similar phenomenon has been observed in Ireland and Malta, which also use STV (with candidates ranked alphabetically). In 1979, Neil Robson, a Liberal member for Bass in the Tasmanian parliament, introduced the system known as Robson Rotation. Under this system, each ballot paper contains a different permutation of candidates so each candidate has a certain percentage of instances at every position in their party's column, therefore equally dispersing the donkey votes and nullifying their impact on the result as to which of a party's candidates is favoured, but allowing the party as a whole to be properly benefited. Manifestation in other electoral systems Donkey votes have been observed in democracies other than Australia, even those without compulsory preferential voting, although the presence of these two factors in Australia makes the phenomenon more visible. In systems where voting is not compulsory, it seems counter-intuitive that many who attend the polls would be apathetic. However, there may be countervailing factors that produce a "donkey vote" even with voluntary turnout. In many US elections, a voter may well be intensely interested in (e.g.) the Presidential contest but not in other, less prominent races on the same "long ballot". Since most non-preferential elections require the voter to mark only one single candidate, or one single party list, it becomes impossible to speculate how many votes for the first candidate or party on the ballot are genuine supporters and how many are donkey votes. In some elections (e.g. Germany and some US states), the order of parties on the ballot is in descending order of their support at the previous election (with new parties being placed lowest in random order). Such a system makes high ballot position both a cause and an effect of high electoral support. =United States= Donkey voting shows up in US state elections that use the "long ballot" for numerous offices, or in multi-seat elections where there are several candidates from the same party. In his book The Rise of Guardian Democracy: The Supreme Court's Role in Voting Rights, 1845-1969 (Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1974), Ward E.Y. Elliott notes: > "One long-time Democrat precinct captain in Denver noted that, besides > having party or lobby support, a candidate had to rank high in the ballot > list. Since ballot ranking was alphabetical, most of the eight Denver > [district State] Senators had names beginning with A, B or C." (p 362, > citing appellants’ brief in Lucas v Colorado). In 2018 North Carolina Supreme Court election, a rule change resulted in the order of the names on the ballot differing from previous years. The Charlotte Observer claimed that "Studies have shown ballot order favors the candidate listed first, and could make a difference in a close race", even though the State has first-past-the-post voting with voluntary turnout. =United Kingdom= British pro-STV campaigner Enid Lakeman noted the same effect in UK local elections, where significant numbers of voters invited to X (say) three candidates for three council seats would simply mark an X against the three highest on the ballot-paper, even if they belonged to different parties. =Ireland= In Ireland, where voting is preferential but not compulsory, the donkey vote has its greatest effect not between parties but within them. With an alphabetical list of candidates, and several candidates from each major party for the three to five seats per district, the proportion of Dáil Éireann deputies with surnames A to M is typically much higher than 50%, whereas it is only about half the population (according to the Irish telephone directory).B Walsh and C Robson, Alphabetical Voting: A Study of the 1973 General Election in the Republic of Ireland, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), General Research Series No #71, Dublin, January 1973 In O’Reilly v Minister for Environment,O’Reilly v Minister for Environment [1986] IR 143 the Irish High Court upheld the constitutional validity of alphabetical listing against an equality-rights challenge, noting that despite its faults, A to Z does have the advantage of making it easy to find candidates on the ballot-paper. ReferencesExternal links * AustralianPolitics.com * Australian 2004 Election Results * Article by election analyst Anthony Green on preference flows including the donkey vote * Proportional Representation Society of Australia page on Robson Rotation * Werriwa 2005 by-election Results * "Ballot Order for Blokes" by Amy King and Andrew Leigh – suggests that donkey vote benefits only male candidates Category:Political terminology in Australia "
"Radium painters working in a factory The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting watch dials with self-luminous paint. The painting was done by women at three different United States Radium factories, and the term now applies to the women working at the facilities: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and a third facility in Waterbury, Connecticut. The women in each facility had been told the paint was harmless, and subsequently ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip; some also painted their fingernails, face and teeth with the glowing substance. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way, because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, which was made from powdered radium, gum arabic and water. Five of the women in New Jersey challenged their employer in a case over the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers under New Jersey's occupational injuries law, which at the time had a two-year statute of limitations, but settled out of court in 1928. Five women in Illinois who were employees of the Radium Dial Company (which was unaffiliated with the United States Radium Corporation) sued their employer under Illinois law, winning damages in 1938. United States Radium Corporation 1921 advertisement for Undark From 1917 to 1926, U.S. Radium Corporation, originally called the Radium Luminous Material Corporation, was engaged in the extraction and purification of radium from carnotite ore to produce luminous paints, which were marketed under the brand name "Undark". The ore was mined from the Paradox Valley in Colorado and other "Undark mines" in Utah. As a defense contractor, U.S. Radium was a major supplier of radioluminescent watches to the military. Their plant in Orange, New Jersey, employed over one hundred workers, mainly women, to paint radium-lit watch faces and instruments, misleading them that it was safe. =Radiation exposure= U.S. Radium Corporation hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves; chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs.http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=660 U.S. Radium had distributed literature to the medical community describing the "injurious effects" of radium. In spite of this knowledge, a number of similar deaths had occurred by 1925, including the company's chief chemist, Dr. Edwin E. Leman, and several female workers. The similar circumstances of their deaths prompted investigations to be undertaken by Dr. Harrison Martland, County Physician of Newark. An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. At USRC, each of the painters mixed her own paint in a small crucible, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The then-current rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial (). The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the U.S. Radium supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips ("lip, dip, paint"), or use their tongues to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory. Many of the workers became sick; it is unknown how many died from exposure to radiation. =Radiation sickness= Many of the women later began to suffer from anemia, bone fractures, and necrosis of the jaw, a condition now known as radium jaw. It is thought that the X-ray machines used by the medical investigators may have contributed to some of the sickened workers' ill-health by subjecting them to additional radiation. It turned out at least one of the examinations was a ruse, part of a campaign of disinformation started by the defense contractor. U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies rejected claims that the afflicted workers were suffering from exposure to radium. For some time, doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with requests from the companies not to release their data. At the urging of the companies, worker deaths were attributed by medical professionals to other causes. Syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women. The inventor of radium dial paint, Dr Sabin A. Von Sochocky, died in November 1928, becoming the 16th known victim of poisoning by radium dial paint. He had gotten sick from radium in his hands, not the jaw, but the circumstances of his death helped the Radium Girls in court. Radium Dial Company The Radium Dial Company was established in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1922, in the town's former high school. Like the United States Radium Corporation, the purpose of the studio in Ottawa was to paint dials for clocks, their largest client being Westclox Corporation in Peru, Illinois. Dials painted in Ottawa appeared on Westclox's popular Big Ben, Little Ben and travel clocks; and like United States Radium Corporation, Radium Dial hired young women to paint the dials, using the same "lip, dip, paint" approach as the women in New Jersey and by another unaffiliated plant in Waterbury, Connecticut, that supplied the Waterbury Clock Company. Following the termination of President Joseph Kelly from the concern, Kelly established a competing firm in the town named Luminous Process Company, which also employed women in the same fashion, and in the conditions as the other firms. Employees at Radium Dial began showing signs of radium poisoning in 1926–1927 and were unaware of the hearings and trials in New Jersey. Furthermore, Radium Dial leadership authorized physicals and other tests designed to determine the toxicity of radium paint to its employees, but the company never gave those records to the employees or told them of the results. In a half-hearted attempt to end the use of the camel hair brushes, management introduced glass pens with a fine point; however, the workers found that the pens slowed their productivity (they were paid by the piece), and they reverted to using brushes. When word of the New Jersey women and their suits appeared in local newspapers, the women were told that the radium was safe and that employees in New Jersey were showing signs of viral infections. Assured by their employers that the radium was safe, they returned to work as usual. SignificanceLitigation= In New Jersey, the story of the abuse perpetrated against the workers is distinguished from most such cases by the fact that the ensuing litigation was covered widely by the media. Plant worker Grace Fryer decided to sue, but it took two years for her to find a lawyer willing to take on U.S. Radium. Even after the women found a lawyer, the litigation process moved slowly. At their first appearance in court on January 1928, two women were bedridden and none of them could raise their arms to take an oath. A total of five factory workers – Grace Fryer, Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice – dubbed the Radium Girls, joined the suit. The litigation and media sensation surrounding the case established legal precedents and triggered the enactment of regulations governing labor safety standards, including a baseline of "provable suffering". In Illinois, employees began asking for compensation for their medical and dental bills as early as 1927 but were refused by management. The demand for money by sick and dying former employees continued into the mid 1930s before a suit before the Illinois Industrial Commission (IIC) was brought. In 1937 five women found an attorney by the name of Leonard Grossman, that would represent them in front of the commission, but by this time, Radium Dial had closed, moving to New York. The IIC did retain a $10,000 deposit left by Radium Dial when it disclosed to the IIC that they could not find any insurance to cover the cost of indemnifying the company against employee suits. In the spring of 1938, the IIC ruled in favor of the women. The attorney representing the interests of Radium Dial appealed hoping to get the verdict overturned, and again the commission judge found for the women. Radium Dial appealed over and over, taking the case all the way to the Supreme Court and on October 23, 1939, the court decided not to hear the appeal and the lower ruling was upheld. In the end, this case had been won eight times before the Radium Dial was finally forced to pay. =Historical impact= The Radium Girls' saga holds an important place in the history of both the field of health physics and the labor rights movement. The right of individual workers to sue for damages from corporations due to labor abuse was established as a result of the Radium Girls case. In the wake of the case, industrial safety standards were demonstrably enhanced for many decades. The case was settled in the autumn of 1928, before the trial was deliberated by the jury, and the settlement for each of the Radium Girls was $10,000 () and a $600 per year annuity () plus $12 a week () for all of their lives while they lived, and all medical and legal expenses incurred would also be paid by the company.http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl The lawsuit and resulting publicity was a factor in the establishment of occupational disease labor law. Radium dial painters were instructed in proper safety precautions and provided with protective gear; in particular, they no longer shaped paint brushes by lip and avoided ingesting or breathing the paint. Radium paint was still used in dials as late as the 1960s. Former factory site in West Orange, N.J. =Scientific impact= Robley D. Evans made the first measurements of exhaled radon and radium excretion from a former dial painter in 1933. At MIT he gathered dependable body content measurements from 27 dial painters. This information was used in 1941 by the National Bureau of Standards to establish the tolerance level for radium of 0.1 μCi (3.7 kBq). The Center for Human Radiobiology was established at Argonne National Laboratory in 1968. The primary purpose of the Center was providing medical examinations for living dial painters. The project also focused on the collection of information and, in some cases, tissue samples from the radium dial painters. When the project ended in 1993, detailed information of 2,403 cases had been collected. This led to a book on the effects of radium on humans. The book suggests that radium-228 exposure is more harmful to health than exposure to radium-226. Radium-228 is more able to cause cancer of the bone as the shorter half life of the radon-220 product compared to radon-222 causes the daughter nuclides of radium-228 to deliver a greater dose of alpha radiation to the bones. It also considers the induction of a range of different forms of cancer as a result of internal exposure to radium and its daughter nuclides. The book used data from radium dial painters, people who were exposed as a result of the use of radium-containing medical products, and other groups of people who have been exposed to radium. = In literature, music and film = *New Jersey punk band Night Birds has a song titled "Radium Girls" on their 2018 album Roll Credits. *The story is told from the point of view of the women in New Jersey, and Illinois, in Kate Moore's non-fiction book The Radium Girls ) released in the UK in 2016 and US in 2017. *The story is told in Eleanor Swanson's poem "Radium Girls", collected in A Thousand Bonds: Marie Curie and the Discovery of Radium (2003, ). *There is an elaborate reference to the story in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Jailbird (1979, ). *Poet Lavinia Greenlaw has written on the subject in The Innocence of Radium (Night Photograph, 1994). *Historian Claudia Clark wrote an account of the case and its wider historical implications: Radium Girls: Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910–1935 (published 1997). *Ross Mullner's book Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy describes many of the events (1999, ). *The story is told by Jo Lawrence in her short animated film "Glow" (2007). *The Michael A. Martone short story "It's Time" is told from the perspective of an unnamed Radium Girl. *A fictionalized version of the story was featured in the Spike TV show 1000 Ways to Die (#196) and Science Channel's Dark Matters: Twisted But True. *Radium Halos: A Novel About the Radium Dial Painters a 2009 novel by Shelley Stout is historical fiction narrated by a sixty-five-year-old mental patient who worked at the factory when she was sixteen (). *Author Deborah Blum referenced the story in her 2010 book The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York. *The story is told in the American Experience episode "The Poisoner's Handbook", based on Deborah Blum's book. * Author Robert R. Johnson features a story on the radium girls in his book Romancing the Atom. () *The Case of the Living Dead Women, a website displaying scans of 180 pages of newspaper clippings about a similar incident, the Ottawa, Illinois Radium Dial Company litigation. * A fictionalized version of the story was featured in the 1937 short story "Letter to the Editor" by James H. Street, adapted into a 1937 film Nothing Sacred and a 1953 Broadway musical Hazel Flagg. *The documentary Radium City depicts first hand accounts of some of the watch dial painters in Ottawa, IL. *A version of the story for a young adult readership is told in the novel Glow by Megan E. Bryant. () *A play titled "Radium Girls" by D.W. Gregory was written from the perspective of one of the women who sued in New Jersey. *A play named These Shining Lives was written by Melanie Marnich and Dramatists Play Service Inc. and is narrated by Catherine Wolfe Donohue, one of four protagonist workers who sued in Illinois. () *Luminous: The Story of a Radium Girl (2020) by Samantha Wilcoxson is a biographical fiction novel featuring Catherine Donohue (). *A film is set to release on April 3, 2020 named Radium Girls starring Joey King. *Episode 99 of "The Dollop" podcast - The Radium Girls. *Nothing Sacred is a 1937 movie comedy romance about a young woman dying from radium poisoning contracted when watch dial painting who is sought by a journalist for interview. See also * Breaker boy * Katherine Rotan Drinker and Cecil Kent Drinker, who researched the Radium Girls * Hiroshima maidens * Labor law * Labor history * Labor rights * Occupational disease * Phossy jaw * Nuclear labor issues * Radioactive contamination * Tritium radioluminescence ReferencesExternal links * Rutgers University – 'University Libraries Special Collections: U.S. Radium Corporation, East Orange, NJ', Records, Catalog 1917–1940 * Undark and the Radium Girls, Alan Bellows, December 28, 2006, Damn Interesting * Radium Girls, Eleanor Swanson. copy of original * Poison Paintbrush, Time, June 4, 1928. "That the world may see streaks of light through the long hours of darkness, Orange, N.J., women hired themselves to the U.S. Radium Corporation." * Radium Women, Time, August 11, 1930. "Five young New Jersey women who were poisoned while painting luminous watch dials for U.S. Radium Corp., two years ago heard doctors pronounce their doom: one year to live." * Mae Keane, The Last 'Radium Girl,' Dies At 107, NPR * Radium City (1987), documentary Category:Activism Category:History of labor relations in the United States Category:History of women in Illinois Category:History of women in New Jersey Category:Nuclear safety and security Category:Orange, New Jersey Category:Radium Category:History of women in Connecticut Category:Ottawa, Illinois Category:History of Waterbury, Connecticut "
"Vicente de Valverde y Alvarez de Toledo, O.P., or Vincent de Valle Viridi was a Spanish Dominican friar who was involved in the Conquest of the Americas, later becoming the Bishop of Cuzco.Prescott, W.H., 2011, The History of the Conquest of Peru, Digireads.com Publishing, (in Latin) He became the first resident bishop in South America. He was born in Oropesa, Spain, about 1495 and most sources claim he died on Puná Island, now part of Ecuador, in 1541, at the hands of the indigenous peoples. Biography He was born in Oropesa, near Toledo, at the end of the 15th century.Leon, P., 1998, The Discovery and Conquest of Peru, Chronicles of the New World Encounter, edited and translated by Cook and Cook, Durham: Duke University Press, Salamanca Al Dia: "El padre Vicente Valverde, pionero de la evangelización del Perú" by José Antonio Benito 26 de noviembre de 2014 He was the son of Francisco de Valverde and Ana Alvarez de Toledo, and was related to many noble families of the region, in particular to that of Francisco Pizarro, the conquistador of Peru, and that of Hernán Cortés, the conqueror of Mexico. In 1515 he was sent to study at the University of Salamanca. While a student there, he later asked to be received into the Dominican Order, which he was in 1523 at the Priory of San Esteban at Salamanca. He became a professed friar of the Order in April 1524, and was ordained a priest within the next few years. Valverde accompanied Pizarro as a missionary on his intended voyage of the conquest of Peru according to the 1529 agreement. He arrived in Peru about 1530, although it is not certain whether he traveled directly there with Pizarro from Spain in 1529 or arrived at San Miguel de Piura in 1531 with re-enforcements from Panama, the initial staging base for the Spanish forces. Before the Battle of Caxamarca on 16 November 1532, Valverde endeavoured to obtain the Great Inca Atahuallpa's peaceful submission. When Atahuallpa rejected a pact of friendship with Pizarro, Friar Vicente joined in the conversation: “He came forward holding a crucifix in his right hand and a breviary in his left and introduced himself as another envoy of the Spanish ruler. ...Friar Vicente called upon the Inca to renounce all other gods as being a mockery of the truth.” Atahuallpa simply replied that he could not change his beliefs in the all powerful and ever living Sun and other divinities. Following the death of Atahuallpa, Pizarro saw no further obstacles to his conquest and decided to march into Cuzco on 15 November 1533, bringing Valverde along with him and his followers. On 23 March 1534, a church was erected in Cuzco and became Valverde's parish church. Pizarro also gave him a large native commandery, whom Valverde allegedly mistreated by simply using them as slaves. Valverde headed back to Spain later that year to assist Pizarro's brother, Hernando Pizarro, in his negotiations at court. There he presented to the emperor, by order of Pizarro, an account of the conquest, under the title of Relacion de la Conquista de los Reynos de Peru, in which he claimed that the Native Americans could scarcely be considered as human beings, as they had no souls. He was nominated bishop of Cuzco in 1535. In 1536 Valverde was named Protector of the Natives and Inquisitor. That same year, the Holy See established Cuzco, the royal city of the Incan kings, as the seat of the first diocese of the Catholic Church in South America, covering the entire continent, up to modern Nicaragua. Emperor Charles V named Valverde as the first Bishop of Cuzco; Pope Paul III ratified this choice in a consistory held in January 1537. After being consecrated as a bishop, Valverde returned to Peru in the beginning of 1538, just before the execution of Diego de Almagro, which he had unsuccessfully tried to prevent. The new bishop found the spiritual duties for his vast diocese arduous, especially combined with those of the office of Protector of the Natives. This forced him to ignore the members of the military constantly, as the adventurers who made up the Spanish armies had no thought of justice or mercy to the Indians. In 1539 Valverde had work begun for the first cathedral of the diocese, now the Church of the Triumph, built on the site of a temple attached to the palace of Viracocha Inca, the last native ruler of the region. On 11 March 1540 he officiated at its consecration. After the assassination of Francisco Pizarro by forces of Diego de Almagro II in June 1541, Valverde fled to Panama, where his brother had been appointed as governor by Pizarro. He halted for a brief stay on Puná Island, near Guayaquil, in Ecuador, where he was captured and put to death by the local indigenous people on 31 October 1541. Criticisms By far Valverde's negative and contradictory side was his alleged mistreatment of the natives of Peru whom, instead of teaching the Catholic faith, he oppressed, enslaved and forced to work for the Church. These charges came about when Valverde was later appointed by Pizarro on a commission to apportion lands and natives to the royal officers, along with the lawyer, Antonio de Game, whom Pizarro had appointed Supreme Judge of Cuzco. The latter charged Valverde in a letter to the emperor, dated 10 March 1539, with arbitrary acts and insisted that instead of protecting the natives, he only mistreated them and sought to confiscate their lands, and always gave the greater part to himself and his assistant. (This was the complete opposite to what Bartolomé de Las Casas, another Spanish Dominican friar and bishop, did years later by defending the natives' rights in works he published and in visits to Spain to inform King Philip II of the abuses committed against the local natives by the Conquistadors.) The validity of these charges is in dispute, however, as they are not universally mentioned by chroniclers of the period, and the main accusers might have had political reasons for these charges, as opponents of the Pizarro regime. See also * Spanish conquest of Peru * History of Peru ReferencesExternal links and additional sources * (for Chronology of Bishops) * (for Chronology of Bishops) *Francisco Pizarro Response to a Petition by Pedro del Barco, 1539 Apr. 14. 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