Before I am judged and sentenced for writing this article, I would ask that it be read and that the accusatory evidence of my conviction was not only the title. Clarified this, why are the Spanish accused of having committed genocide in the American continent?
The answer to this question is very easy if we turn to the hackneyed Black Legend . According to the RAE, the black legend «is the opinion against the Spanish spread from the 16th century «. And this was taken care of by the English, French, Dutch and even some Spaniards during the reigns of Carlos I and Felipe II, curiously coinciding with the period of maximum splendor of the so-called Spanish Empire. A legend that, five centuries later , is still in force, that too many people believe at face value and that from the American continent is repeated like a litany when in some text the history of the conquest and colonization of the American continent by the Spanish is narrated, not by other powers European.
Before continuing, it should be noted that we are in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries where the European powers strive to expand their borders, discover new territories and subjugate their inhabitants, fleece raw materials and precious metals, and spread the Christian faith - more power, more wealth and a greater number of subjects at his command. Except for the religious nuance, something that has happened throughout history and in all corners of the world (even in the American continent before the Europeans arrived, as in the Aztec Empire). The inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula have also been conquered by other peoples:Carthage, Rome, Germanic peoples, Muslims or France. I do not discover anything new, I only point out that we have also been on the side of the oppressed or subjugated. And this does not produce any type of suspicion or animosity towards these peoples. In fact, our cultural heritage, our own language or certain customs are a clear example of all those peoples who passed through the Iberian Peninsula.
So, why this animosity towards the Spanish of something that happened centuries ago? It seems that the answer is included in the title of this article… the accusation of genocide of pre-Columbian peoples . But it is that there was no such genocide, and I explain myself.
If said genocide had occurred (according to the RAE, genocide:«systematic and deliberate annihilation or extermination of a social group for racial, political or religious reasons «) it would be impossible for current populations of Latin America/Ibero America to see such markedly indigenous traits. In fact, just as by physical features we can venture to say (and I say venture, not to assure) that a European is from a Nordic country, we can also venture to say someone from a South American or Central American country. In addition, we are talking about a territory in which the language of those conquerors is spoken, their religion is mostly practiced (currently, with much more fervor than in Spain) and, essentially, its form of law governs.
History bears witness that for a culture to settle in a foreign territory or people, the establishment of a political or military power, the education of a population or the establishment of customs is not enough, it is necessary, yes or yes, human miscegenation.
The first expeditions to the American continent were made up almost exclusively of men. So, logically, the first sexual encounters between Spaniards and indigenous women had more to do with the "sexual need" of those than with anything else. Those relationships, punctual and initially only carnal, over time became habitual. Coexistence varied from mere company women to wives, sometimes formalized through Indian and non-Christian rites. The problem is that those mixed relationships lacked a true legal status…until 1514. King Ferdinand the Catholic approved a royal decree in 1514 that validated any marriage between Castilian men and indigenous women. By recognizing the possibility of marriage between the two races, the certificate of Fernando el Católico served to fill a legislative vacuum regarding the legal status of the Indians, ensuring the absolute legitimacy and equality of the offspring that arose from the mixed marriages compared with the marriages of Castile . Not only did it recognize an already existing reality, it also opened the door to miscegenation and cultural symbiosis. These new mestizo generations were responsible for creating a hybrid culture, a mixture of both and with recognizable indigenous patterns. If we look a few kilometers to the North, to the USA and Canada, where the English and French were responsible for the conquest and where human miscegenation did not occur, we can verify that, except for some isolated communities and almost as a tourist attraction, there is no trace of indigenous cultures, or indigenous physical traits among current populations.
No one escapes that the conquerors committed reprehensible and miserable acts in our eyes (typical of all conquests) and that many deaths occurred, both in direct fighting and as a result of subjugation and work in the encomiendas. Even so, most of the deaths of indigenous people must be attributed to the spread among them of diseases (flu, smallpox, measles...) of which the newcomers were ignorant carriers and for which the indigenous people lacked natural defenses. In the words of Agustín Muñoz Sanz , head of the infectious pathology unit at the Infanta Cristina Hospital in Badajoz and full professor of Infectious Pathology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Extremadura…
This phenomenon represents an excellent and dramatic example of what is now called the pathology of the traveler and the immigrant. Infectious diseases were one more aspect, undoubtedly very important, of the exchange of people, goods and microbes between two areas of the planet separated for millennia by a great sea and by the ocean of mutual ignorance. […] It is materially impossible that weapons killed more than diseases and other associated factors. To think that something more than a hundred men and a few horses led by Hernán Cortés swept away a huge empire that was very well organized and had a high level of civilization, like the Aztec of Moctezuma (Mexico), is to ignore the reality of history. Something similar happened in Pizarro's adventure in the Inca empire of Huayna Cápac (Peru). Smallpox and measles were perfect allies –involuntary, not intentional– in the success of the Spanish conquest.
And for those who are not clear about what genocide means, an example… When they paid five pounds for the capture of an aborigine in Tasmania
Of course, we must recognize the propaganda work of all those who for centuries have been busy and concerned about keeping the Black Legend alive. As the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes said , they painted Spain as…
brutal, bloodthirsty and sadistic, bent on torturing and murdering her colonial subjects, in unspoken contrast, no doubt, to the pristine purity of the French, English and Dutch colonialists.
Sources:Smallpox and measles in the conquest of America, The law of mixed marriages that changed the colonization of America, Great fucks in history – Jose Ignacio de Arana