Guilty or Not Guilty?

[orangebeaver]

More stuff I gleaned from Charles Mann's book, "1491

Comments

[asharak]

If the Native Americans were only killed by disease, then the Spanish wouldn't really be guilty of genocide. But they also massacred a good bulk of the population that managed to survive.

[orangebeaver]

The genocidal effects of the epidemics were initially unintentional, and preceded the arrival of the Spanish in many places...their germs got there before they did. However, after a certain point the Spanish (and other Europeans) realized that they were causing epidemics. They were familiar with diseases, etc., but did nothing to curtail them, although they couldn't have done anything even if they had wanted to.

[leelu_multipass]

I don't know enough about Central American pre-history to really comment. I'll have to do some research.

I think the Native Americans in North America was genocide. I don't think the concept of genocide was around that many years ago (I could be wrong) but a lot of the Europeans who came over to this continent willfully murdered the Natives because of their religious superiority complex and fear.

[orangebeaver]

This is true. It's ironic that the epidemics, which were started unintentionally, had the effect of almost completely exterminating all of the Indians of the so-called "New World." The book 1491 makes the case that the results of the Spanish Conquest could have been far different without the invisible weapons that the Spanish carried with them in their bodies, as did the English, the French, etc., etc. The result was that the grand, sophisticated and ancient civilizations of the Americas were for the most part destroyed, and then ignored, misunderstood or forgotten. It's a tragedy. Not just for the people that died, but culturally. Most of the literature, for example, of the Inkas was lost--burned by the Spanish--but those that survive--poetry, religious works, philosophies, etc., are just as complex and insightful as that of the Greeks.

[leelu_multipass]

I think it's a tragedy too. Another tragedy (in my opinion) is that european peoples in general, OR what you could call

[orangebeaver]

It's kind of frustrating to come home and see my family, because I've traveled alot around the world, but they are all so insular and xenophobic and kind of intolerant.

[xgv]

Bartolomé de las Casas told in a little book (historia de la destrucción de las indias), complaining the spanish kings for the kind of treat the indians by the conquerors, the atrocities commited. Is still under discussion if they do it intentionally or if it was the ills borne by spanish (as me, but a little more thick, I hope). Anyway, the explanation of the diseases worn by conquerors is the mildest for the genocide (tho other option talks of people burn alive and other cruelties

[orangebeaver]

Interesting. Where do you live in Spain?

[xgv]

I'm on the northwest, Galicia, in A Coruña city, what is near Santiago de Compostela and the Earth End (Finisterre ;-), too.