Posted by agilis on 3/25/2008, 10:51 pm, in reply to "You can kiss my wantabe Spainsh a...."
68.39.233.135
Bartman, you jump to unwarranted conclusions. Nothing I wrote was intended to imply that the Spanish people (however you want to define that term) and the Nazis are comparable. I did suggest that the morals, ethics, and actions of Cortez and most of the other Conquistadores were barbaric, and every bit as bad as those of the worst of the Nazi butchers. The crimes of the men who murdered whole nations and deliberately stamped out language, history and culture do not represent the Spanish people any more than the Nazis represent th German people.
I am not employed by any big corporation, and I have no special feeling, positive or negative, about the company that discovered the treasure ship. I've spent most of my life in academia. I think the people who discovered the shipwreck have a more legitimate claim than the Spanish Government, but the fragmented people from whom the wealth was stolen have an even stronger claim.
Don't draw your image of the 'style' of Spanish pirates from some idiotic movie. It wasn't like that. The one thing that I do admire about the Caribbean pirates was the democratic anti-authoritarian and relatively unbigoted nature of many pirate bands. Still, they were killers, rapists, and usually were illiterate snaggle-toothed filthy stinking desperate men.
I was in Peru two years ago. The largest cathedral in Lima is built on Inca sacred ground, the site of an Incan temple. This was done throughout the defeated Inca and Aztec civilizations. The indigenous culture was blotted out, as much as possible. I saw the place where they strangled Atahualpa, the Sun Emperor. And the place where Tupac, the last Incan general, was betrayed and slain. If his name is familiar, it's because his relentless resistance to European brutality still resonates among los pobres de la tierra, to borrow a phrase from Jose Marti.
We know many of the details of the genocide in Hispaniola from the written protests of a Spanish priest. Lover's Leap, high cliffs on the south coast of Jamaica, is actually the place where Taino Indian people jumped to their death as they were hunted into extinction. The brutality of the Conquistadores was so extreme that mothers poisoned their infants. One Taino chief in Cuba was given the option of being strangled before burning at the stake, provided he accepted Christianity and was baptised. He was assured that he would also be admitted to Heaven. He asked if Spaniards were in Heaven. Upon being told there were, he refused batism, and was burned alive. One of thousands. Their names remain, names like Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti. The people are gone, extinguished. Where is there a monument to them, a reminder of their genocide? For that matter where are the Raritan, the Manhattan, the Pequot, the Massachusetts? Are any of them mentioned in the mandatory NJ Holocaust Studies curricula?
Peace, brother.
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