I know you know a lot of Spanish history, perhaps you cna help.
Thakns for the ping. I'm just checking mail right now. I'll look at the thread this evening.
Columbus was not a genocidal monster. He was not Mother Theresa either. He was an adventurer of the late 15th Century with all the cultural and moral failings of his era if such an era can be judged with 21st Century moral hindsight.
The "genocide" topic is one of those topics that has become so mired in revisionist propaganda that is now Politically Correct Gospel. Columbus has become the poster child of those who despise to the cominng of the Europeans to the Americas.
Politically Correct Gospel now proclaims that:
1. Spain commited genocide.
2. It is Columbus' fault that the genocide occured because he discovered the America's for the Europeans.
The fact and the propaganda often get quite mixed up as in the article you quoted in Post 5:
Bartolomeo de las Casas, a young priest who assisted Columbus in the conquest of Cuba, writes in his book “History of the Indies” (reprinted by Harper & Row, 1971) that "from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines.
It is true that Las Casas participated in the Spanish conquest of Cuba in 1513. However, Columbus was dead and buried by 1506. Thus Colombus gets credit for conquests he never made and for many events that occurred after he was dead.
According to the genocide P.C. Gospel, Spain in 1492 should have the 21st Century enlightment to known that conquest of a new land is sooooooo Politically Incorrect. After all, there were other people already living there. The fact that, in 1492, conquest of "barbarian" lands had been the natural order of things since the dawn of history is irrrelevant. Spain should have known better.
Of course, these individuals are the same ones who glorify the Aztecs who had no qualms about conquering neighboring Mesoamerican tribes and cutting out the beating hearts of their captives. The also never mention the very Politically Incorrect and cannibalistic Carib Indians that were conquering their way up the Caribbean archipelago and eating the peacenik Arawaks.
According to the genocide P.C. Gospel, Columbus should have known better than to take Indian slaves back to Spain.
However, this was at a time when Venetian and Genoese traders had a rather active Black Sea slave trade in white Slavic "barbarians". To Spain's credit, The "Catholic Monarchs", Ferdinand and Isabella, disapproved and ordered the Indian slaves returned to the Americas.
Eventually, Spanish colonists in the New World set up a system of encomiendas where they played the role of fuedal lords and the Indians played the role of feudal serfs. (Not unlike the roles the Cuban Communist Party and the Cuban people now play.) Las Casas himself received an encomienda in Hispaniola in 1502.
By 1511, however, Las Casas was influenced by other Spanish clergy that complained about the treatment of Indians by the colonists and, after the conquest of Cuba brought more abuses, he became an advocate of Indian rights.
Las Casa returned to Spain to plead his case before the Spanish Crown and was succesful in being appointed part of a royal commission to investigate the treatment of the Indians. Las Casa became a political activist for Indian rights and part of his campaign was the writing of his books detailing atrocities against the Indians.
Las Casas' books made quite an impression on the Spanish Crown which passed laws abolishing Indian slavery.
Some claimed that Las Casa accounts were totally accurate. Some claimed that he greatly exagerated in order to achieve his political aims. It is now generally agreed that 3 million dead is a gross exageration as there were not 3 million Indians in all of the Caribbean.
This being the time of religious wars, Las Casas' books were used by Protestant nations such as Holland and England as an example of how horribly cruel Spain was......"The Black Legend" as anti-Spanish propaganda was called.
What the anti-Spanish propaganda failed note, however, was that atrocities by some Spaniards were denounced by other Spaniards, debated in Spain by Spaniards and reforms were instituted by the Spanish Crown on moral grounds.
In the English and Dutch colonies of North America, the Indians had no such advocates. "The only good Injun is a dead Injun" was the motto until the late 1800's but it is Spain that was branded as commiting "Genocide".
It is true that the Indian natives dissappeared from the Carbbean islands. You will see white Cubans, black Cubans, mulatto Cubans and even Chinese Cubans but you will find no Indian Cubans. This, however, is mostly due to the effects of introduced diseases in small island populations.
"White man's diseases" are often cited as part of the "genocide" charge. It is rather absurd, however, to blame such tragedies on a 16th Century nation that knew nothing about the transmission of infectious disease and that suffered in turn. The Black Plauge was an Asian import to Europe and syphilis was an American import to Europe. Millions of Europeans died from such diseases during the Age of Exploration but only non-European deaths are labelled as "genocide".
To those who now, with 21st Century 20/20 hindsight accused Spain of "genocide", I would ask them to compare the racial populations of the American East Coast with the population of Mexico and Central America.
Look at them. What race do you see?
In the American East Coast you will see whites and blacks and immigrants from all nations but the number of Native American Indians is miniscule.
In Mexico, except for a small white minority estimated at about 11%, you will see either a full-blooded Mesoamerican Indian or a Mestizo of mixed white and Indian blood.
In spite of this, it is Spain that now bears the stain of so-called "Genocide".
It is interesting to speculate how America had turned out if Europeans had never learned to sail. Would the Aztecs still be cutting out their neighbor's hearts? Would the Caribs be eating anybody right now? Would the Japanese have discovered America in 1910 and left not a single Mexican Amerindian alive by 1939?
Once you apply 21st Century moral hindsight to an era half a millenium ago and use the term "genocide" rather loosely, there is hardly a society in history that would pass the moral test.