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Please review your history before making bigoted and idiotic statements

Your rude rant is not central to my argument but I'll reply anyway.

History books over several centuries have spoken of exceptionally cruel treatment of the Indians by the Spanish. Lately there've been some attempts to revise that. Your interpretation of the Spanish vs. the English treatment of the Indians is open to several interpretations - the Spanish came to rob and steal, not to settle. Hence they didn't bring their women. The English had different priorities. Your view of the relationship between the Spanish and the Indians reminds me of the old South's view of black-white relations. By the way, you are aware that Indians occupy the bottom rungs in most - or all - Latin American societies, mestizos the middle, and pure-blood Spanish (and other Europeans) the top.

It's not a rude rant, it happens to be the truth.

The Spanish did indeed come to South America to settle, after their initial period of exploration. In fact, one of the main objectives in their explorations was the extension of the Catholic faith - which they did do, and quite effectively. They attempted several settlements in North America, but failed first because of the climate, and then because of the attacks launched upon their Southern mission chain (which extended from Florida fairly far up to northern and western parts of the South) by the English and Indians who were incited by the English. This coincided with diminished resources of the Spanish crown, because of its European wars, and the mission chain (with its villages of Christian Indians) collapsed.

The reason mestizos are at the bottom in Latin America is that they formed the great majority of the population in economic cultures that were controlled by a small number of rich families at the top, something that was typical of Spanish economic life in Spain, as well. This is not a good thing, but it was simply a fact of economic life.

One of the reasons that "mestizos" are not at the bottom in English speaking cultures is that few existed in the first place, because the English did not consider the Indians sufficiently human to merit baptism, and certainly not intermarriage. (The exception was during a brief period in New England when attempts were made by the very earliest English settlers to convert the Indians.)

You are clearly a subscriber to the leyenda negra, and you should most certainly reexamine things before making the usual bigoted statements about the Spanish.

Some of the Spanish came to settle - for example recently converted Moslems had no difficulty finding reasons to move to the New World. The same was true of the Jews who'd become Morenos. For most of a century these people settled the Caribbean islands and only later moved on to the continental mainlands.

Spanish Protestants also found it highly expedient to relocate to the Americas as fast as possible since their discovery in Spain all too frequently resulted in a quick death. Although there's little history written about these people, it's worth noting that one of the last of Pizzarro's Conquistidores, a Senor Carvajal (Carvalho) actually rejected the ministrations of a Catholic priest just before his execution. As a direct consequence of this clear profession of his Protestant beliefs he was drawn, quartered and his parts tossed into the fields to be devoured by dogs and wild animals.

What a mensch!

It's worth noting, too, that Pizzarro worked initially for DeSoto, and he'd begun his search for a homeland in FLorida, also known as what is now the Midwest, in 1541 - this is the same year French and Breton Protestants sailed West to begin a similar search in the New World. Given the close relationship of both parties to the de la Garde and Carvajal multi-national families of Protestant adventurers, I think a fair case could be made for assigning the "steal" and "pillage" attitudes to the Protestants, with an assignment of the "settlement" attitudes to all parties.

Europe was, after all, a cesspool in that time and one of the major driving forces behind European conquest of the world was to get out of Europe.