Explanation: It’s been common in recent years, with increased critiques of colonialism and imperialism, including past colonialism and imperialism, for there to be a certain amount of backlash to the new narratives being discussed. To some degree this is normal, natural, inevitable, and even desirable - academia and popular culture alike should be in a constant state of correction and re-evaluation, for as long as it is possible to correct and re-evaluate.
One particular ‘counterpoint’ of note against narratives against Spanish colonization is that the Aztecs were horrible, actually. And they were! Not just from a standpoint of “They were past cultures, and past cultures tend to conflict with our modern values”, but from a standpoint of “They were hated even at the time for being vicious and bloodthirsty towards their vassals and rivals by the standards of their fellow Nahua city-states.” This is true! The Aztecs were an immensely shitty polity to have as an overlord, and their vassals wasted little time in swapping to the Spanish side once the slightest chance of overthrowing Aztec rule was presented. Whether the Spanish were an actual improvement is… debatable, but it would be certainly hard to unambiguously root for the Aztecs simply on the balance of each side’s moral merits.
… but the Aztecs also only controlled a tiny sliver of modern Mexico; whereas the Spanish Empire conquered everything from Cali to Chile, most of which was controlled by polities and communities which were not nearly as bad as the Aztecs, and therefore for whom Spanish colonial rule was certainly a fucking step down from not being enslaved and exploited and having native cultures erased and literally burned for offending Spanish sensibilities.
As bad as the Aztecs were… I’m not sure the Spanish were better
“Meet the new boss, same as the old…”
Well they weren’t all that into human sacrifice, and I think actual slavery of native americans was banned so it was africans and asians that were slaves. How better or worse they were compared to their predecessors is hard to say for most people, due to lack of information and discussion ending at “colonialism bad” (it is) no further info needed.
Slavery was never banned by the Spanish. The natives made for poor slaves, hence the need to import Africans. But they were slaved throughout.
Edit: a word.
most of the accounts about the aztecs were written down by spaniards who (surprisingly) had racist biases… just to put that out.
While we Spaniards stole a lot of gold and brought diseases (unintentionally), I think we can agree that preventing religious child sacrifices is a positive thing.
Yeah. if that’s all that happened, you might have a point.
Ask yourself how they got the gold and how many children were enslaved for labor after the gold ran out, and how many were killed as ‘object lessons’ when people tried to resist. Just take a look at the Taino Genocide for an example of what I’m talking about. Spanish conquistadors were known to bash still-nursing infants to kill them. They fed natives to dogs. Burning a live and hanging weren’t brutal enough, so they sometimes did both. At the same time.
sure diseases wiped out most natives. and they may not have known about it. but I wouldn’t be shocked to find when they found out, they decided to make use of it. (I mean, we did.)
This is not about lowering the relevance of the brutalities committed by the colonizers, I was responding to a meme, I did not intend to enter into a deep debate on the subject, in which I am not an expert either.
In any case, one thing is clear to me, the subject of diseases was used by the British in North America, the Spaniards (more than two centuries before) not only did not know about the damage they caused with this, but they did not find out until long after they spread, because they did so faster than the conquerors themselves.**
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