Was there genocide in America?

The Bering Strait

About 15,000 years ago (up millennium down millennium) the Bering Strait, an arm of water about 80 kilometers wide located at the northern end of America, was, after the end of the last ice age, flooded by the waters of the Pacific. This detail would be unimportant if it were not for the fact that a prehistoric human community was isolated on the eastern bank of the newly formed strait, which had been arriving on foot from Siberia thanks to the fact that the sea level was about 120 meters lower than today.

These two parts of humanity, one in the old world and the other in the new, both oblivious to the existence of the other, remained separated for 16,000 years or, in other words, about 700 generations. To put the figure in perspective, remember that the pyramid of Cheops was built 4,500 years ago or that the Roman Empire reached its maximum territorial extension less than two thousand years ago.

The history of human beings in America begins with ancient isolation, and that helps a lot to explain everything that happened when this small group, which had multiplied and spread across a gigantic continent that goes from pole to pole, suddenly found itself with the rest of the species. During this time the two communities that, let us not forget, were still in the Paleolithic, developed in parallel, adapting to different environments through their own survival strategies in what may have been the greatest natural experiment the world has ever seen.

The consequence of the great separation, or the great isolation depending on how we want to see it, was that one of the communities developed more slowly, thus exposing itself to a traumatic reunion. And it's not that they were stupid, it's that there were many fewer of them and they had to deal with the American geography, much more rugged than the Eurasian one, with more devastating and frequent natural catastrophes, and with the fact that the axis of the emerged lands described in America a longitudinal line and not a latitudinal line as in the case of Eurasia, with the climatic implications that this entails in terms of mobility and the transfer of skills, experiences and crops

The first inhabitants

The first inhabitants of Eurasia who managed to cross the oceanic chasm that separates both land masses were Spaniards for the simple reason that Spain is located on the very edge of that chasm. There was no genius whatsoever, they could well have been French, Portuguese, English, and even Arabs, although the latter never showed much interest in navigation.

In fact, technically the first Eurasians to set foot on American soil were the Vikings, but they reached the continent too far north, where the population was sparse and the climate harsh. Not to mention that the Scandinavians of the 11th century were one of the most technologically backward peoples in the entire old world, so they did not have the appropriate capital or knowledge for a sustained conquest and occupation of the new territories.

In the end, the reconnection between these two great human groups fell on the peoples of Western Europe, with special intensity on those of the Iberian Peninsula, condemned to a corner of the continent and with the ocean as the only way out. After Columbus's first voyage and his triumphant return, a flood of Spaniards poured into America, first into the Caribbean and, later, into the center and south of the continent. It was the beginning of a human stampede across the Atlantic that continues today and that dramatically changed the world, and not exactly for the worse. As it could not be otherwise, the consequences of this invasion were immediate.

The Spaniards of the time were nothing special, they were simply one more expression, not even the most refined, of the many revolutions that had occurred in Eurasia since the moment of separation. They brought superior technology, starting with navigation itself. No American town, not even the most advanced, was in a position to make such a trip. They also mastered metallurgy, writing, and gunpowder. They had a very wide range of domestic animals that, in addition to doing much of the work for them, constituted a continuous supply of protein that was added to that of a few very productive plant species with great nutritional contributions such as wheat, barley, or rice. They believed in a single transcendent god, that is, one who was outside the Earth and who was accompanied by a sophisticated theology written down, very far from the prehistoric shamanism of American cultures, fed by the extraordinary abundance of hallucinogenic plants that always existed in the New World. Finally, they carried with them new, unknown, and lethal diseases for the inhabitants of the until then isolated Western Hemisphere.

The Spaniards knew of all their advantages and put them to work in their favor, except for the fundamental advantage, which was biological and the one that would end up tipping the balance. It is estimated that between 90 and 95% of the population of the Indies - as the first Spaniards called them in the belief that they had arrived in the vicinity of India - died from diseases that were very common in Europe but which in America they were unpublished. If there was a genocide it was biological, not unlike that which the bubonic plague inflicted on Europe in the mid-14th century. But epidemics are not genocides, they are epidemics. By proxy, we can use the term genocide, but that would be twisting the language with no meaning other than to satisfy certain ideological rantings or to prop up some political agendas.

According to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, genocide is any intentional act that seeks to “destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.” Therefore it was not genocide from a legal point of view, but neither was it if we stick to the colloquial meaning of the term, which in our language and according to the dictionary of the Royal Academy is "the extermination or systematic elimination of a group." social due to race, religion or politics.”

The Spanish in America

The Spanish in America – and whoever says Spanish means Portuguese, English, French, or Dutch – never had the intention of systematically eliminating any social group, at least during the first two or three centuries of European presence on the continent. What they all had was the will to take over the newly discovered lands. They did this through all possible means, including friendly negotiation and the purchase of land from the indigenous people, although traditional-style conquest prevailed.

In the case of the Spaniards, who were very few during the first century due to the demographic weakness of the metropolis and the long and costly ocean crossing, pacts between the conqueror and the local indigenous people eager to get even with other tribes were common. that they had been fighting for a long time, or simply because they were motivated by the same desire to conquer as the Spanish, whom they considered especially recommendable allies given their technological superiority.

In this way, Mexico was conquered. Cortés could never have done it alone, but by rallying an alliance of all those who hated the imperial power, he managed to subdue the Aztec tlatoani. One of Cortés' lieutenants, Pedro de Alvarado, used the help of the Quauhquecholtecas and the Cakchiquels to take over what is now Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The cruelty displayed by the conquerors was typical of the time, not very different from that which the Europeans inflicted on each other in their many internal wars, for example, in those of religion that in those same years was waged with a great profusion of blood. in the old continent.

The indigenous leaders did not spare losses for their enemies either. To this end, the so-called Lienzo de la Conquista is very instructive, which is preserved in the Mexican city of Puebla and in which the indigenous conquerors narrate how they defeated the conquered indigenous people, the Quiche, at the hands of the Spanish, whom they painted as bearded. , dressed, on horseback, and not especially threatening.

Once the conquest was completed, no genocide occurred either. And to prove this it doesn't take much effort. If they had been physically eliminated, today there would be no Amerindians left or they would be an ethnic rarity like the New Zealand Maori. But it's not like that. America, especially Hispanic America, is a mestizo continent in which dozens of pre-Hispanic indigenous languages still exist, some with several million speakers.

Kingdoms built

What the 16th century Spaniards did do was put all the indigenous people to work for them, at least all those who survived smallpox, while forcibly integrating them into the new society they built at an astonishing speed. in their newly acquired domains. Nothing strange on the other hand, that is the minimum that the conquerors have done in all times and places whenever they have been able to afford to do so.

The Spanish replicated the kingdom of Castile on the other side of the Atlantic with its same institutions and legal order, even the court of the Holy Office. They never took it as a colony but as a natural extension of their own country. This involved the founding of cities and universities, the construction of cathedrals, palaces, forts, fortresses, and roads... and the dissemination of their language, religion, and culture. It also implied the disappearance of pre-Columbian civilizations, but not all of them, many had already disappeared before their arrival. That of the Mayans may be the best known but it was not the only one.

What Spain did in America was very similar to what Rome had done in old Hispania a millennium and a half before, with the difference that the Romans were much more elusive when it came to granting Roman citizenship to Hispanics, while Native Americans were granted the title of subjects of the king from the precise moment Columbus and his men set foot on the beach of Guanahaní. Probably the conquered did not want to be Spanish just as the ancient Iberians did not want to be Roman, but they had no choice.

History is not how we would like it to have been, but how it was. Applying current moral standards to events that occurred half a millennium ago is either self-deception or a mere desire to confuse history in the service of political ideas that are more of today than yesterday. Two centuries after the conquest, when Philip V commissioned the construction of the new royal palace in Madrid, he took into account that his kingdom covered both shores of the Atlantic, that he was both the successor of Isabella the Catholic and of Atahualpa. For this reason, on the main façade of the palace, next to his statue and that of his son, he had two others placed representing the great Inca and Montezuma, emperor of the Aztecs. There they remain as mute witnesses of a genocide that never was.