Indeed. Read Michael Harner about Aztec human sacrifice. But that doesn’t mean that Cotes wasn’t a right bastard as well.
Anglicized versions of names don’t have to follow the rules of the original language. I very seriously doubt if I were to spend my free time perusing the Spanish-language internet I wouldn’t stumble upon Spanish use of names for English speaking people or use of English loan words that didn’t violate English standards–but who would seriously waste their time nitpicking over that stuff? Cortez has been the spelling in history books for generations, it’s a correct English way to reference the man–and serves its purpose, no one is confused about who you’re talking about so it perfectly satisfies the primary purpose of a name.
“community activist”? Can’t express my feelings as this is not the Pit.
You’ve got the numbers wrong, but I’m not going to defend human sacrifice. However, many other aspects of Aztec civilization were admirable. Bernal Diaz:
As far as spelling names goes, how about Montezuma, Moctezuma, Moteczoma, Motecuhzoma, Moteuczomah, Mwatazuma? (From Wikipedia) “Moctezuma” seems to be the most accepted modern version (unless you’re singing the Marine Hymn).
I’d guess that less than half of non-Latino Americans would have a clue if you asked them who Cristobal Colon was.
I don’t either but I do it out of habit. The same reason I also keep playing with my pizzle but then I forget what the point was.
Indeed. Like the joke goes:
- How’s your wife?
- Compared to what?
I feel no need to feel pride or shame in anything any culture has done. I am a member of humanity and will feel proud of anything good and shame at anything bad any human of any race or nation has done. I believe nationalism together with religion is one of the most destructive influences we have.
Cultures can only be judged in their context and their time. Slavery in Roman times is not the same as slavery in 19th century America. What was correct or necessary in one moment may be bad at a different time.
For American culture to criticize Cortez is extremely hypocritical. His sin was that he was not English and not Protestant. If he had been he would be regarded as a hero.
In 1520 Spain’s policy was to integrate the natives into their empire, not to exterminate them. The idea was to keep and integrate the existing social structures, not to destroy them. The grandson of Moctezuma was created Count of Moctezuma. By comparison the North American Indians were just pushed away into reservations…
The Spanish mixed with the natives like the Anglos never did.
Archivo:Tecuichpoch.png - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre
This, of course, is obvious just by looking at Mexico and America today.
Much consideration was given to their rights and well-being
Laws of Burgos - Wikipedia
New Laws - Wikipedia
The English at that time did not even come close to such and enlightened view. In fact, centuries later, when the concept of human and moral rights were much more developed the Americans were massacring Indians (not to mention chattel slavery), and were committing all sorts of atrocities, again, in a very different context, where such things were comparatively much worse.
Even in the 20th century America has committed atrocities which were totally contrary to the spirit and enlightenment of the times. But hey, it’s OK if it’s done by us and it’s only an atrocity if its done by others.
The atrocities committed in the Philippines: Jacob H. Smith - Wikipedia “kill everyone over ten”, the Moro Crater massacre where more than 600 mostly unarmed Muslim Moro villagers (including many women and children) were killed by the Americans
Operation Condor - Wikipedia
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cias-operation-condor-dirty-war-death-squads-and-the-disappeared/5327003
This was the doing of the American government within our lifetimes. Crimes upon crimes. Torture and disappearances. The American government stands by this to this day.
And more recently the atrocities committed in Afghanistan and Iraq, the razing of Fallujah, Guantanamo, renditions and torture…
And yet this culture has the nerve to criticize Cortez who lived 500 years earlier.
As we say in Spanish: Tell me what you boast and I’ll tell you what you lack.
The fact that Americans believe they did so well and Cortez and the Spanish colonization were so bad just shows how easy it is to believe anything convenient against all evidence.
So we now learn that Mexican culture was not so bad because even though they carried out human sacrifices for which they raised and fattened their victims in cages, on the other hand they built some nice buildings and pyramids and shit so all was not bad. Umm, Ok, . . . I guess. That of course justifies the extermination of the North American Indians because they never built nice buildings.
Good health I still have, thank Huitzilopochtli.
LMAO! Who cares what the “point” is/was as long as it (still) works!
Again, masterful if hardly news to me. Glad one of us still has the energy. But does it really matter? Doubt anyone here will change their mind about our Empire vs ‘theirs’ & their respective ruthlessness.
I attribute what’s left of mine to The Loa, if only due to their proximity.
I’ve been back in Madrid twice since we last met – though I was quite busy, I regret not seeing you, you fuckin’ all-knowing Guru 
Take good care.
Are you from Spain?
Exactly. You can’t look at Cortes’s actions from a modern viewpoint. You have to judge him by contemporary standards, and you have to look at the conquest of the Mexicans from those standards, not from our standards, 500 years later. I mean, at the time, nobody had a problem with it. Certainly, there weren’t any Spaniards of the time who complained.
Thank you for the de Las Casas quote, Captain.
As a man of primarily Northern European extraction who was raised in the American South in the middle of last century, I can report that as a child I was taught that Spain was brutal in its conquest of Mexico. But, I was also taught that Spain brought Christianity to the pagan Aztecs. So, it all balanced out in the end.
We were taught little about the similar deplorable conquest of North America by the men from other parts of Europe. That was, of course, because those men were “Americans” from sea to shining sea.
And so it goes.
Well, I’ve never understood why any conquerors and empire builders who engaged in mass murder should be glorified whether Cortez, Columbus, or others and think the genocide committed against Native Americans was a great stain on the histories of all the countries in Latin America.
Also, while I’m certainly not an apologist for the Aztecs, I want to throw up every time people try to excuse the mass murder against them based on their own brutality.
It reminds me of all the apologists for Anglo conquerors trying to excuse the slaughter of the Zulus by wild tales of Chaka Zulu. Spain had just finished with La Reconquista during which they engaged in mass murder, genocide, and ethnic cleansing on a grand scale and the Northern Europeans would have, if anything, been even more brutal. That was certainly one of history’s more forgotten atrocities because the victims were Muslims.
Cortez would have done what he did regardless of who he faced and the same is true of the British and the Boers.
Beyond that, I find the idea that the Aztecs were committed 50,000 human sacrifices in four days to be utterly preposterous and comparisons of them to the Nazis to be beyond disgusting.
Ah yes, Las Casas, one of history’s forgotten heroes.
It’s also a worthwhile reminder that whenever people talk about “presentism” they ignore that many at the time did disagree.
Another good example is when people try and excuse slavery being allowed in the Constitution and forgetting that many both inside and outside the US objected to the idea of slavery(not that being anti-slavery meant being non-racist).
The point is that whatever Cortez did in his time America has done much worse much later on when moral standards had developed. You cannot criticize Cortez and praise America. That’s all.
Being immoral or being an asshole are moral judgments and very subjective but if you whip out your measuring tape and Cortez comes out as “immoral abuser” then necessarily the whole American history is a long list of immoralities and only Mary Poppins has a tape that would show America to be “Almost perfect in every way”.
Cortés did whatever he did but I have already cited a list of things done by America which are much worse including their own treatment of the natives. So, if you say Cortez was an immoral asshole and then say America is much worse then I have to agree on the relative scale if not with the absolute. What I cannot accept is that Cortez was terrible and by the same measuring stick America is great. Which is what most of Cortez’s critics say and that is just unsustainable.
Las Casas criticism is mainly of the abuses committed by the Spanish which were already against the king’s laws and directives. He was not criticizing the right to conquer nor defending the right of the natives to be left alone with their human sacrifices and all. It is like today someone condemning acts committed in Iraq which are already illegal.
It is silly to say Cortez had to know what he was doing was wrong because Las Casas criticized the conquest. American history is full of acts which went contrary to the established moral values of the time and plenty of people wrote against them at the time.
Plenty was written at the time against slavery and against the treatment of North American Indians and yet it was all done centuries after Cortez.
Mark Twain wrote often and strongly against American imperialism and atrocities in the Philippines and those atrocities went much more against the moral values of the time than what Cortez did in his time.
Plenty has been written against the atrocities committed by America in Vietnam, in South America, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Plenty has been written against torture, renditions, indefinite imprisonment without trial. These are things that are clearly against the moral values of the times and yet plenty of Americans support them.
How about all the aggressive wars America has started just because it could? They were criticized plenty.
How about the destruction of Fallujah? Was it not criticized as a huge crime against humanity? And it happened five centuries after Cortez. With the support of the American people.
How about the covering up of the crimes at Abu Ghraib? Americans who are so ready to condemn the catholic Church for covering up cases of pedophilia are equally ready to cover up crimes committed by the American Government. It is just a case of using a different yardstick to measure them versus us. That is all it is.
How about the death penalty? It is considered immoral in pretty much all the civilized world and is strongly criticized and yet America goes against the world in this.
So, what I am saying is that you can put Cortez and the Spanish conquest anywhere you want on the scale and that is subjective but what you cannot do is say America is any better than that. No, it is a thousand times worse.
Mother Theresa may have had her faults and many people consider her a bad person but on any good/evil scale you use Mother Theresa has to come up as better than Stalin or the whole measuring system is defective.
If you say America is a benevolent empire in tune with the moral standards of the times I have to disagree. America goes against moral standards accepted by the civilized world and even proclaimed by America itself. Cannot claim ignorance.
America openly defies and contradicts the community of nations and even will not fullfill treaties it has signed voluntarily if that is what is convenient. And with plenty of support from the American people including many on this board.
The same people who criticize China for doing X, Y or Z feel America has a perfect right to do X, Y and Z. And the same people who say Cortez had no right to do what he did say America has the right to do that and worse.
Those who criticize Cortez and the Spanish empire are generally those most vocal in their support for the American empire and most willing to overlook all the crimes committed by America. They are the ones who defend America’s right to invade and destroy a country because their ruler was “bad”. It is not a question of right or wrong, it is “my country right or wrong” no matter what.
Different yardstick, that’s what it is.
Red, you’re right, I don’t have the energy for this shit. It’s taking longer than we thought, it’s taking forever.
Sure you can. You just can’t condemn Cortez and excuse the comparable atrocities by other people and it would be ridiculous to ignore the fact that other contemporary Europeans were just as horrible.
Similarly, it’s very possible to condemn Columbus without condemning both Canada and the US and one can certainly condemn La Reconquista without condemning modern day Spain.
Now, are you correct that there’s often a double standard?
Certainly, all one has to do is look at how many people scream about what happened to the Armenians while ignoring the vastly worst atrocities committed against Muslims who were cleansed from Southern Europe and Greece(not that this justifies the ethnic cleansing of the Armenians).
Frankly, if you’re complaining about double standards against Spaniards I think you’d be better off complaining about how much criticism there is of the Inquistion while comparable atrocities in Northern Europe occurring at the same time is largely ignored.
Where do you get that from? The people who criticize Cortes and the Spanish Empire are generally left wing academics and people involved in native/indigenous rights issues; hardly American exceptionalists. The people who criticize Cortes’s treatment of the Aztec tend to make it part and parcel of general European/American treatment of the natives. So you have people like Howard Zinn who say:
And Cortes’s actions in Mexico were moral or immoral independent of Aztec human sacrifice or American foreign policy.
Great read: Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma, and the Fall of Old Mexico.
Just not for most…
…
Figures, sailor. Just not worth it as I said. Facts alone, mostly as described and cited by you, earned me a Pit thread as a racist and a ‘Spanish apologist’ way back when I still believed this place was about “fighting ignorance” -though to be fair, said thread backfired on the OP, the hypocrisy drained the hell out of me. But still: not worth the effort. Those who wish to educate themselves will do so…those that don’t. Well, so be it.
USA #1! History & facts be dammed.
Take good care.
If anyone wishes to discuss either the relative ethics of various societies or the quality of history as it is taught in various educational systems, you should probably take it to a different thread. We are pretty far afield from discussing the actual topic of the OP and, however informative posts such as #25 (for example) are, they deserve their own thread to be pursued.
[ /Moderating ]