True that.
I am also curious of sailor’s view of Cortes and maybe Pizarro.
The British were worse, because ex-Spanish colonies have better cuisine.
(Indian cuisine is better than anything from Latin America, but it does not count, as it predated British colonization.)
Then again, didn’t the Brits bring chilli peppers to India from South America, thus transforming Indian cuisine?
Black Pepper is native to India.
I said chilli pepper, NOT black pepper.
We don’t have natives, but we’ve had several mixed presidents, ranging from the very black to the “almost pass as white”. You are sadly misinformed.
Our current president is obviously mixed, so is Chavez for that matter.
It’s not any better or worse than any religion, but I think you missed his point.
Pistols at dawn!
Can’t agree. Sure, I love the chow you can get all around South America… but there’s nothing like roast beef, grilled catfish, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and all our arrays of pie.
I’d say that both countries have a mixed record. Take the carribean islands-islands once British (like Jamaica) are pretty poor and run down-the roads in jamaica are terrible. the capital (Kinston) is a dump. Aruba (still Dutch) is much better (modern roads, high living standard). Spain did some awful stuff (like kill most of the population of Peru (forced them to mine silver). But spain built up an infrastructure.
Both colonial empires were based upon resource extraction.
The British killed off the dodo.
Somebody did. Actually, I think the introduction of chillies* to India predated British colonization. The Portuguese and Spanish were in India before the Brits.
- N.B.: “Chillies” apparently is how the word is always spelled in the context of Indian or Anglo-Indian cuisine. In Mexican or Tex-Mex, it’s “chilis” or, better, “chiles”; the spiced meat dish is “chili”; a powder made of dried and crushed chile peppers is “chile powder,” but a mixture of chile powder and other things prepared as a chili seasoning is “chili powder.”
Sauteed in olive oil with peppers, onions, and lots of garlic. 
Errrr. No mate, only in the mass settlement colonies, such as Australia.
But then Argentina looks rather similar.
You evidently haven’t spent much time in the British Caribbean. The English intermarried like little bunnies back in the day, and the mixed race people are dominant… well they’re all mixed race actually.
This is only true of the United States (and I guess Aussie land). The American developed the most pernicious aspects of their colour bar all on their own, so I hardly see where the UK gets the blame. Hmmm, and to an extent in South Africa, but it was far less the English that pushed the colour bar.
But in the African colonies, Ghana, etc. mixed race is quite a-Okay.
Funny, Black Latin Americans have told me that its because the lighter people refuse to recognize how fundamentally prejudiced they are, using the excuse some cousin or the like married a coloured lady. Or had an affaire with her.
Again, one-drop is more American than English.
Uhuh, that’s actually pretty condescending and pretty much indicates the blindness my black Latin friends complain about (see the picture link the other poster linked too, Cuban elite is pretty bloody European…).
Former Anglo colonies are almost universally richer than their Spanish peers (peers in region). I’d say if we leave aside American history - what they did after their independence is their responsibility - British colonial rule comes off not badly (among a bad lot I should say).
Hey mate, the US is not the only (former) British colony in the world.
Not really.
I’d say Ryan is spot on here.
Bollocks, Indian cuisine co-developed with the Empire - we were there so long you can’t separate the two (although certainly many excellent portions are from the Moghul days).
Never mind you’re clearly confusing British National Cuisine (I can’t quite bring a defence for it myself) with the various colonial cuisines, which are generally outstanding (excluding Egypt, can’t understand what went wrong there). Ghana, the Caribbean, even Aussie land.
Mate, you’ve got not the first clue as to what you’re on about.
First, comparing Aruba, which receives direct subsidies from Netherlands to Jamaica, that’s been under self rule since the 40s and independent since 1958 is just bloody daft. It’s apples and oranges. The decline of Jamaican infrastructure is pretty much a story of bad post independence governance.
And to say the Spanish built up infrastructure is just … amazingly ignorant. The Spanish colonial empire was in fact pretty much known for the mediocrity of its infrastructure investment (as Spain began on a quasi Medieval mode of conquest to extract Bullion for the crown in the 1400s and had pissed away its capital by the time the concept of investment in infrastructure gained traction.
Jaysus mate, try to post with some actual facts in it.
Before the Europeans colonised areas of the world the locals lived in love and peace with each other, in harmony with the environment and didn’t rape mother nature.
The Aztecs, for example didn’t brutally butcher huge numbers of people, the Moghul lords treated their subject Indian peoples with fairnes, dignity and respect,
(So that there is absaloutley no truth in the story that the creator of the Taj Mahal, for example had all of the workforces right hands cut off so that they never again could create such a work of beauty),
In Africa the Zulus didn’t exterminate the bushmen when they migrated into the south of the continent, and Black East and West Africans didn’t enslave other Black Africans routinely BEFORE ever the Europeans appeared on the scene.
( and still don’t do so today )
These are just a very, very few examples of what the peace loving saints who inhabited the non European worlfd didn’t do to each other.
Just because the losers lose it doesn’t make them innocents, it just makes them peoples who weren’t as good at winning as the people who actually won were.
Barbados people are considered ‘anglo blaxons’ for a reason, you know.
OK, so your complaint is that the current Cuban government is not representative of the racial makeup of Cuban population. Thanks for the clarification.
George Orwell could, FWIW.
It’s Ryan_Liam’s complaint, not mine. But generally, historically, with a few important exceptions (like Battista), white and light skinned Cubans have tended to be more successful politically or economically than black and dark skinned Cubans.
That’s not exactly accurate… Texas in particular was also a French colony, and when it was developed beyond some missions in El Paso, Nacogdoches and San Antonio, it was part of Mexico, not Spain. And it was settled primarily by white immigrants from the US prior to the Texas Revolution, not Mexican immigrants. There were some (look up “Tejanos”), but they were not the majority.
Most of early pre-independence Texan history and culture is derived from the white settlers to Mexican Texas, not from the Tejanos or Mexicans. Post independence, it is a combination of white immigrants from the US or from parts of Europe (primarily Bohemia, Moravia, Germany, and some Italians).
You may as well lump Louisiana in with Texas, California and Florida above; they were part of Spain as well, just prior to 1803, but the French influence is what people remember.