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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

Where are my fellow spain haters?

I see a lot of hate here for the french and british which is valid of course but no one ever talks about spain. I've been learning a lot about colonialism in the Americas and honestly I wanna go back in time so I can strangle hernan cortez to death with my bare hands. I have shed genuine tears for people who lived centuries before me. I cannot die at peace knowing spain still exists.


This was supposed to be a sorta joke sorta serious post but I'm deciding to expand on the serious bit.

emotion dumpThe more I learn about history the angrier I get about the state of the world. It's incredible that it has come to this. How have we not gotten past this? It's the same shit over and over with a different face, how do most people not see this? I feel so incredibly powerless to even begin to approach changing the problems I see in our world. Hell I feel powerless to affect even smaller local issues. Sitting here and watching the slaughter and abuse perpetrated by our ruling class is sickening but what am I to do really? So I sit in my room and shake with rage, I sob for people I can never even meet and everyday that pressure in my chest grows. I feel this insatiable desire to do something but there is genuinely so little I can do where I am. Reading helps I find, developing myself political helps me feel like I am atleast doing something, not just pretending these problems don't exist like I see so many others doing. I find though, that reading history has the opposite effect. It's cathartic in that I can let out those awful turbulent emotions through my empathy with different subjugated peoples and my anger at their oppressors. I can let these emotions fill me so that I may understand them better and fuel my revolutionary spirit. This was true in the beginning at least. These days however, its just depressing and awful. I come out of these journeys into the past wondering if things will ever change when they have gone on like this for so long. Will I ever see the world I dream of? Will the slaughter ever end? Idk really, no one ever does I suppose. I smoke a lot more these days.

I know many of you here are likely more educated than me on both history and theory so I ask. How do y'all cope? How do you maintain hope?

Shit genuinely has me like

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[-] WaterBowlSlime@lemmygrad.ml 31 points 1 month ago

The fact that damn near 100% of Latin Americans speak Spanish and are Catholic speaks to how thorough Spanish colonialism is. Hell, the fact that "Latin American" as a racial category even exists is a testament to their indigenous erasure. There's so much Zionist apologia from Western powers about how Jews need a homeland to protect their religion and culture. Well, where's the fervor for a Maya state? And a Muisca state? And a state for the dozens of other peoples that also suffered genocide at their hands?

The damage caused by the Spanish empire is so extensive that reparations are never remotely entertained, or even fucking mentioned, because it would ruin smol bean Spain. And we can't have that! Not Spain!!!

[-] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 26 points 1 month ago

brb, going back in time to devastate the Spanish with a series of wars against Portugal so that neither side has the capacity to colonize

But as a kindness, I will still bring potatoes and tomatoes to the Old World, but say that I found them in the ruins of Atlantis

[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 month ago

Tell them that Atlantis will kill anyone who tries to sail across the Atlantic because they own the ocean.

[-] FlakesBongler@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

Poseidon is real and he is very, very angry that we killed all the Cyclopses

[-] pcgaldo@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yes, it exists, still has a monarchy and practices forms of neo-colonialist corporatist oppression, both in its former colonies and in the territories within its borders.

Next to them is Portugal, which also did its own. What about Holland, Belgium or Germany, with smaller empires but ruled with special brutality?

[-] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

We usually get tired after considering the depths of atrocity of USA, exhausted after remembering Brutish Empire, completely flattened when we next turn to mention France, so we don't have much of energy of hate left to properly dispense among all the colonial powers :(

[-] ashinadash@hexbear.net 10 points 1 month ago

Reading about the Shark Island concentration camps and the broader Herero and Namaqua genocide convinced me that the imperial Germans were as bad as anyone else.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 9 points 1 month ago

Also don't forgot those who might not have had big empires themselves but who profited from supplying and enabling the big empires. When it comes to imperialism, no European nation is free from sin.

[-] Dolores@hexbear.net 19 points 1 month ago

anger is more acute the closer to the present events are, almost everywhere the spanish empire was it has been eclipsed more recently by anglo, US, or French imperialism. while people can be angry about multiple things at once, a longstanding historical grievance is less visceral than the people/systems that are making people hungry and poor today.

also this is a predominantly anglo forum people here are as a rule uneducated about it

[-] citrussy_capybara@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago
[-] queermunist@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Columbus may have been Italian, but he sailed and killed and enslaved under the Spanish crown. Somehow Spain gets let off the hook.

[-] GrouchyGrouse@hexbear.net 13 points 1 month ago

I think it's because Spain bankrupted itself and became a sickly shadow of its former self that everyone kinda bullied around for a couple centuries so it's not as "fresh" in people's minds but Spain did some really fucked up things. The legacy of their "castas" system can be found in the racist jim crow laws of the USA south, for instance.

There are cool stories of indigenous resistance most people don't know of, though. Like how the Mapuche in what is today Chile taught themselves how to ride horses and stole Spanish steeds and in the foothills of the Andes waged pitched cavalry battles against Spanish soldiers.

[-] infuziSporg@hexbear.net 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Spain is one of the top 3 "countries that are barely held together" in Europe. It's inclined to break up, but for the next half century at least there's too many stitches keeping it intact.

Balkanize Western Europe, lessen the concentration of capital and political blackmail.

do-something

[-] anarchoilluminati@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago

Death to the tapas empire.

[-] grandepequeno@hexbear.net 9 points 1 month ago

I don't do it because here in portugal it's very common to do it, and it feels gauche because they're literally our biggest trading partner

[-] MelianPretext@hexbear.net 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You really witness the inhumanity of Western imperialism, that was then replayed in every first contact with the West since the 1500s, being first expressed through the period of early Spanish settler-colonialism. And you see the inability of those they encountered in grasping the refusal of Western chauvinism to ever see them as human equals.

You see it in Montezuma welcoming the armed Spanish conquistadors to the Aztec capital; you then see it with Lin Zexu's letter to Britain's inbred Victoria (which she never read) appealing to her "better virtues" to stop the opium trade right on the eve of the First Opium War; you see its modern reincarnation with Gorbachev betraying the entirety of Europe's actually existing socialism with his delusion of a "Common European Home" and his weepy need for approval and "friendship" from Reagan, H.W. Bush, Thatcher and Kohl, an especially reactionary generation of mediocre Western leadership that had been utter domestic policy failures, which he then elevated into the history books through the credit they took for the capitalist restoration of Eastern Europe and the USSR.

Because English language academic "scholarship" on the extermination of the Aztec state are obsessed with getting the "conquistador" perspective and revisionist apologia, same as every other Western historical atrocity, to treat historical figures like Cortes "with more nuance," the best history on the subject likely remains Miguel León-Portilla's 1962 "Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico," a compilation of Aztec primary source documents.

In the Aztec account, first contact between the Aztecs and the Spanish in the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan begins like this:

When Motecuhzoma had given necklaces to each one, Cortes asked him: “Are you Motecuhzoma? Are you the king? Is it true that you are the king Motecuhzoma?” And the king said: “Yes, I am Motecuhzoma.” Then he stood up to welcome Cortes; he came forward, bowed his head low and addressed him in these words: “Our lord, you are weary. The journey has tired you, but now you have arrived on the earth. You have come to your city, Mexico. You have come here to sit on your throne, to sit under its canopy. [...] You have come back to us; you have come down from the sky. Rest now, and take possession of your royal houses. Welcome to your land, my lords!”

When Motecuhzoma had finished, La Malinche translated his address into Spanish so that the Captain could understand it. Cortes replied in his strange and savage tongue, speaking first to La Malinche: “Tell Motecuhzoma that we are his friends. There is nothing to fear. We have wanted to see him for a long time, and now we have seen his face and heard his words. Tell him that we love him well and that our hearts are contented.” Then he said to Motecuhzoma: “We have come to your house in Mexico as friends. There is nothing to fear.” La Malinche translated this speech and the Spaniards grasped Motecuhzomas hands and patted his back to show their affection for him. [...] When the Spaniards entered the Royal House, they placed Motecuhzoma under guard and kept him under their vigilance.

After the Spanish place Montezuma under house arrest in his own palace, a festival leads to a massacre:

[...] Motecuhzoma said to La Malinche: “Please ask the god to hear me. It is almost time to celebrate the fiesta of Tox- catl. It will last for only ten days, and we beg his permission to hold it. We merely burn some incense and dance our dances. There will be a little noise because of the music, but that is all.” The Captain said: “Very well, tell him they may hold it.” Then he left the city to meet another force of Spaniards who were marching in this direction. Pedro de Alvarado, called The Sun, was in command during his absence.

Then Tecatzin, the chief of the armory, said: “Please remind the lord that he is here, not in Cholula. You know how they trapped the Cholultecas in their patio! They have already caused us enough trouble. We should hide our weapons close at hand!” But Motecuhzoma said: “Are we at war with them? I tell you, we can trust them.” Tecatzin said: “Very well.”

Then the songs and dances began. A young captain wearing a lip plug guided the dancers; he was Cuatlazol, from Tolnahuac. But the songs had hardly begun when the Christians came out of the palace. They entered the patio and stationed four guards at each entrance. Then they attacked the captain who was guiding the dance. One of the Spaniards struck the idol in the face, and others attacked the three men who were playing the drums. After that there was a general slaughter until the patio was heaped with corpses. A priest from the Place of the Canefields5 cried out in a loud voice: “Mexicanos! Who said we are not at war? Who said we could trust them?” The Mexicans could only fight back with sticks of wood; they were cut to pieces by the swords. Finally the Spaniards retired to the palace where they were lodged.

Another account of the Fiesta of Toxatl Massacre:

At this moment in the fiesta, when the dance was loveliest and when song was linked to song, the Spaniards were siezed with an urge to kill the celebrants. They all ran forward, armed as if for battle. They closed the entrances and passageways, all the gates of the patio: the Eagle Gate in the lesser palace, the Gate of the Canestalk and the Gate of the Serpent of Mirrors. They posted guards so that no one could escape, and then rushed into the Sacred Patio to slaughter the celebrants. They came on foot, carrying their swords and their wooden or metal shields. They ran in among the dancers, forcing their way to the place where the drums were played. They attacked the man who was drumming and cut off his arms. Then they cut off his head, and it rolled across the floor.

They attacked all the celebrants, stabbing them, spearing them, striking them with their swords. They attacked some of them from behind, and these fell instantly to the ground with their entrails hanging out. Others they beheaded: they cut off their heads, or split their heads to pieces. They struck others in the shoulders, and their arms were torn from their bodies. They wounded some in the thigh and some in the calf. They slashed others in the abdomen, and their entrails all spilled to the ground. Some attempted to run away, but their intestines dragged as they ran; they seemed to tangle their feet in their own entrails. No matter how they tried to save themselves, they could find no escape.

Some attempted to force their way out, but the Spaniards murdered them at the gates. Others climbed the walls, but they could not save themselves. Those who ran into the communal houses were safe there for a while; so were those who lay down among the victims and pretended to be dead. But if they stood up again, the Spaniards saw them and killed them.

The blood of the warriors flowed like water and gathered into pools. The pools widened, and the stench of blood and entrails filled the air. The Spaniards ran into the communal houses to kill those who were hiding. They ran everywhere and searched everywhere; they invaded every room, hunting and killing.

After this moment, the Aztecs unite and retaliate, driving the Spanish out of the city. In a pathetic historiographical display of playing the victim card, the Spanish-dominated historical record calls this eviction "la Noche Triste" or "the Night of Sorrows." They later return to put the city under siege and this leads to the fall of Tenochtitlan:

The Spanish blockade caused great anguish in the city. The people were tormented by hunger, and many starved to death. There was no fresh water to drink, only stagnant water and the brine of the lake, and many people died of dysentery. The only food was lizards, swallows, corncobs and the salt grasses of the lake. The people also ate water lilies and the seeds of the colorin, and chewed on deerhides and pieces of leather. They roasted and seared and scorched whatever they could find and then ate it. They ate the bitterest weeds and even dirt. Nothing can compare with the horrors of that siege and the agonies of the starving. We were so weakened by hunger that, little by little, the enemy forced us to retreat. Little by little they forced us to the wall.

After the Spanish colonial regime is established, one indigenous leader rebuilds on the land left to his people:

I remember, I will establish a little temple where we will place the new god that the men from Castile have given us. Truly this new god wants us to worship him. What will we do, my sons? Let us receive the water on our heads [be baptized], let us give ourselves to the men of Castile, perhaps in this way they will not kill us.

Let us remain here. Do not trespass [by] going on another’s land, perhaps in this way they will not kill us. Let us follow them; thus, perhaps we will awaken their compassion. It will be good if we surrender entirely to them. Oh, that the true god who resides in heaven will help us [coexist] close to the men of Castile.

And in order that they will not kill us, we will not claim all our lands. We will reduce in length the extension of our lands, and that which remains, our fathers will defend.

Now I declare that, in order for them not to kill us, . . . we accept to have water poured on our heads, that we worship the new god, as I declare he is the same as the one we had.

Now I reduce in length our lands. Thus it will be. Their limits will begin in the direction from which the sun rises and continue . . . [he mentions each of the limits].

I presume that for this small piece of land they will not kill us. It does not matter that it was much larger. This is my decision because I do not want my sons to be killed.

Therefore, we will work only this little piece of land, and thus our sons will do so. Let us hope in this manner they will not kill us. ...

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago

I've been reading about and reading passages from the Florentine codex. It is through the accounts of the massacre during the fiesta of Toxatl and of the Spainish blockade that I truly came to understand their dread and anguish. The cruelty that came after was just as if not more horrific. Being forced through slavery to not only destroy the history of your culture but to build atop it the culture of your oppressor. I can't fathom the feeling. Worse still, the Aztecs were thriving, they were at their peak even. As far as they were aware they were the most powerful people in the world. To have that dynamic flipped upon so suddenly had to be humiliating and terrifying. I think it's the dread that radiates from this history that affects me the most though, that feeling of certain impending doom is palpable. I feel as though I can't properly put into words the miasma of it.

[-] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 month ago

Spain gets a pass only because there are so many horrible countries in Europe that let it hide in the crossfire.

France: racist post-colonial nuclear power with a neoliberal fash-baiter running the show

Germany: trying to revive the Nazi legacy is half a dozen countries at once

Italy: Run by the granddaughter of Nazi sympathisers

UK: [the horrors]

And that's only the ones I could be bothered to list. Not that Spain isn't worthy of joining them but there's more than a few targets for hate when it comes to fucking awful European powers.

[-] ThomasMuentzner@hexbear.net 5 points 1 month ago

Spain is great in the sense of low suns and long shadows..

this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2024
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