Letters from readers: Holocaust

In the letter “Holocaust” dated 03/03, reader Ramón Alfredo Maldones refers to the presumed “benevolence” of the conquest and the “superiority” of Spanish culture. We believe that the terrifying actions of the Inquisition that acted precisely at that time and that filled the history of Spain with opprobrium and shame in its, paradoxically, its “most glorious hour” cannot be ignored. This inquisition was imposed in the fifteenth century by Domingo de Guzmán, founder of the Dominican Order, who gave himself fully to the “pious work” of slandering, torturing, expropriating and killing the defenseless victims. It was introduced in Spain at the time of the Catholic Monarchs and Philip II, dedicating itself with the greatest care to the public burning of men and women in the so-called “autos de fe”, which were carried out in the presence of the populace happy to see it burn. to the “heretics”. It was -according to Fernando Vallejo- “a true Christian festival”, which was later exported to America (Lima, Mexico, Cartagena). The aforementioned reader also affirms that the “generous conquerors” only sought to “propagate the faith of Christ.” Well then, let me now recall the following words of Juan José Sebreli, who affirms, in this sense, that “evangelization did not spread due to the superiority of its doctrine as the Hispanists claim, nor because of the persuasion of its missionaries: The clergymen were accompanied of brutal soldiers, many of them ex-convicts, who occupied cities and villages amid looting, mass murder, rape and vandalism. Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, who was in America at that time, raised his voice to condemn the genocide in his “History of the Destruction of the Indies.” It is also known that the Incas, unlike the Aztecs, did not practice human sacrifices -as the reader claims- and their culture was far superior to that of the Spaniards: In a recent letter I wrote, entitled “Maiden Sacrifice ”, we refer to the way of colonization practiced by the Incas in the neighboring territories, which was, as a counterpart to that of the Spaniards, eminently agricultural and free of barbarism. In the areas conquered by them, roads and bridges were built, crops were cultivated on terraces and irrigated on the slopes of the mountains, the living conditions of the defeated peoples were improved, respecting their beliefs and customs. They were also taught to raise maps in relief, to make calendars by means of astral observations, and the kind protection of the individual and the family. It is also remarkable its perfect political and administrative organization, which even today is the subject of astonishing study by cooperative members and sociologists from all over the world. Furthermore, everyone knows the enormous cost in human lives caused by the conquest of the so-called “New World”. Brandel, Chaunú and many other historians confirm it. Pierre Chaunú in “European expansion”, page 284, affirms that: “the accumulated effect of the conquest and all the shocks received cost the lives of some 70 million aborigines. The planetary unification process was carried out at this price: high, certainly, but reasonable if one takes into account all that was at stake.”