The Spanish did not destroy heaven on earth, but rather hell

In Spanish-speaking countries, Argentine political scientist Marcello Gullo’s trilogy of books, “Motherland,” “Nothing to Forgive” and “What America Owes to Spain,” is causing a stir. In the volumes mentioned above, the author deals with the black myth that America was a paradise on earth in pre-Columbian times and when the Spaniards conquered it, they brought only misfortunes. In his opinion, it was quite the opposite: there was no earthly paradise on American soil, but a hell where cannibalism and anthropomorphism, human sacrifice, ritual violence and forced prostitution reigned, while the Spaniards created a more just system. A former one.

Good savage mythology

Argentina notes that the idealized image of pre-Christian America, populated by Indians who created happy and free societies untainted by the pathologies of Western civilization, dominates the public sphere today. However, this image has little to do with reality, but rather resembles Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s myth of the “good savage”. Having carefully studied the customs of the pre-Columbian Indians, Gullo presents in his work the image of the tribes of that time, far from the naive modern images.

The author gives many examples that seem shocking from today’s point of view. For example, among the Mocovi Indians, who now live in Argentina, if a family had to travel with a newborn child, the father ordered his wife to kill the newborn so that it would not be an uncomfortable burden on the way. The Bijao tribe from what is now Colombia used to kidnap, rape and forcibly impregnate the women of their enemies so that they would bear children and then fatten them up enough. Then at 12. or 13 they were killed and eaten to their heart’s content. Among Guarani Indians living in present-day Brazil and Paraguay, husbands force their wives into prostitution and fathers force their daughters into prostitution. Some women had value only as trade goods with other tribes.

A special situation prevailed in the lands of present-day Mexico, where the Acetas were – as Gullo writes – “the most cruel imperialism in the history of mankind”. They believed that human sacrifice to the gods was the only way to sustain the world. So they waged wars whose sole purpose was to take prisoners and then kill them on the altars, tearing their hearts alive. For decades, they oppressed many tribes, demanding from them not natural resources or slave labor, but human lives. Each year they ritually murdered tens of thousands of their victims. In this context, it is not surprising to learn that Aztec elites ate human flesh.

Another bloody regime was established by the Incas in what is now Peru. When the founder of their state power, Chief Bachakutek, died, a thousand boys and a thousand girls aged between four and five were buried with him. All the victims belonged to tribes conquered by the Inca and murdered to celebrate the ruler’s funeral.

Culture and admixture of blood

All this stopped after the Spanish invaded America. As Marcello Gullo says, the gods forcing the Indians to live in a world of fear and terror were replaced by a loving Father God, and daily human sacrifices were replaced by bloodless sacrifice in the form of the Eucharist.

The Argentine author draws attention to the differences between the conquest of North America by the Protestant Anglo-Saxons and the conquest of South and Central America by the Catholic Spaniards. The former built an empire based on division and destruction, the latter based on the mixing of cultures and blood. This is why the United States, with a population of 340 million, has only one and a half million citizens of Indian descent (that is, those with at least a quarter of Indian blood), compared to Mexico, with a population of 140 million, roughly 60 percent. The population is mestizos, meaning Indian women and white men or the descendants of Indians and white women, approximately 40 percent. Native Indians, 10 percent white, mainly of European descent.

According to Marcello Gullo, religion does not explain everything, because France and Portugal were Catholic countries, yet they built predatory empires in which mixed marriages were rare. According to him, the key to understanding this phenomenon is nationalism. As Argentina points out, Spain was born out of the will of Iberians who wanted independence and rebelled against an encroaching Arab imperialism. Their independence struggle, known as the Reconquista, was conducted under Catholic banners. It was she who shaped the character of the people who crossed the sea from Spain to confront another bloody imperialism oppressing the New World. It is a sign that Europeans discovered the Americas in the same year that Granada, the last Muslim stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula, fell.

Many Indians greeted the arrival of newcomers from across the ocean with optimism. Hernán Cortés, with only a few hundred warriors, joined 110 Indian tribes fed up with the bloody Aztec rule, and was able to conquer a very powerful empire within two years. The Tlaxcalans were the first to make a treaty with the Spanish conquistador, which is still commemorated by a colorful mural painted in the Governor’s Palace in Tlaxcala.

Gullo writes, “The society built after the Conquest, terribly unjust in the modern sense, was far more just than that under the Aztecs or the Incas.” This is the only way to explain why, during the independence wars of the Spanish colonies in 1810-1826, the indigenous people of the Indian tribes not only remained loyal to the Spanish monarchy, but also fought for Spain even after Chile – in his opinion. And Peru declared independence.