15. THE CONQUEST.
The history of the "discovery" of America, its violent conquest and its unjust colonization during the last five centuries, has been on the hands of the victors, and the sons of the sons of all Europeans who have continued arriving to Mexico, to make fortune through the "natives" and their apparently inexhaustible natural resource. Yesterday gold and encomienda,[1] today oil and minimum wages, but history repeats itself. But knowing history, frees people from cyclical and repetitive mistakes. Thus, it is essential for Mexicans to know their own "true story", so that there are no more victors and defeated, dominated and dominating, colonized and colonizers.
"Was not like that what the Dzules (Spaniards) did when they arrived here. They taught fear; and came to wither flowers. For their flower to blossom, they damaged and sucked the flower of the others." (Book of Chumayel Chilam Balam)
The conquerors world.
Spain had just expelled the Arabs, who had dominated their peninsula for over eight hundred years.[2] The kingdoms of Castile and Aragon, in 1479 had formed a single Kingdom through the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, it was a Crown "new, poor and with devastated territories" and men in arms. Also, Europe had lost the commercial passage
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- ↑ The encomienda (Spanish pronunciation: [eŋkoˈmjenda]) was a system that was employed mainly by the Spanish crown during the colonization of the Americas. In the encomienda, the crown granted a person a specified number of natives for whom they were to take responsibility. The receiver of the grant was to protect the natives from warring tribes and to instruct them in the Spanish language and in the Catholic faith.[1] In return, they could extract tribute from the natives in the form of labor, gold or other products, such as in corn, wheat or chickens. In the former Inca empire, for example, the system continued the Incaic (and even pre-Incaic) traditions of extracting tribute under the form of labor.
- ↑ The invasion began in 711 CE and ended in 1492 CE with the fall of Granada, the last Arab stronghold in the Spanish Peninsula.
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