German Ignorance

[Master Zen]

Originally posted by Oerdin
OK, lets have a fact check. in 1492 there were around 80 million natives in the Americas but mostly due to disease (deseases caught from other indians without ever even seeing a white man) the native population collapsed to around 3-5 million by 1800 in the entire western hemisphere. Most of that population was in central American and south America.

Wrong. The diseases were brought by europeans and if people didn't catch them from a european, the did catch it from another indian who did catch them from a european. You are honestly trying to imply that coincidentally the entire indian population of the Americas died out from native diseases? Utterly ridiculous and even insulting that you try and manipulate a historical tragedy like that.

I seriously don't know where you get your "sources" (you never bother to cite them). In Mesoamerica there lived approximately 22 million indians at the time of the spanish arrival. The population was decimated by various epidemics throught the colonial period, smallpox and typhus (neither of which were native to the Americas) being the major killers. It is estimated that about 90% of all indians alive in 1519 (the year the spanish landed in Mexico) died because of european diseases.

As for Mexico's treatment of Natives they most certainly did have several indian wars (look up the caste war, 1848-1901) in which whole sale slaughter occured with just as much frequency as in the US. In addition the Mexican government had a set policy to enslave the native population and to force them to work or suffer beatings or even death. These forced labor system killed far more indians then the indian wars to the north if for no other reason then there were more indians to kill.

Wholesale slaughter? Please, back up your claims, the Caste War was a full scale war in which armies formed from Mayan citizens and government-supported european criollos fought, taking towns, besieging cities. It was a war, and guess what, people die in wars. That does not necessarily amout to genocide or slaughter. No more than 50,000 people were killed in the Caste war over a 50 year period and you have yet to prove that all of these were deliberate slaughterings of the native population.

As per slavery, slavery was outlawed since 1821. A part of the reason Texas secceeded from Mexico was precisely because the white colonists wanted slavery officiallized but the Mexican government never acceeded to their demands (sadly we had no way of enforcing it hence slavery did exist). Once again, where is your scholarly proof of the "government policy to enslave the native population"? Seriously, where do you get this information? Do you pull it out of your ass just to try and diminish what your country did?

I thought Muad'Dib's argument was as ridiculous as this thread could get. Yours is really approaching that level.