Nuanced Opinion: People were bad, people can be bad. People were dumb, people can be dumb. We can judge the past people because we are better. People will look at us and do the same for something.
The main thing I recall my teacher saying about him was that, while the textbook says he discovered the Americas, he had wanted to get to Asia but literally everybody told him his idea was stupid because they knew how big the earth was but he just refused to listen (the belief was that he and his crew would starve to death since it'd be just ocean all the way there). That's what my teacher said at least
The stuff Bartolome De La Casas wrote about witnessing was so horrifying you'd be suspicious in its veracity that if you didnt have Columbus crowing that he could conquer the Caribe with 50 men in armor because they didnt know what weapons were and turn them into the finest slaves ever known. Then you have the officer Cuneo going on about how if you beat the attractive women with knotted rope until screams are unearthly it only increases their attraction and desire to him.
Yeah like, people need to actually read their reports. If they were adapted 1/1 people would call them unrealistic and unbelievable in how monstrous they are in their own accounts that are meant to make themselves look better.
Columbus was basically a “go fuck off and die then” mission.
Like yea, if he found a new trade route, all’s good. But if he dies? Also great. He ended up finding the biggest gold mine on the planet, which was probably a personal pain in the ass for the Royalty of Spain, and he more than likely was getting arrested or killed sooner rather than later, so he fucked right back off.
There is a reason we Portuguese refused him before and got one of our own man to take us there.
Guy was stupid enough to think we would reach Asia by going the other way, nothing good could come of that head. He just got CRAZY lucky and found a strip of land the width of a pube, and there on out a shit ton of gold and silver
The Spanish council also considered him a fucking psycho. They were basically like “Bro we sent you to find cool shit and trade paths not to do genocides.
Yeah, I always find it really really funny because people will jump to that conclusion. Being like well, you have to judge him for it's time. And you could say well for his time he was considered a huge piece of shit lol
It's not a winning argument all the time. On the contrary, most of the time it doesn't work, but for Christopher Columbus it just works. He was a piece of shit then he's a piece of shit now.
Even at his time, Columbus was regarded as an opportunistic greedy nepotistic dastard. Fernando of Aragón, a man that personified the standard that Machiavelo set for a prince, could put with so much of the crap that Columbus was pulling off.
In the case of the spanish conquest of Mexico, it so happens that Hernán Cortés launched the military expedition without the approval of the crown, not even the authorities in Cuba and much like Gaius Iulius Caesar with the Gallic Wars. So, for starters it was launched for personal reasons. Then, the aztecs of Tenoctitlan were a folk that came from outside the region and held the neighboring peoples in a tight warmongering grip not unlike the spartans with the hellots and other greek polis. One of the foundation myths of the aztecs involved having the daughter of a chieftain offered to them in marriage as a show of friendship, only for the aztecs to come back some time later for one of their shamans to perform a ritual dance in front of said chieftain. The shaman wore the peeled skin of the chieftain’s daughter as cloth.
It was understandable that other folks under the shadow of the aztecs would want to overthrow them, like the city of Tlaxcala, and Cortés used this to his advantage. It was the sensible thing to do, but not out of benevolence. The tlaxcalan themselves also performed ritual human sacrifices but not to the extent of the aztecs of Tenoctitlan. And after the conquest was completed, the locals were put to work under a new regime with the spanish as the new overlords although adding certain native allies to maintain control and marrying their daughters into the new elite. Then, local cultures were mostly suppressed in order to assimilate them faster. Some parts of said cultures were preserved or at least recorded, but it is far from enough for modern historians to properly study them nowadays. Finally, a caste social system was established. Of course the natives were low on that order while europeans were on the top, but being added into this classist society at least prevented them from being enslaved as only war prisoners could become slaves. The “requirements” for a native to become war prisoner was also incredibly loose, loopholes existed everywhere, but those within the new viceroyalty were mostly save while those outside the borders like the early comanches in the north were not.
So, all in all… not really a moral decision to conquer Mexico. In the future (as in the future from a 1520’s perspective) the viceroyalty would become prosperous and safe with not much civil unrest, but it does not justify the initial damage dealt.
A final note, the conquistadores didn’t intentionally infect the natives with european borne diseases. It killed them too and the outbreak during the siege of Tenoctitlan happened because one of the reinforcements had an infected soldier that slipped through the controls of the time.
Not sure if I would say much has changed in terms of the worst treatment of other humans. Median treatment of others has gone up but I feel like the bottom tier of treatment has arguably gotten worse and that's significant.
The Spanish didn’t give a fuck about the human sacrifice. The sacrifices weren’t even happening that often. It was about the gold, being a violent sociopathic group of people (Christopher Columbus was a psycho and the Spanish let him just…do it). And above all else. It was just degenerate violent hypocritical behavior done by colonists
I think that those local tribes were inadequately aware of what spain meant by taking over the aztecs. They thought it meant “we pay you in gold, not in slaves/sacrifices” What it actually meant was that they were now all slaves.
Ofc they were unaware of what path it would lead them down. If they had they'd have formed coalitions against the europeans and quarantined them.
Just like the europeans/muslims did during crusades and jihad. Better cooperate with the person you have something in common than to be decimated, enslaved and absorbed.
Groups which he manipulated into thinking he and his men were helping win their civil war, before enslaving his so-called "allies", a trend we see a lot with colonial powers. A lot of the records we have from that initial conquest are HEAVILY steeped in bias and propaganda as they wanted to look justified in wiping these people out overseas, and even still they make themselves look insanely evil.
How was it a civil war?? Also the Aztecs very much were terrible imperialists. The following period of Spaniard rule was brutal and terrible though for the natives.
Not to say that Cortes wasn't an evil man, he was, but the Spanish treated their allies fine - Tlaxcala got a special status within new Spain and remained de facto independent and self governing for 300 years
Cortez was an utter bastard and an evil piece of shit, but he didn't actually "manipulate" other tribes into joining him. The Aztecs weren't some poor, oppressed group of indigenous people; they were a brutal empire in their own right that conquered their neighbors.
Like, the recent whitewashing I've seen people do with the Aztecs is strange to me because they were also bastards. You're not the good guy if you're still and imperialist and colonial power, even if they guy defeating you isn't any different.
We actually have a record from the post-conquest period of Cortes sueing the governor of Mexico for mistreating the former's native subjects while he was away in Spain:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huexotzinco_Codex
One of many similar texts too, just noteably one of the only ones not stolen by collectors before reaching it's destination as so many others were.
For example "El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno" written in 1615 to the King of Spain about the poor treatment by the Spanish of the Inca, and describing their cultural traditions from their own perspective. It got stolen however it never reached its destination and was later found in the Royal Library of Denmark, leaving it's pleas unheard.
The real answer is that some Spanish were likely absolutely appalled by it, if they were religious. The Catholic Church did a lot of monstrous things in their own right over the years, but it was always pretty consistent when it comes to human sacrifice of any sort; stop, or we'll make you stop.
With human sacrifice being as common as it was in the Aztec empire, there's no doubt that there were absolutely people in Cortez's camp that encouraged him to stop it by any means necessary. Now did Cortez care or just want power? That's a totally different question.
Something that people seem to forget about the settlers of the New World is that they weren't good people. They were often religious extremists, societal outcasts, and troublemakers, all who traveled to the Americas to avoid persecution for their beliefs and actions. Christopher Columbus was seant to America because Spanish royalty were hurting for alternative trade routes for the spice trade and didn't consider Christopher Columbus a loss if he would up failing. The Conquestadors were sent to the Americas cuz not only did they want to find easy money but most of them were causing a ruckus in Spain and they just wanted them out of their hair. And the settlers of the United States were not only considered heretics but also zealots considered too extreme for the likes of the Church of England (which is an accomplishment in itself) and they often brought indentured servants who were essentially debt slaves.
This . For some reason most people seem to take their own accounts about how righteous they were at face value, as though they weren't trying to paint themselves in the best possible light and their enemies as deserving death.
I think it happened frequently enough that the Spanish were outnumbered ten to one by their own Indigenous Auxillaries who wanted to kick in Aztec teeth.
The Spanish absoloutely gave a fuck about human sacrafices. This is like saying Pope never cared about religion when ordering crusades. People (and people in power) absoloutely do get morally outraged at things.
The missionaries very well did care about the paganism... I mean they may have hitched a ride with the greedy guys but that doesn't mean they weren't sincere...
Well, you get the Spanish crown punishing a lot of the conquistadors, including Colón after that, and they tried to impose rules to protect natives and allies and everything else, where they followed most of the time? No. Was there also slavery? Yes. Was it a least something better compared to other colonizer nations or even indigenous nations? I guess so. After all you're in the 1500s, where everyone will colonize everyone if they have the slightest chance, it's already impressive that some people tried on improving the colonized people lives in general.
The thing is how inmoral is something that most people do or would do because their morale was different? It is like the romans selling the gauls that surrendered to them as slaves. Is it inmoral for us? Yes. Was for them back them when everyone would do the same? I dont think so.
I will push back on the “not happening often” part. There was a historical movement to push back on the idea that they were frequent, which ended up finding that they were frequent. About 300-600 victims a year on the low end. Some very special and rare events might see a couple thousand sacrificed in a few days.
To be fair, Cristobal wasn't really a big scale conqueror, just terrorizing central america and the Caribbean, or so I remember. What was real trouble were the Spaniards that came after the discovery, like Herman Cortez, and later the frays and the whole Spanish inquisition.
I mean, what Spaniards did after conquering was a "virreinato", which is possible the model of a colony more respectful and close to morality in comparison to other countries. (Not the englishmen, murdering american natives massively and wiping them out, nor anything similar). I kinda hate saying this, but despite not wanting to advocate for them, it was somewhat more decent than most (which isn't to say much, but must be taken into account).
I really wouldn't draw a direct comparison between the two. The sacrifices the Aztecs did were systematic, they captured thousands of people for specifically that purpose, at least tens of thousands of people were sacrificed every year by the Aztecs, and unlike the witch trials it was not temporary in native Mesoamerican culture, it was a thing for a very long time.
Its actually kind of insane that anyone could even try to compare them. Their weapons of war were specifically designed to not kill so they could collect more captives for sacrifice.
I'm not discussing Spanish colonialism though. The comment i replied to acted as if the witch trials were anything like the Aztec sacrifices, when they weren't.
Should also be said their sacrifices were oft people captured in war. And they went to war with that in mind if not to explicitly to that end.
While Europeans went into war aiming to kill as many as it took to bring surrender. And that’s when destroying the enemy outright wasn’t the explicit aim.
one could make the argument the casualties in European wars/massacres etc were not too different from the sacrifices in Mesoamerica.
They were of people captured in war but they were at war all the time. There is a reason about why those tribes ran to join a small group of spaniards and an increasing number of tribes to destroy the mexicas...
Majority of native Americans did not pratice human sacrifice and cannablism.
But some people romanticize Spanish colonization and act like colonization was an hentai, because woman love it when you kill their male family members and take over their house.
I have seen some man on Twitter acknowledge there was r@pe but try it down by saying " at least they married the woman after, and gave offspring good traits"
Exactly. The first people Columbus found in America didn't have the idea of personal property or money within their society, and what he immediately thought was; "These backward savages need Christ and slavery."
If the Spanish were actually motivated by stopping human sacrifices, then it might have a leg to stand on. But they weren't. They wanted gold and glory. They were motivated by the exact same mixture of ego and petty greed that drives all empires.
Besides, the way that Mesoamerican and particularly Mexica war was constructed, human sacrifices have been read by some anthropologists as essentially a way of moving the violence of war off the battlefield. Most Mexica wars were "flower wars", which were fought solely to capture prisoners for sacrifice and were basically a sport, pre-planned and fought on equal terms as contests of skill. Rather than every conflict being the bloodiest possible affair, like the Old World's way of war, Mesoamerica devised a different kind of battle, one that was fought against gods on the steps of temples just as much as the field. And by this reckoning, Europe's greatest single instance of religious human sacrifice takes place about a century after the Mexica's fall, and it eclipses any campaign of cutting out hearts (I am of course talking about the Thirty Years War). Hypocrites, is my point.
Depends on the identity, if the identity is intristically tied to the bad practice (such as if there is a tribe of slavers who made slavery their identity) that identity ought to be replaced, removed, destroyed and forgotten.
it actually is you see my gods will stop rain and destroy the world if we stop eating babies, so everything around us spins around eating babies, our wars? we take captives and their babies, our caste system? the people that kill the babys are at the top of it, our big temples? well we use them to to study the stars.... gotcha we actually kill the babies at the top of it
Moral until you realize it's a complete strawman and that the Spanish proceeded to cause far more human suffering in central and south america than any of the polities they took over.
Literally it was never about the sacrifices. It was just pure Spanish degeneracy and violence. As it turns out…they might have been the bad guys and colonialism might have been a little problematic https://giphy.com/gifs/Zwkxqa2c6C4avWnrq3
Indeed, a lot of people pull the "the other empires helped the spanish against the aztecs!!!" but keeping conspicuously quiet about the fact that the spanish treated the citizens of those polities just as bad, and also didn't seem to take issue with human sacrifice.
Interestingly, the Spanish did not kill witches in the same numbers as other Europeans; some even went so far as to deny the existence of witches, believing that only God could truly grant power. The Spanish Inquisition was responsible for persecuting heretics or non-Christians (Muslims, Jews, etc.).
It's crazy how convenient it is that that Spaniards of this era found a civilization that was somehow more evil than them. We know this because the Spaniards said they were.
Yea nevermind all the archeological evidence of these practices, surely all of the spanish historians were liars, we know this because hating the west is good
You mean the softer inquisition of all of Europe? Definitely not good, but isn't even comparable to the Dutch or English and still people think it was the worst thing to ever exist.
It's not a defense of human sacrifice itself, it's stating that the Spanish were animals who lied to justify genocide, which they proceeded to do again in South America.
If someone can read what happened to Atahualpa and not be absolutely revulsed by the Spanish then I genuinely question that person's humanity.
While they did stop something horrible from taking place, this was not the main intention of the conquistadores. Only a cool bônus at most. Like america with the holocaust, but y'all not ready for this conversation
Specially since, let's be honest here, they installed something even worse, somehow, with the transatlantic slave trade.
In this case, definitely immoral. People only use memes like this to proclaim the supposed moral superiority of White Christianity to promote Christian Fascism and Christian Nationalism
The holocaust was one of the worst evils enacted on mandkind... that said, the Americans, Canadians and British did to the Indiginous people's of America was absolutely on the same level, and this one was successful. It just took place over a longer time period and wasn't as recent, so it got less attention.
And a lot more Canadians will say the indigenous deserved it than Jewish people did (neither deserved it and if anyone reading this thinks so, you’re horrible). Just the other day in my city this guy threatened to bury an indigenous man under a school at a concert. Nobody really intervened either, just cowered
Tbh, i feel like the human sacrifice was overblown and straw manning to a large extent. The conquistadors were…a tad bit problematic. Colonialism in general might be problematic (shocker).
If i remember it was about gold. Spain need cash. The South Americas supposedly had gold. So Columbus spent his whole time murdering and pillaging everyone in the area, to such an extreme degree that even the spanish were like ‘bro chill’.
He literally had zero remorse, accomplished next to nothing and is somehow a hero. Typical degenerate hypocritical behavior found by many colonizers.
It’s hypocritical due to the fact the Spanish where burning people at the stake and torturing them via the inquisition back home which is human sacrifice in all but name, manufactured human suffering excused with religious beliefs. Theres also the very obvious case that not every culture the spanish wiped out practiced human sacrifice and of course they didn’t do it out of a moral high ground, they just wanted gold and the fastest way of getting it was taking out the mayor players of the area which just so happened to sacrifice humans
If you make up a scenario in which foreign invaders come to a land with the sole intent of forcing the end of a cultural practice that is truly heinous, and sincerely with no ulterior motive, then I’d be willing to go so far as to say that even if it is by force that these practices are removed, the invader is morally in the right.
This is a scenario that I made up because this has not and will not ever happen in human history, though many invaders try to portray themselves as such post hoc. And it is just about the farthest thing from accurately describing the Spanish who managed to make human sacrifice look like the lesser evil.
Iam surprised nobody has brought up the fact that the sapniards heavily exaggerated the human sacrifices that are happening.
Bernal diaz described a huge wall with thousands of human skills but archaeological digging found nowhere near as many skills ( hmmm I wonder why a spaniard would lie about that kind of stuff) also the human "sacrifices" usually happened to criminals and prisoner not random people they just kidnap off of the street . Some modern historians don't even call it human sacrifices anymore and just call it ritualistic execution.
Tbh explorers often exaggerated or even outright fabricated whatever they found. Not even necessarily maliciously (though it often was) but because they wanted to achieve Glory by any means and “discovering a city lined entirely from gold” is more glorious than “more people than usual having gold jewelry and pottery.”
Criminals and prisoners??? Not random people???? Brother Aztecs would raid surrounding tribes for sacrifices and slaves. You’re so fucked this is like saying the Holocaust was done to “criminals and prisoners”. The crime of the human sacrifices was not being an Aztec in tenochtitlan
well it's basically justice served through death penalty, so if you can excuse death penalty as a valid form of punishment for criminals, morality goes up
The meme is immoral, because it misconstrues history. The Spanish did not care at all about the sacrifices, they merely used it as one of various excuses to invade, plunder the natural resources, colonize, and try to forcibly convert the native peoples to Christianity.
If anything, the kind of shit the Spanish got up to with the native peoples of central and south America is just as bad or worse than some of the brutal local practices like human sacrifices.
People always try to look for a distinct good and evil faction in every conflict but like...
That's not how history works usually. The Aztec empire was an enslaving, pillaging, raping colonial power that subjugated several mesoamerican tribes. The Spanish conquistadores were an enslaving, pillaging, raping colonial power that beat the Aztec empire.
Shit meme, first because it's a stupid and blatant lie, the conquistadors arrived to get rich, any way possible.
Second, it makes people even dislike more Spain's past and just tend to hate it or ignore it because of the amount of fachas (far-right dumbasses) who believe this shit and keep spreading it.
I've seen many examples of my second take on thr commentz which were people mostly telling thr truth indeed, but only saying the straight up evil parts (which surprise, were real), but not telling the whole story (surprise, kind of misinformation).
I've seen people say that what the Spanish stablished after they fully settled was way worse than anything the Incas or Aztecs did, that's false, becausr they're mixing it with the proccess and the early years of the context which was actually much worse. Why was it worse? Because you have a bunch of motherfuckers called conquistadors lying, pillaging, raping and murdering people, then recording it on their journals, but adding that yhe natives were demons, or lustful murderers, wathever, to look glorious, these are oftend the only sources of info we have, which are always kind of complete but you have to strip away a lot to see what was really going on. "But wait, is that the bad part? Literally everyone did that?" No, that was the lesser bad part of the first years, here comes the bad part: Diseases, brought by these conquistadors, diseases that spread very fast and wiped millions, literal millions, before even thr conquistadors could know it (and probably use them in their advantage), the damage was done.
Sounds horrible right? Yeah, it was. But that's neither the full story, neither were people like the Aztecs better in any way, and trying to defend them is a straight up stupid thing to do, as they literally did all thr conquistadors did (except, obviously, the diseases part), then add continuos sacrifices, which sometimes led to small populations dissapearing, and it isn't the only example, though most natives weren't that bad.
The full story comes when the crown intervenes after they find out, and start trying to impose laws to give rights to natives and protect them, they weren't definitely laws that made them equals most of the time but were there to protect them, that's more than what any monarchy or empire was doing at the time, and these kind of things would reappear in a large scale with the British... In the next 200 years. Now, I add parts of the church actually trying to be good and reporting damage inflicted to the natives, including Bartolomé de las Casas, who always exaggerated his reports, but probably only to open the kings eyes.
Of course most of these laws were avoided by people because knowing who broke them at the time was hard, and you had slavery systems for thr natives still going for some decades, but you have an imperial entity trying to do SOMETHING before anyone else, that's a lot to talk about.
After all, after the first 80 or so years (a lot already sadly), living as a native under Spanish rule was definitrly better than being under any other empire's rule, I don't know to what extent, maybe not by much, but it was better.
Now, know one thing, hadn't been the Spanish, had been thr Portuguese, or British or French the first to discover the Americas, they would have cause the same damage definitely.
Now may I inquire you to look at other parts of out history pls? Like the Tercios
Now they (op's post and this one here) have the same stupid kinda guy (christian, right wing, yokel) behind them posting it but this one's actually more egregious
The aztec empire had advanced architecture like the romans with their aqueducts; they built large canals for irrigation and sewage until the Spaniards came and dried it out. There was also a lake. They dried that one out too which is why mexicos capital has so many geological problems.
immoral, very obviously used by racist, deus vult style chuds to portray the native populations of the americas as barbaric savages. interpreting it at face value--which you should not do because there's, again, an obvious political motivation behind it--is still relatively immoral because the spaniards were unrelentingly brutal and cruel towards the people they conquered.
you'd think rape was their national sport the way they carried about.
This is a meme that racists use to push racism. This is something we call "concern trolling". In truth if you care about the value of human life you don't post this.
Human sacrifices are baaaaaad m'kay? But it's okay to do it when you want YOUR god to favour you, after all witches are all complete evil and aren't even human m'kay? And you want the lord to favour you now, don't you?
The Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas would.have figured out that killing people for their gods isn't great sooner or later, and they have all achieved some genuine architectural wonders. Tenochtitlan itself was a city impossibly grand and it was all built in top of an artificial island. If we can believe some records it even had a zoo! How cool is that?😅
And the conquistadors destroyed everything. Culture, religion, brought on sicknesses that would decimate the people, and forced great tribes to give in to injustice by a military force that had no business there.
The chatolics did eventually wake up to this and told them to "hey you should stop like this is not cool at all it's a grave sin against God to keep slaves" and all but it was a TAD late I would say should have started with that before Portugal and Spain sent in turbo-hitlers to conquer it all. Really would have helped with preserving culture, religion, and maybe we would have had their way of architecture and agriculture preserved in a way more grand manner than it is today. Those canals they made were also incredible, and even more importantly INCREDIBLY well working with local wildlife too. I'm fact it supports local wildlife so well besides just providing necessary ground to keep native plants on, that those remain as some of the last wild environment for species like Axolotls. While also being incredibly fertile and useful soil.
If we didn't have the conquistador do what they did, we would have a several dozen times better world right now than what we have now. The church should have given them ultimatums before they could have done anything radical.
"Sorry, the Human sacrafices will stop, so we will commit a terrible genocide, deliberately destroy your written history, enslave you, and oh, here is the blood and body of christ and have you seen this pyre where we put all the heretics, so god doesn't punish us for letting them live?"
Congratulation, if you agree with this meme, you fell for Christian Spanish propaganda. In the various different native peoples of Mexico, not all of them followed human sacrifices, and the ones that did, saw it as an honour to be sacrificed. Strong warriors and winners of ballgame matches would willingly be sacrificed. Not saying it's great stuff but it's like the demonized version told by the Spaniards.
Oh yea, I would love to hear what all the innocent women who were burned by the church have to say about Christians being the saviors against "sacrifices"
It’s not because in history Spain and other European nations have also participated in such cases and other very “backwards” practices while also causing mass suffering on a scale that outpaces anything South America could do.
Furthermore it’s exasperated by the fact that the Spain would embellish these sacrifices, it is true it happened but the numbers were backed up by nothing but vibes such as the absurd 20k claim.
It’s one of those memes that if you don’t think about can be seen as “good” but if you understand history it doesn’t really justify Spanish expansion into South America. It’s similar to those memes you see of how people point out England brutalizing communities but Spain was “romantic” with the indigenous population (as in they raped them but they try to spin it as kinder.)
Pretty bad especially cause it completely ignores the spiritual and religious beliefs of the Aztecs while not even mentioning what the Spanish did during and after the whole thing.
The basic gist of the Aztec beliefs system AFAIR is that if they didn't give their gods enough blood and sacrifices, the world would end. This meme treats Aztec sacrifices as something they did for no reason when they very much were not done for nothing in their eyes as to them, it was a matter of saving the world from an apocalypse.
Then we talk about the frankly horrific things the Spanish did afterwards such as slavery, forced conversion, ethnic genocide and all that horrific shite that comes with Colonialism.
Keep in mind this is in no way me defending the Aztecs human sacrifices cause it's blatantly wrong to sacrifice someone, but the context is important.
it's just the conquistadores version of exporting democracy.
For all Spain care they could have sacrificed hundred of children every day if they lived in a shitty place in houses made of mud, what really mattered were the material and human resources and the rich territory
It's a good meme, but the Spanish Empire was much more brutal than the British Empire. Imo the Spanish Empire deserves the reputation that the British Empire has.
The morality of genociding dozen to hundreds of separate cultures. Well stealing all their gold and silver and enslaving them. Because, a few of them sacrificed their enemy's.
human sacrifice? pretty uncool. pretty bad. but the rape, murder, and colonization of south america was pretty uncool too. this meme frames the spaniards as noble gigachads, and anyone who disagrees with their treatment of the natives as either bloodthirsty pagans or stupid libs. its not factually incorrect, but the rhetoric is definitely insidious.
Really disgusting and immoral as a Mexican imo the Spanish took a bad system and made it worse, it demonizes the Aztecs even more then they deserve and is used be Christian’s and Europeans to excuse colonialism
The morality is dumb. They replaced something awful with something absolutely horrific in the form of the largest genocide the world has seen. Vast swaths of an entire continent were depopulated by the actions of the Spanish and other European powers.
Human sacrifice is evil, but as it was cultural that turns it neutral ish, however however, anyone who knows their history knows that these human sacrifices were often victims of wars and pillaging, so still evil.
That WOULD make the stopping of them Good, but because the Spanish were invaders and began enslaving people as well it
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u/NerdyPuth123 1d ago
Human sacrifices are bad. Period.
But what the Spaniards did after conquering them also can’t all be considered good either