History is full of dark pages.
After the Italian Explorer Christopher Columbus discovered America, in his footsteps followed many other discoverers. Who would have thought, looking at the current Spain, and especially Portugal, where it was two powerful colonial Empire. All the huge Brazil was Portuguese.
Spain has established in the Latin continent, the Spanish-speaking world. In their methods the latter-day owners of these lands did not stand on ceremony with the indigenous population. But many centuries they lived in separate tribes and Nations, developing their own institutions of power, social structure and culture. Someone led a primitive way of life, and someone managed to achieve relatively high indicators in development. But it was broken, destroyed, burned and rebuilt in their own way conquerors.
Surely, You have heard about the Maya, especially before the announced end of the world in December 2012, which is calculated from the calendar of this ancient people. The capital of the Maya, their Central place of settlement was the yucatán Peninsula. The Mayan people were not backward, they have been continuously cultivate land, engaged in Handicrafts, trade, and even science and art. They even had a written language in hieroglyphic form. For the neighbouring tribes – almetov, Zapotec, totonac – Mayan state was a model and an example of a public organization.
In Central Mexico the fifteenth century, the Aztecs lived, but to them, these territories were inhabited by more ancient civilization sites Indian. The Aztec people had made progress in agriculture, construction and trade spheres. Believe it or not, if You are persuaded that Latin America lived a stupid uneducated wild people. The who says it will is likely to have a Portuguese or Spanish passport, justifying their ancestors. After this they were the true savages.
Being familiar with the latest achievements of his time, in the period when Europe began the Renaissance, with fire and sword, these “civilized Europeans” have established their order. They tried to convince their governments and many people that aboriginal people are downtrodden, that it is the barbarians who want to destroy or enslave. But the Aztecs have left behind many monuments of architecture and even sculpture. They have created a solar calendar. Their writing was in its infancy, and they gradually passed to the social order on the basis of different classes.
In the heart of the Andean mountains were occupied by peoples of Quechua and Aymara with a high level of spiritual culture. At the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they conquered the Incas and formed their own state, whose capital was the city of Cusco. The Quechua language was given official status in the new country.
The Indian tribes of the Zuni, tango, according to hosty, and the Keres, who were called the tribes of the Pueblo, lived near the rivers Colorado and Rio Grande del Norte. There were peoples, for example, the Guarani, the arawaks and the Caribs, who lived in the Amazon and Orinoco. Many different tribes inhabited the South American continent. Someone is lucky more, and they managed to escape and survive, fell under the rule a more loyal owners. And someone destroyed almost completely, leaving no chance for survival.
It drama a world-scale still raises questions. How is it that for such hypocrisy, when men acted under the cover of the official Catholic Church, and carrying with them not salvation, and death to local residents. After all, the world today would look very different, more multifaceted and diverse. We often talk about the victims of the world wars, about the victims on the European continent. But people, be they of different skin color, eye shape or more for some features – in fact, all the same, we all have a mind, heart and soul.
The name of Christopher Columbus to the Europeans has become a synonym of progress, of discovery. But for the indigenous Latin American residents, on the contrary, this name is a reminder of all the mess that was experienced by their ancestors after the discovery of their continent. Later, the Spanish-Portuguese rule was replaced by the Anglo-French. The country produced a redistribution of territory, guided by the ancient Roman principle: divide and conquer. In the early nineteenth century, Latin America will cast off the 300 years of the shackles of the colony. But even still, after many centuries, the damage done to the first colonizers felt and not forgotten.
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