Source:El Debate

All the violence was justified by the whites’ desire to bring civilisation to the interior of the United States.

The black legend of Spain is just that, a legend. The Anglo-Saxon peoples have created it out of their frustration at not being able to defeat Spain throughout the modern era and out of a strange mixture of fear, admiration and contempt.

Mass grave after the Wounded Knee massacre.

If anyone has a black past, it is undoubtedly the children of the British Isles. From India to the United States, Afghanistan, the Philippines and South Africa, wherever they have been they have left a sad memory of their passage.

It is surprising that Joe Biden, a direct descendant of the exterminators of the North American Indian peoples, should set himself up as judge and executioner of the Spanish heritage in America, forgetting that it is the hands of his ancestors that are stained with blood. How many times have we seen in the classic Hollywood westerns that the only good Indian was the dead Indian! The genocide of the American Indians is the most sustained massacre on record.

When the British, now Americans, began their conquest of North America, the Native American population was estimated at around 12 million. In 1900, the United States closed its borders as a result of the Indian Wars, and there were now only 300,000 to 250,000 Native Americans left. Bullets and disease wiped out the American Indians over the course of a century and a half. These wars, killings, deportations and all manner of violence were justified by the white man’s desire to bring civilisation to the interior of the United States, to obtain new land for farming and cattle, or to take over the hunting grounds of the Indian nations in order to obtain gold.

California, part of the viceroyalty of New Spain, belonged to the Spanish monarchy until 1821, became part of Mexico, then the Republic of Texas, and finally, in 1845, became part of the United States. With the arrival of the anglo-saxon Americans, the Indian population fell from 150,000 to just 15,000 in 50 years.

The trail of tears, by Robert Lindneux

In 1848 gold was discovered in California. White men set out to violate the “permanent Indian frontier”. To justify this invasion Washington politicians invented the “Manifest Destiny”. The white man had a mandate to conquer America. They were the dominant race so they owned the Indians, their land, forests, trees and mineral wealth. Only the New Englanders, who had already exterminated or driven the Indians from their lands, stood against Manifest Destiny.

The Senate voted 28 to 19 to pass the Indian Removal Act.

Defeated by the guns of the U.S. Army and the settlers, after being massacred they were deported far from their lands. In the forced exodus of the Cherokee to present-day Oklahoma 4,000 died of cold, hunger, and all manner of hardships on what has gone down in history as the Trail of Tears. In the Wild West, 50 pounds was paid for an Indian scalp, 25 for a woman’s and 20 for a child. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced the deportation of five major tribes; Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole. Nobody cared until Dances with Wolves hit the cinemas.

American Indians were banned from their religions under civilising regulations until 1936. In 1924 they were granted American citizenship as a reward for their combat participation in the First World War.

American textbooks today tell the story of a virtuous nation with a proud past and an enviable future that fought to free the black slaves and opposed the Vietnam War. It is all a lie.

In the United States, there is only a little less than 1% indigenous or mestizo population, in Canada 4%, while in Honduras it is 96%, in Bolivia 88%, in Mexico and Peru 85% and in Nicaragua and Guatemala 82%. No comment.

Nowadays it is fashionable to pick on the Spanish colonisation because kicking a man when he’s down is free and makes one forget one’s own sins. Today the 565 tribes have a total of 2.5 million members, of whom just over 1 million still live on reservations, surrounded by 330 million Americans. All the tribes lost the lands of their ancestors more than a century ago, which were forcibly taken from them by the white man, Joe Biden’s great-grandparents.