Source:ABC

The negative image about the Hispanic has its roots in the world hegemony of the Spanish Empire. Even its downfall as a great power was accompanied by a large propaganda campaign against it.

In the United States, they do not remember the war against Spain in 1898. The oldest thing is ten years old”, reads one of the most popular quotes from the humorist Woody Allen. But the truth is that the black legend against everything Spanish was present until well into the 20th century – when other enemies absorbed the American interest – precisely because of the 1898 war. The military disaster starring the remains of the Spanish Empire facing the emerging American army was firmly supported by a propaganda campaign that renewed the bad image of the Spaniards worldwide.

As it would later be the case with the Germans, the Japanese, and the Communists, the Spanish became the recurring enemies of the United States even in the movies. In the film “The Sea Hawk” (1940), Felipe II is portrayed as a fascist tyrant who contemplates a huge map of the world and plans the invasion of England. His dark style is a direct reference to the new enemy of England and the US at the time: Adolf Hitler.

Spain, which had been an important supporter of the 13 Colonies during the American War of Independence against the English (at the risk of creating a bad precedent in the Spanish territories of America, as in fact happened), became the main enemy of the United States in the late 19th century. The enlightened and liberal ideas that had entered the United States in the eighteenth century were added to their sympathies for the new rising republics in the South, increasing the anti-Spanish sentiment. Taking advantage of the growth of the independence movement in Cuba, the United States interfered in the conflict with a doubtful, if not invented, casus belli to seize the last Spanish overseas territories.

The wreck of the USS Maine in 1898

The wreck of the USS Maine in 1898

The escalation of mistrust between the governments of the United States and Spain was on the rise, while in the press of both countries there were strong smear campaigns against the adversary. In this way, the sinking in Havanna of the American second-class battleship Maine, sent basically to intimidate Spain, was used by the William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers, today the Hearst Group, one of the main media empires in the world, to convince the public opinion of Spain’s guilt and the need to start a war against this country.

With the war cry “Remember the Maine, to Hell with Spain!”, the Americans destroyed the Spanish forces. In addition to granting the independence of Cuba, which would take place in 1902, Spain had to cede the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. However, the long-term consequences were even more damaging for the Hispanic interests: the United States collected, renewed, and amplified the Spanish black legend. Therefore, the negative view of our country, which had its genesis in the Dutch, French and English propaganda spilled during the imperial period, was elevated to the degree of historical narrative with the rise of the powers that had rivaled the Hispanic Monarchy for the rule of Europe, and later, the most prominent heir of these.

“Nothing was left but the Spaniards; that is to say, indolence, pride, cruelty, and infinite superstition. This way Spain destroyed all freedom of thought through the inquisition, and for many years the sky was livid with the flames of the autos-da-fé; Spain was busy carrying firewood to the feet of philosophy, busy burning people for thinking, for researching, for expressing honest opinions. The result was that great darkness covered Spain, crossed by no stars and illuminated by no rising sun”, stated the North American politician Robert Green Ingersoll in the years before the Cuban War. The Anglo-Saxon phobia against the Spanish was assumed by the United States, including all its lies and exaggerations.

Biased school books

The North American historian Philip Powell (California, 1913-1987) was one of the first to analyze this campaign against the Spanish in his work “The Black Legend. An invention against Spain”:

“The scale of the anti-Spain heroes extends from Francis Drake to Theodore Roosevelt; from William “The Taciturn” to Harry Truman; from Bartolomé de Las Casas to the Mexican Lázaro Cárdenas, or from the Puritans of Oliver Cromwell to the communists of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade – from the romantic to the prosaic, and from the almost sublime to the absolutely ridiculous. There is much less distance in concept than there is in time between the Anglo-Dutch hatred of Felipe II and its echoes in today’s university classrooms; between the anti-Spain of the Enlightenment and the anti-Spain of so many intellectual circles nowadays”.

To the political matters, it was necessary to add the religious component. “The propaganda deformation of Spain and Hispanic America, of its people and of most of its works, has long since merged with the dogmatic anti-Catholicism. This twisted mixture endures in popular literature and traditional prejudices, and continues to support our Nordic superiority complex to sow confusion in the historical perspectives of Latin America (sic) and the United States”, explains Philip Powell in the aforementioned book.

As a sign of these prejudices, in 1916, about 40 Protestant churches met in Panama to organize a religious offensive against the decadent and idolatrous character of Catholicism. The false belief that Protestants were superior to Catholics – something that was justified in the rise of the English Empire at the time it displaced the Spanish – resulted in a racist doctrine that placed Anglo-Saxons at the top of the evolutionary scale.

The economy seemed to agree with them. For the economist Max Weber, Protestants represent the “spirit of modern capitalism”, characterized by the rational pursuit of profit through a freely chosen profession. It was not until the middle of the 20th century, that this proclaimed superiority of the Protestant and Anglo-Saxon world over Catholicism and the Latin peoples started to be refuted. As late as 1980 a think tank, “The Council for Inter-American Security”, produced several well-known documents in which they questioned the ability of the Catholic Church to resist the advance of Marxism-Leninism.

Satirical drawing published in 1896 in the Catalan newspaper La Campana de Gràcia, criticizing the attitude of the United States towards Cuba.

Satirical drawing published in 1896 in the Catalan newspaper La Campana de Gràcia, criticizing the attitude of the United States towards Cuba.

As happened to England before, the prospect that the legacy of its empire would end up as deformed as the Spanish has made the United States begin to look at the history of Spain with a less severe look after World War II. “No one who reads the newspapers can doubt that the nations of the world are compiling a new Black Legend, nor that the United States has enjoyed world power; like Spain, they have allowed themselves to take self-criticism to the extreme; and, in the end, their fate may be the same”, affirms the Hispanist William S. Maltby in his book “The Black Legend in England” (1969).

The anti-Spanish bias of numerous North American educational materials, which went as far as being caricatures, have been progressively corrected, among other reasons due to the increasing Hispanic influence in the United States. The Spanish past of many North American states, as in the case of California, Florida, or Texas is being slowly recalled in recent years.

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On This Day

1556 Felipe II is crowned king of Spain in Valladolid.
1844 The Duke of Ahumada creates the Guardia Civil.
1899 Marconi establishes communication between the two sides of the English Channel.
1939 Spanish Civil War: General Franco enters Madrid victorious.
1979 Nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island power station (Pennsylvania).

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