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Are all civilizations and
cultures equal, or are some more equal than others?
As the
Democratic Party quarrels over reparations for slavery, a new and related issue
has arisen, raised by the president of Mexico.
Andres
Manuel Lopez Obrador has written Pope Francis I and King Felipe VI to demand
their apologies for the Spanish conquest of Mexico that began 500 years ago
with the “invasion” of Hernando Cortez.
Arriving
on the Gulf Coast in 1519, Cortes marched in two years to what is today’s
Mexico City to impose Spanish rule, the Spanish language and culture, and the
Catholic faith upon the indigenous peoples.
“One
culture, one civilization was imposed upon another,” wrote President Lopez
Obrador: “There were massacres and oppression. The so-called conquest was waged
with the sword and the cross. They built their churches on top of the temples.”
He
demanded that the king and the pope ask for “forgiveness for the abuses
inflicted on the indigenous peoples of Mexico.”
Now no one
denies that great sins and crimes were committed in that conquest. But are not
the Mexican people, 130 million of them, far better off because the Spanish
came and overthrew the Aztec Empire?
Did not
300 years of Spanish rule and replacement of Mexico’s pagan cults with the
Catholic faith lead to enormous advances for its civilization and human rights?
Or is
there never a justification for one nation to invade another, conquer its
people, impose its rule, and uproot and replace its culture and civilization?
Is “cultural genocide” always a crime against humanity, even if the uprooted
culture countenanced human sacrifice?
Did the
Aztecs have a right to be left alone by the European world?
If so,
whence came that right?
Which
leads to another question: Are all civilizations and cultures equal, or are
some more equal than others? Are some superior?
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Before
recent decades, most Americans were taught to believe the West stood above all
other civilizations, and America was its supreme manifestation. And much of the
world seemed to agree.
As for the
assertion that all civilizations and cultures are equal, that is an ideological
statement. But where is the historic, scientific or empirical evidence to
support that proposition? How many people really believe that?
Spain’s
Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said it was “weird to receive now this request
for an apology for events that occurred 500 years ago.”
He
wondered if Spain should seek an apology from France for the invasion of the
Iberian Peninsula and crimes committed by the armies of Napoleon, or if France
could demand an apology from Italy for the invasion of Gaul by Julius Caesar?
Unlikely
to get an apology from the king, Lopez Obrador may do better with Pope Francis
who is into begging for forgiveness for crimes committed in the
Spanish-Portuguese conquest and rule of South America.
In Bolivia
in 2015, the pope declared:
“I say
this to you with regret. Many grave sins were committed against the native
people of America in the name of God. … I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for
the offense of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the
native people during the so-called conquest of America.”
As The New
York Times related in its story on the “chilly response” in Madrid to Mexico’s
demand, other Western leaders — not only Barack Obama — are very much into this
apology fad.
Justin
Trudeau has apologized for Canada’s mistreatment of its indigenous peoples.
France’s Emmanuel Macron has apologized for the torture of rebels in Algeria’s
war for independence.
The
Spanish right, however, is not with the program.
Alberto
Rivera, leader of the Ciudadanos, called Lopez Obrador’s demand “an intolerable
offense to the Spanish people.”
Rafael
Hernando of the Popular Party dismissed it with contempt: “We Spaniards went
there (to Mexico) and ended the power of tribes that assassinated their
neighbors with cruelty and fury.”
Behind this demand for an apology from Spain and the
Church is a view of history familiar to Americans, and rooted in clashing
concepts about who we are, and were.
Have the Western peoples who conquered and changed
much of the world been, on balance, a blessing to mankind or a curse? Is the
history of the West, though replete with the failings of all civilizations, not
unique in the greatness of what it produced?
Or are the West’s crimes of imperialism, colonialism,
genocide, racism, slavery and maltreatment of minorities of color so sweeping,
hateful and shameful they cancel out the good done?
Is the white race, as Susan Sontag wrote, “the cancer
of human history”?
As we see the monuments and memorials to the great
men of our past desecrated and dragged down, the verdict among a slice of our
intellectual and cultural elites is already in. Thumbs down. They agree with
the moral shakedown artist of Mexico City.
Query: Can peoples who are ashamed of their
nation’s past do great things in its future? Or is a deep-seated national
guilt, such as that which afflicts many Germans today, a permanent
incapacitating feature of a nation’s existence?