I appreciate your trying to convey well sourced information, but it is all for not. I missed any mention in that of the Taino which some estimate over seven million were killed. The conquistadors were professional warriors, who went out to conquer, hence the name as already mentioned. Ultimately however, time is the ultimate proof. Latin American countries are “third world” or very close to it in most cases. The Spanish Catholic experiment was a failure in comparison.
I would argue that you are also very wrong in your assertion of cause and effect in America as regarding the founding fathers. You convey an idea that seems to be popular, if not horribly misguided and intellectually dishonest, that somehow the founding fathers suddenly were spawned out of a vacuum, or a sea of darkness, and just happened to be solely responsible for the greatness that is America. Hogwash!! The development of every idea in the founding documents of America is directly traceable to through previous historic documents in America and more importantly through America’s pulpits carrying on the ideas of the reformation. There are books that deal with this in detail. John Calvin may be more responsible for what America is than any other man.
Similarly trying to extract Latin America’s current situation away from its foundational history is equally a mistake. They didn’t just happen to fall into the hands of corrupt politicians. From the very start everything in Catholic Spanish America was different, and it still is today.
You show, as usual, that for some people prejudices sometimes are more powerful than facts. Cuba in 1959, the biggest of the Antilles Islands, had 6.5 million inhabitants. The Caribbean islands could not sustain 7 million inhabitants in 1492. Scholars on the mater asserted that an indigenous population of less than a million for all of the Caribbean would still be a relatively dense population, given the technology and resources of the region in the late fifteenth century. Probably one-half of these inhabitants would have been on the large island of Hispaniola, about 50,000 in Cuba, and far fewer than that in Jamaica. Puerto Rico, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and Trinidad all had fairly concentrated, if not large, populations.
Most of the deaths of the Indians were the result of deceases, specially the smallpox, for which then Aborigines of America did not have antibodies. Naturally, your knowledge in this matter is as limited as is biased. The Spaniards brought together with the Churches and the Gospel, schools and hospitals where Indians and Blacks were treated as well as the Spaniards. Catholic Spain established public education in America 300 years before the English did it in its territories.
In 1597 the first hospital opened in what is now the United States in Florida, which at the time was part of the Spanish dominions. In it both Indians and Blacks were treated alike with the Spaniards. “When the nineteenth century opened, there were only three medical schools in the United States, and only two general hospitals. There were at that time at least eight hospitals in the city of Mexico alone. Two of them, the San Andrés and the Hospital Real of Indians, were large. The San Andrés had 400 beds, all endowed, while the Indian Hospital cared for 350 to 400 patients. In a severe epidemic it cared for over 8,000. Humboldt gave the number of beds available as 1,100 in 1803.” (Historian Francis Kelly)
Even the poor in Hispanic America fared better than some of the peasants in Europe... “Lima, Peru, in colonial days had more hospitals than churches and averaged one hospital bed for every 101 persons, a considerably better average than Los Angels (California) has today.” (Salvador de Madariaga)
Dr. Philip Wayne Powell, Emeritus Professor of history at the University of California, in his research on the “Black Legend” titled the “Tree of Hate”, (a book that every Hispanist should read) asserts that the study of 16th century Europe clearly reveals the universal pattern of cruelty, intolerance, and inhumanity which characterized the social, religious, and economic life throughout the continent...Examples of this were the reigns of Elizabeth I of England and her successor James I which were known for their most barbarous cruelty. However, Dr. Powell affirms “that the Spain of the conquest period was a deeply civilized nation by all discernible European standards of that day, ...In jurisprudence, diplomacy, monarchical, religious and imperial concepts, and total culture, Spain was a European leader throughout the sixteen century and in much of the next.”
As Dr. Powell points out, as soon as it was available, “an enlightened Spanish government sponsored very early use of vaccination against smallpox, precisely because the disease was so dangerous to the Indian population.” The Spanish crown ordered a massive vaccination campaign of natives of America and Philippines. Along with the gospel, the Spaniards brought the western medical knowledge to America. There was never any attempt of genocide of the Indians on behalf of the Crown, to the contrary. As historian Salvador de Madariaga indicates, “the Spanish Crown constantly reiterated its paramount interest in the natives, this has been a constant feature of the regime, even in its worst days and in the worst governed parts.”
Alexander Von Humbolt, the famous Protestant naturalist who visited most this Continent mentions: “not only has the number of natives increased for a century, but also New Spain is now more inhabited in 1803 than before the arrival of the Europeans...between 1752 and 1802, in New Spain, the ratio of birth to death stood as 170 to 100, despite a number of torrid-zone plagues; for the cold or temperate part of New Spain the ratio of births to deaths was of 190 and even 200 to 100...The increase of population was simply due, says Humboldt, to an increase in prosperity.”
Dr. Powell “rightfully urges our acknowledged experts and scholars in all matters Hispanic should conduct a much more thorough assessment than heretofore of our errors or, perhaps worse yet, the partial truths, in our education about Hispanic peoples and countries. All that is required, and all that should be demanded, is accuracy of facts, elimination of invidiously erroneous comparisons, and sophisticated historical perspectives.”
According to Dr. Powell, “the American students find it disconcerting when they learn that in the Spanish American lands of Catholicism and Inquisition, a sophisticated European culture flourished, almost from the moment of the Conquest itself. This included everything from complex municipal and regional government, vast projects for Christianizing (i.e. Europeanization), and protection of even the most savage aborigines, to encouragement and successful establishment of all kinds of schools and universities, hospitals, and the production of scholars and a very respectable literature-a far more exciting and plentiful literature, by the way, than colonial English-America produced. This is to say nothing of economic and commercial activities on the grand scale. Students are invariable surprised to learn that, for all its weakness, the general system and aim was that of ‘ennoblement’ (ennoblecer) rather than destruction.”
You are crediting the books by John Calvin for what America is today more so than the contribution of any other man. That is pure hogwash and denotes how close minded and fanatic you are.
Calvin, the brutal tyrant of Geneva, burned alive those who dissented from his theological views, among them, Michael Servetus, the famous Spanish theologian and physician who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood.
The TRUTH about JOHN CALVIN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gD0AHBQI4WI