Hernán Cortes

Corocotta

Corocotta

Active member
I am reading the biography of Hernán Cortes, the spanish militar that conqueor Mexico in the XVI century(1519-1521).
He was an awsome strategic. He just used 450 soldiers and 13 horses to do this, with the colaboration of some tribes.

What do you know about mexico´s conqueor? What is your opinion?
What are the consecuences for you of this epopeya?
 
He has got a bum rap by the ivory tower college intellectuals because they only look at the brutalities he commited and go "omg he is lik sooooooo evil, lik HITLER, omg"

God I hate college.
 
He did kill many people, that´s for sure. But the most incredible part of the history is that he used 450 men to conqueor a all country. he used the diferences that existed betewen all the tribes in order to put each of them against the other.
 
Didn't you see those pics of that one spanish monk that went to the americas and saw all the slavery and destruction done by the spanish to the natives? They're done in a crude kind of drawing style but depict indians with smallpox which wiped out a good portion of their race. Eventually there were more livestock than natives in the americas.
 
Yes, I did read many things that "De Las Casas" (thats the name of the monk) wrote.
I never said that the spaniards weren´t mean with the indians many times, they were, and a lot.
As you said many indians died due to the disieses that the spaniard brought with them,they did not have their inmunity sistem used to this virus, bacterias...
The spaniards had a couple of misions there:

-Get new territories for the spanish emperator Carlos V.

-Get gold for the spanish empire.

-Expansion of the true faith, and savind the indians from idolatry.
 
In spanish its called "Viruela", I didn´t know the name in english.


Some time ago i read this rumor: the muslims went to America before the spaniards, in the IX century, it sounds wiard to me...Have any of you heard about this? Some Muslim historicians are talking a lot about this rigth now. But i just do not belive it...why there are no inscriptions, probes......?
 
In spanish its called "Viruela",
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Oh sorry, i thought smallpox was the same in spanish.

It's true that the spanish unitentionally brought the disease, but they did seem a good job of spreading it, i think they even gave diseased clothes to natives to wipe out pockets of people.

BTW, is there any animosity between latin america and spain, i read in a national geographic that mexico and other countries don't get along with spain.
 
WarMachine said:
but they did seem a good job of spreading it, i think they even gave diseased clothes to natives to wipe out pockets of people.
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There is only one instance that I am aware of this happening and it was perpetrated by a colonial British officer.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this act has been blown up, mythicised, and incorporated into the 90s indoctrination of White American guilt.
 
I know some white man did that to the indians at one point, but you might as well throw them all into the same group. I mean which colonial power didn't screw the indians.
 
I don't know that they understood enough about the transmission of disease to have any control over it in terms of using it as a weapon.

It's fairly well accepted that the Swine Flu epidemic started in the trenches in France, and was brought back to home countries when the troops returned from WWI.At the time they had little idea of what they were doing.

Another viral outbreak took place in a later war. We are very lucky it was self limiting.
 
WarMachine said:
In spanish its called "Viruela",
Click to expand...

Oh sorry, i thought smallpox was the same in spanish.

It's true that the spanish unitentionally brought the disease, but they did seem a good job of spreading it, i think they even gave diseased clothes to natives to wipe out pockets of people.

BTW, is there any animosity between latin america and spain, i read in a national geographic that mexico and other countries don't get along with spain.
Click to expand...

Well, I do not think that the spaniards spread the disease intentionally. That behaivor wouldn´t have been very intelligent..they probably didn´t know the cause-effect btw using infected closes and the disease..The probably relationated the disease with a punishment of god...We can´t see this facts with our mentality...

The porpouse of spaniards was to annex the aztec empire to the spanish empire. They just used violance when the indians didn´t accept their peace offers and when they did not renounced to human sacrifices and canibalism(aztecs usually practised human sacrifices as a gift to Bichilobo, and they also had the habit of eateing their prisioners;in the mentality of a XVI century Catolic conqueor this was unnanceptable, they thought that aztecs prayed to devil...) and this cases they could be really mean.But if they accepted their peace offers they actually acted like brothers, for example with Cempoal kingdom.
 
Oops, sorry, i forgot your second question...yes, there is animosity some times, but i would call it in better terms a love-hate relation...Spain has good relations with all Latin America, we invert a lot of money there, there a lot of spanish companies, a lof of spanish peole live there( and there never have been agressions to them), we send a lot of humanitarian help, we have the same language, the same religion,....I think we consider our selfs as brothers. A lot of people in South America has spanish blood!!
 
I know Spain has invested a large amount of money in Cuba. So have several other countries: Canada, France, Germany, etc.

But I agree, Spain has essentially excellent international relations throughout their former American colonies.
 
Zucchini said:
I know Spain has invested a large amount of money in Cuba. So have several other countries: Canada, France, Germany, etc.

But I agree, Spain has essentially excellent international relations throughout their former American colonies.
Click to expand...

Actually Cuba is where less money have been inverted, at least during the period 1990-2003.
The countries with more inversions are: Brasil(40.000 million euros), Argentina,Chile, Perú,México and Venezuela(great idea of our brand new a**hole,Zapatero)

But lets get on topic.... ;)
 
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