You should read about the Spanish missions and their treatment of the native people on the west coast. But also the Mexicans weren’t innocent of things either. They were constantly having political violence and even voluntarily returned monarchies. (yes plural)
Comment on So, is the USA screwed?
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 3 days agoWhat if this is karma for invading and taking half of Mexico? There weren’t slavers or shittier-that-usual people in the region before that.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 days ago
TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub 2 days ago
As. Mexican, I agree with you. The conquistadores weren’t people of the highest caliber, and while the catholic monks were better, their mission was evangelizing at any cost, even if it meant killing people who didn’t want to. Even prehispanic people could be brutal.
The main difference between colonial Mexico and USA was that slavery wasn’t a thing here, because the evangelized became full-fledged catholics, having a would and all. Something unthinkable for the slavers, who justified their acts because blacks “didn’t have souls”.
Mexican creoles, the hacendados, found a loophole: Catholics could still be exploited by crushing, multigenerational debt. That’s why we had a century of turmoil after the revolution(s), right after the century of turmoil after our independence from Spain.
Guess my point is: by the time USA invaded and forcefully took half our country, we didn’t have slavers (the hacendado’s loophole was gone), and definitely didn’t trade humans as things.
Maggoty@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah that’s true. The American South was exceptionally evil. I don’t think we’ve ever properly processed that as a country.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I mean, if the united states is getting karma for invading and annexing other peoples land, SURELY you’d think there would have been some repercussions from Native Americans, right? Hell, even Canada arguably has some leeway to give us karma if that’s the case.
And Hawaii.
And technically Puerto Rico, and the Somoa Islands, and Guam.
Even though Vietnam isn’t, nor has it ever been a US territory, they still know what it’s like to be invaded by us. We were never trying to take land for ourselves, but we WERE trying to take land for our cold war ally. We just failed is all. And yet…for everybody reading this from a country that ISN’T America, here’s the weird thing. In our schools, they teach vietnam in history as if WE WON. Which I assume the rest of the world easily see’s how absurd that is. Here in America? There are PLENTY of people who think we’ve never lost a war. There are people who defend the 2001-2020 invasion of multiple middle eastern countries as a war we won. Some of them think it was multiple wars in a short amount of time we won. Others think it was one continuous war that we won. But those people exist. I’ve met many of them.
Now, with all that said, NOBODY calls them freedom fries. Nobody. Never even heard of a single person who calls them that. It was a 2 week thing on tv, and then everybody just shrugged and called it stupid. Which is exactly what I’m hoping this whole gulf of america/mexico thing is. Just political theater, and then it’s over because it’s stupid.