2023-05-03 14:35:13
Gustavo Petro, President of Colombia, visited Spain on Wednesday, where he was received by the authorities with the corresponding honors, including the award of the Collar of the Order of Elizabeth the Catholic. All this hours after the Colombian recalled how important it was for his country to shake off “the Spanish yoke”: “The only way to win at that time was for the liberating army to be more powerful than the army of the yoke and it could not be done if the indigenous, the blacks, the poor, the shirtless, the worker did not enter that army ». A statement that is neither very diplomatic nor very historical. Suffice it to mention that the number of indigenous troops of the royalist side far exceeded that of the rebels in the battle of ayacucho (1824), the most decisive of the Emancipation Wars.
The statement about the ‘Spanish yoke’ It is in tune with the hegemonic and mythologized story of the Creoles who led the conflict against the Crown on behalf of the oppressed. These American-born Spaniards presented themselves as the voices and guardians of the indigenous people against the evil Spanish Empire, despite the fact that time showed that independence worsened, in most cases, the living conditions of the indigenous population and that it only a minority of the population mobilized in their support.
According to the British historian John Lynch, of Yale University, in his biography of Simón Bolívar “post-independence liberals considered the indigenous people an obstacle to national development and believed that the autonomy they had inherited from the colonial regime should be ended through their integration into the nation. In Colombia and Peru, the new legislators tried to destroy legal persons in order to liberate indigenous lands and mobilize indigenous labor.
To this was added the particular prejudices of the liberator towards the Indians. “Of all the countries, South America is perhaps the least suitable for republican governments, because its population is made up of Indians and blacks, more ignorant than the vile race of the Spaniards, from which we have just emancipated ourselves,” he noted in a correspondence with the British when the war against the royalists had already ended.
Creoles, castas, Indians and blacks they took up arms for or against the King for reasons that were not determined by their status as descendants of the conquered or the conquerors. Today, American historiography begins to recognize that it was a civil war with characteristics similar to those that were experienced at that time in the Peninsula (absolutists against liberals) and that, of course, without the American Spaniards, the Crown would have lost those lands. at the first exchange. In his book ‘Elegía criolla. A reinterpretation of the Spanish-American Wars of Independence’ (Tusquets Editores), the historian Tomás Pérez Vejo states that in order to understand what happened, the category of analysis is not that of wars of independence, nor that of revolutions:
“Some civil wars in which the Spanish did not fight against the Americans, nor the indigenous against the whites, but, basically, the Americans against the Americans, without their affiliation to one side or the other being determined by their origin, ethnic group or socio-economic group.”
a biological catastrophe
Petro’s speeches have been characterized since his run for the presidency by inflaming his anti-colonial bases and criticizing the Spanish conquest from the postulates of the Bolivarian left. In August 2020, he stated that “Bogotá was not founded by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada, it already existed. Indigenous history should not be erased, since it existed. By deleting that story, only a false story is imposed. That of the conquistadors who murdered those indigenous people. Earlier, in October 2017, he declared that “October 12 commemorates an invasion, a genocide, a conquest, a looting. There was never a discovery. Furthermore, last year he made the sword of Simon Bolivarliberator of Colombia, was present at his inauguration, against which King Felipe VI chose not to get up.
Rural Landscape of the New Kingdom of Granada according to an engraving by Jorge Juan and Antonio de Ulloa.
Regarding these statements, it is worth remembering that the conquest of America was not conceived as a genocide. To begin with, the concept itself, that is, the systematic extermination of a human group for reasons of race, ethnicity, religion, politics or nationality, refers to a phenomenon of the 20th century and does not fit with the laws dictated by the Spanish Crown for the Defense of Native Americans. No country in Europe did as much to combat the excesses in the processes of settlement and colonization as that Spain of the Catholic Monarchs and then the Habsburgs, among other reasons because they understood that what was important was the conversion of these Indians to Christianity over political reasons. or economic.
However, for the most pragmatic, such as the Hispanist Joseph Pérez, the main reason why the conquistadors organized a systematic extermination of the Indians is not related to religion or human rights, but to the obvious fact that «Spain could not kill the goose that laid the golden eggs». The expansion in America and the exploitation of resources by such a small group of people as the Spaniards who traveled to the new continent needed the cooperation of the locals.
No country in Europe did as much to combat excesses in the processes of settlement and colonization as Spain under the Catholic Monarchs and then the Habsburgs.
What is certain is that the indigenous population suffered a drastic decline in a few decades caused by diseases that were unknown to them. The inhabitants of America had remained isolated from the rest of the world and paid a high price for the biological shock. When the diseases brought from Europe, which had evolved during thousands of years of Humanity, came into contact with the new World they caused thousands of deaths due to the biological fragility of their inhabitants. A simple runny nose was deadly for many Indians. The result was the death of an estimated 95% of the existing Native American population at Columbus’s arrival due to disease, according to the ecologist’s calculations. Jared Diamond.
Bogota did not exist
What is the current Colombia underwent a process similar to the rest of the continent. In 1499 the territory was discovered for Europeans by Alonso de Ojeda, who arrived there from nearby Santo Domingo, making landfall at Cabo de la Vela. But it was not until 1525 when the Spanish began a process in Colombia through Rodrigo de Bastidas, who founded the first settlement in the territory: Santa Marta. The city is the oldest in Colombia and the second in South America. In 1533, Pedro de Heredia founded Cartagena de Indias and made it the main center of commerce in the area.
The conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada took over by entering the interior of this territory, while the conquistador Sebastián de Belalcázar headed towards Ecuador. Supporters of both clashed in the following years for control of the New Kingdom of Granadaof which Santa Fe de Bogotá would later be its capital.
Portrait of Don Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada located in the Liévano Palace. Gonzalo Jimenez de Quesada Hall.
Contrary to Petro’s statement, Bogotá did not exist as such until the arrival of the Spanish. At his first approach on August 6, 1538, Quesada ordered the construction of twelve huts in the Bacatá region, known as Teusaquilloa land populated by the Muiscas, without taking into account the instructions of the Crown about how a town should be established.
On April 22, 1539, already in the presence of Sebastian de Belalcazar y Nicholas de Federman A firm foundation was made where the sites for the main church, the government house, the prison or jail were designated, as well as the lots for the first neighbors, after which “chiefs and soldiers, foreigners and Chibchas, surrendered to celebrate the baptism of that city (…) Everyone went to the banks of the (river) Fucha, and there they did horse races, dances and games of reeds». The social and cultural miscegenation was underway to give rise to what is today one of the most populated and cosmopolitan cities on the continent.
In any case, the main problem with speeches like Petro’s is that they give rise to thinking that the only story that counts is the indigenous one and that this is incompatible with the European one. the history of americalike that of the whole world, is mixed and is in constant evolution.
The customs, culture and institutions of Colombia today have more to do with the old viceroyalty than with the pre-Columbian peoples. The viceregal presence lasted three centuries of coexistence and also clashed with the indigenous population, whose claims have survived the march of the Spaniards for many years. Colombia has been occupied longer by the spanish empire what it has been under the republican stage or what it was under any other people.
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