From - Sun Dec 19 15:22:14 1999 Path: iad-read.news.verio.net!iad-artgen.news.verio.net!iad-peer.news.verio.net!news.verio.net!iad-read.news.verio.net.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <385CDBAB.3EABFBC@clark.net> From: klaatu Reply-To: klaatu@clark.net Organization: Earth Operations Central 1486 #5 Harvard Street NW Washington DC 20056 X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.51 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.3 i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.california,alt.politics.immigration,soc.culture.mexican Subject: Re: A little history lesson -- (was Re: Whining about "hate speech" by Latinos References: <385aef37.667217@news.earthlink.net> <3857FD6E.DBD04885@usaor.net> <385b70aa.1406929@news.earthlink.net> <83ao8a$9oj$1@nntp1.atl.mindspring.net> <385e38f8.1592624@news.earthlink.net> <83e8bp$kdt$1@nntp9.atl.mindspring.net> <385CC9E3.46A3@pdq.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lines: 245 Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 13:20:43 +0000 NNTP-Posting-Host: 168.143.10.25 X-Complaints-To: abuse@verio.net X-Trace: iad-read.news.verio.net 945627623 168.143.10.25 (Sun, 19 Dec 1999 18:20:23 GMT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 18:20:23 GMT Xref: iad-artgen.news.verio.net alt.california:77426 alt.politics.immigration:35215 soc.culture.mexican:9297 Humberto Garza wrote: > > Douglas Long wrote: > > > By the way, since when did suggesting that Mexicans > > go back to Mexico become something harmful > > to the public? > > Hate remarks like those, are not good! The Moors at the apex of their > civilization, had found comical in the Spaniards this saying: "Moors! > Go back to Africa!" It's even more funny when you look even farther back into history, because by the time the Moors invaded, there were hardly any pure Iberians or Celts left: ... The injustice of the Byzantines provoked the OstroGoths (admitted as a nation into Thrace, whence they fled from the Huns) into revenge, and in 378, near the modern Adrianople, they defeated and slew the Emperor Valens. Under his sucessor Theodosius, relations between the Goths and the Romans were peaceful, but when in 395 the Empire was divided between his sones Arcadius and Honorius, trouble began. The Goths, under their king Alaric, ravaged Greece. But Stilicho, ruler of the Western Empire in the name of Honorius, having intervened, Alaric in 402 invaded Italy, but was twice defeated at Pollentia and Verona and forced to retreat. In 408, after the death of Stilicho, Alaric again invaded Italy and swept all before him. Rome was thrice beseiged, and the third time it was sacked and plundered in 410. Honorius fled to Ravenna, and Alaric beseiged it and died in the process. His heir Ataulf induced the VisiGoths to war against his enemies in Gaul. They succeded so well that the Goth king Wullia was granted all of Aquitania, richest province in Gaul, in 419. Later, under king Euric (466-484) the Goths held all of Gaul south of the Loire and west of the Rhone, and invaded and subdued almost all of Iberia. But they were defeatd in the north in 507 by Clovis, king of the Franks, and in 510 abandoned most of their French holdings and became the power in Spain (converting in battalions to Christianity about 600), until the last of the Goth kings, Roderic, was killed by the Moors near Jerez in 711. But the influence of the Goths remained as the new overlords granted considerable autonomy to local authorities, and while there were Islamic and Jewish laws for the Muslims and the Jews, for all of Christian Spain, the foundation of law was the Lex VisiGothorum. ... For 200 years the divided nations of Iberia were peaceful and prospered but eventually in the Christian north, fanatics invited martyrdom by insulting Islam. Concurrently, every Christian king in the north had followed the tradition of dividing their kingdoms among their heirs, and when the Moorish military occupation was at last destroyed as a significant force (including the capture of Cordoba and division into 12 petty kingdoms), Spain was extremely fragmented, and had only the Church as anything resembling a central government. The various towns -- which had been granted considerable autonomy under charters from the counts and lesser kings in the border kingdoms and counties about the time of the millennium -- increased their level of autonomy from the various grandees and nobles, and eventually a confederacy of strong-willed town governments became the greatest power in Spain. This lasted roughly until the Almohades Muslims again subdued all of Spain between 1145 and 1149, and held it loosely until the early 13th century when united Christian rebellion and war pushed the Almohades' military out of most of Spain, leaving them only Granada. But by this time, vast numbers of refugees from the unending wars between the Islamic states elsewhere had flooded Spain. ... Eventually, as the cultures of Asia Minor, the Middle East, and Africa integrated with what remained of the Gothic and Iberian culture of Spain, "Alfonso the Learned" (Alfonso X) -- being very partial to the learning of the Orient and something of an integrationist -- codified a modern version of national law, translated the Old Testament into Castilian Spanish and declared that language to be the national language, and his "Leyes de las Partidas" to be the law of the land. That last didn't happen until 1501, and Alfonso was driven from the throne in 1282. The usurper Sancho disappointed the Nobles who had helped finance the rebellion and a civil war erupted, which never settled down completely until 1350. Throughout this part of Spain's history, one cannot overlook the influence of the Cortes, or the Association of the Towns, which excluded nobles and priests from their governing membership. The kings used the Cortes and the individual towns to balance themselves versus the nobles, and the nobles attempted to use the king to enforce their will on the town, and the towns played both the king and the nobles against each other. From 1350 onwards for the next century-and-a-quarter, outside of the towns, Spain became a lawless anarchy with endless warring between the nobles and endless intrigues within the courts of royalty. In 1474, Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon ascended the throne of Castile, and in 1479 Ferdinand inherited Aragon and Sicily. Aligning themselves with the towns, they established order in Castile and reduced the power of the nobles, but then began to reduce the power of the individual municipalities, and the collective power of the Cortes. An important instrument of this political activity was the Spanish Inquisition, where religious intolerance was used to destroy political resistance. In 1492, the last Moors were driven from Granada, and Cristobal Colon announced the discovery of the New World. ... Ferdinand set out to destroy France as a rival in the New World (France largely set its sights on New France in the far north), by pursuing wars against it in Europe. When Charles I (the German) came to power in 1516, and became Holy Roman Emperor in 1519, he also heavily taxed the towns and nearly destroyed the Cortes, and reduced Castile to ruin. Spain remained at war throughout most of the next century and a half. Particularly even as Mexico was "civilized" by the Conquistadores, Spain had become a hotbed of intrigue, of political corruption, royal absolutism, religious intolerance, and outright racism. ... Under Philip II, Spain aligned itself with England, with Philip marrying Queen "Bloody Mary" Tudor in 1554, a year after she ascended the throne amid rebellion, and together they imported the Spanish Inquisition to England, when Mary burned 300 Protestants alive for heresy, reversing England's previous move towards Reformation. She involved England in the Spanish war with France, in which she lost Calais to the French and died in 1558. Philip II returned to Spain, and having tried to stamp out Protestantism as soon as he took the Spanish throne in 1556, now attempted to stamp it out in his domain of the Netherlands, killing thousands and making refugees of thousands more, and by 1579 had managed to lose the seven United Provinces which are now the Dutch. In 1572, under Elizabeth Tudor, England allied with the French and English privateers began to harass Spanish shipping while in 1585 an English army opposed Philip in the Netherlands, and in 1588 the Spanish attempted to bring England under Catholic Spanish control and had their Armada destroyed utterly by intepid English seamanship followed by storms which had been described by witnesses as "the very wrath of God". Under his son, Philip III, religious persecution increased and became racism as every person of known Moorish descent ("Moriscos") was expelled (the Jews had already been expelled or killed), which essentially destroyed the intellectual class, and much of the bourgoisie. English privateers harassed shipping, and in 1607 the English under King James I established Protestant colonies in Virginia. James' religious politics caused the Puritans to found their own colony in Massachesetts in 1620 and begin mass emigration to Plymouth in 1629. Under Philip IV, Spain suffered greatly through many civil wars. In 1624 the Dutch (suddenly a new great power once freed from the Spanish) established colony on Manhattan Island. In the northern Chesapeake Bay a colony was founded under royal grant by England's Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, as a refuge for Catholics, with a charter stating that there would be religious tolerance for all, a very important point in US history. Spain continued to suffer, and continued to war with the French. In 1628, the Dutch captured the Spanish treasure fleet, and they took over Brazil, Ceylon, Malacca, Java, several Caribbean Islands. In 1641 Portugal recovered independence. In 1648, Spain was forced to sign a treaty with the Netherlands recognizing the Dutch possession of its former colonies, including "Spanish Holland". Under Charles II (also known as Charles the Fool), Spain fell into total decay. The last of the German Hapsburg Kings of Spain, this inbred dolt made a bad situation much worse by leaving administration almost entirely up to courtiers. Territories were lost to the French in Franche-Comte and Flanders, the administration was corrupt, the interior was in total anarchy, the military and navy existed in name only; trade, commerce, industry and even agriculture were almost completely destroyed, and after 35 years of bringing Spain to total ruin, Charles II left no heir, but appointed a grandson of French King Louis XIV, Philip of Anjou, as his successor. charles The Fool's death in 1700 immediately plunged the nation into the Succession Wars, with Philip V (of Anjou) being recognized as the king in 1714 when he renounced all claims to the French throne. Repeated wars ensued however, as Spain warred with Austria and in Italy. Only in Mexico could Spain be said to be remotely "successful". Cortez sailed to Mexico and established Vera Cruz, sinking his ships to show his determination in 1519, even as King Charles the German became Holy Roman Emperor and began to tax Castile into ruin. After allying himself with the enemies of Montezuma, Cortez succeded in destroying the Aztecs through terrible bloodshed and European diseases by September 1521, and by 1522 Cortez was appointed the Governor of New Spain. in 1535, New Spain was a Vice-Royalty, with the first Viceroy being Antonio de Mendoza. In Europe, Emperor Charles was very active, suppressing the Lutheran Reformation, the Anabaptists and fighting against the Peasants' War, repelling the Turks, and in the end seeing many years spent interested exclusively in the affairs in Germany, trying to control the Protestant princes. In the end, he failed, but in the meanwhile he required gold, much gold. Under Cortez, the main goals had been conquest, destruction of the natives, and the acquisition of gold to return to Spain to fight the Emperor's wars. Under Mendoza, the aim was less destruction, and more of construction. He built many mines, established Guadaljara and Morelia. Mexico itself became a conquering power when they invaded the Philippines, in 1564-1565. For the better part of the next two centuries, Mexico enjoyed quiet growth and some measure of prosperity in isolation from the rest of the world, for a royal decree by Philip II required that all trade from the Philippines be through Veracruz and Portobello in Panama, and by royal decree there was a great deal of restriction regarding travel and commerce, with all funds eventually travelling to Spain. As Spain itself was in decay, and corrupt, and endlessly at war, the government of New Spain was itself often corrupt and violent and autocratic, but it must be noted that in almost all cases, it was less corrupt than that of Spain -- but it would have been better for Mexico if there had been a better example in the fatherland. While Spain concerned itself with the passions of royalty and religion, New Spain concerned itself mostly with production and with operating smoothly in the generation of wealth for the parent country which squandered that wealth so prodigiously. After the successful revolution, it is most unfortunate that the Mexicans largely carried on the same pattern they had learned from Spain, one of constant unrest, rebellion and uprisings, never developing a strong and united civil society. (The sole unifying force in Mexico was the military and their tradition, even the Church was very factionalized.) While all of this was going on, and American colony in Texas was established, and it grew, and it declared its independence and later joined the United States. When Mexico thought to regain some of Texas, another war was fought, and Mexico was again defeated, but accepted a great deal of payment for abandoning claim for the northern lands. People who had always been New Spanish were now Americans with the stroke of a pen, and most of them benefitted greatly outside of the Old Californians. > But... After 800 years... The world turned in a > very strange way! Assimilation, understanding, and direction toward > the same goal! IS THE NAME OF THE GAME! "All! For a better and > stronger America!" When Mexico reforms its government, and abandons all of the foolishness they learned from the Spanish, such as the racism and religious intolerance and the ability to be proud even as one sinks into poverty and decay -- not to mention the political corruption -- and has an uncorrupt and civil society such as the US has, then we can talk about it being all one America. But for now, alas, poor US and Mexico, both so far from god and so close to one another. > > Humberto > -- > Visita mis páginas... > > -- "We look through a glass but darkly: What we see is more colored by our beliefs, than what we believe is colored by what we see."