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The link doesn't mention "seeking out" those books, in fact it mentions catholic priests both burning and lamenting the burn.
by Cantinflas 11mo ago
The link doesn't mention "seeking out" those books, in fact it mentions catholic priests both burning and lamenting the burn.
- wudangmonk 11mo agoI guess that is implied since these things always happen this way, its not like book burners are just having a nice campfire and the books they dislike just happen to be close by.
- jacobolus 11mo agoThey hunted down all of the libraries, collected all of the books inside, and burned them in massive bonfires, accidentally saving a total of like 3 books which had already been shipped back to Europe as trophies. I think there are also some remaining fragments of a few others. One Spaniard wrote about it: > We found a large number of books in these characters and, as they contained nothing in which there were not to be seen superstition and lies of the devil, we burned them all, which they regretted to an amazing degree, and which caused them much affliction.
- antognini 11mo agoIt is worth noting that the friar who organized this book burning was recalled to Spain to stand trial on account of his actions.
- Larrikin 11mo agoWhy is that worth noting?
- hnidiots3 11mo agoBecause it might not have been the “Spanish”, but certain people who ruined history. So it’s not fair to blame a whole country for the actions of a few.
- jacobolus 11mo agoIt's pretty fair to blame the entire social and political system of 16th century Spain, which at that time was centered on religious persecution, mass murder, large-scale theft and exploitation, and quasi-slavery, leading to centuries of profoundly racist tyranny in the Americas. The book-burning cultural genocide was just the cherry on top. (As is common for feudal occupiers of foreign lands, and by no means unique to Spain) the worst kinds of psychopaths were continually elevated to positions of authority and then granted almost complete impunity to do what they wanted, with an ideology that treated the recipients of their exploitation as sub-human.
- ffsm8 11mo agoIt's really not sane to do so, today. You're literally applying birth sin for it to make sense, because none of the Spanish people alive today had anything to do with it Even worse, what hnidiots3 was trying to convey: 99% of the population that were alive during the time period you'd have described as "Spaniards" were entirely uninvolved in these actions, and wouldn't have supported them either, likely. While the Mayan culture was literally doing human sacrifices - the average person living in Spain wasn't inherently evil and wanting to cause suffering to other people. Despite their culture being kinda shit. They just wanted to live their live, which was mostly being a farmer and working.
- jacobolus 11mo ago[flagged]
- nickpp 11mo agoYou guys remind me of the old joke: A Mexican goes to Spain, accosts the first Spaniard he sees, and lays into him: “I demand an apology, sir - your ancestors pillaged my country!” The Spaniard blinks. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Your ancestors did that. Mine stayed home.”
- 11mo ago
- wtcactus 11mo agoBecause a previous commenter wrongly said, "the Spanish made a point of seeking out all the Maya books". It wasn't "The Spanish" it were some individual actors clearly acting against "The Spanish" crown wishes.
- alex_smart 11mo agoIf that is the case, why did the trial absolve him of all crimes and why did get consecrated as a bishop by the king of Spain?
- wtcactus 11mo agoI'm guessing that his 1st person description of the human sacrifices carried out by the Mayan and establishing a connection between those and the need to erase the culture that enabled them and that he - wrongly or not, we can't know anymore - saw as enabled by those books had some weight there... The Spanish crown didn't have in mind to destroy other people books, but then again, they also didn't have in mind that they casually, recurrently and nonchalantly offered human sacrifices to their "gods". Probably the order of priorities for the Spanish crown was books < human sacrifices. Strange times, those, eh?
- hopelite 11mo agoI would say because it highlights that even back then there was the same kind of tension as today between those who believe they are doing right, those who also believe they are doing right, and right never ending up being done in the end. It’s like ideological, metaphysical, and psychological border disputes and skirmishes, i.e., human nature. Also, failing upwards of those who serve the dominant system is clearly not just a modern phenomenon.
- vintermann 11mo agoBecause it's not what most people expect. There was pushback against a lot of the evils of colonialism - most of them unsuccessful, like this one. Maybe we can learn lessons for fighting against the institutional evils of our time.
- rayiner 11mo ago[flagged]
- BigTTYGothGF 11mo ago> Was Spanish colonization “evil?” It's hard to look at the on-the-ground details and come to any other conclusion.
- rayiner 11mo ago[flagged]
- Larrikin 11mo agoBefore anyone wastes their time, this is the same start of the other bad faith argument that the enslavement of Africans was for their own good and they were better off being slaves than being in Africa.
- rayiner 11mo ago[flagged]
- jacobolus 11mo agoProbably not, but this counterfactual depends on the circumstances, and depends on your values. For example: people might argue about the relative harms of various kinds of slavery vs. cultural genocide vs. land dispossession and forced displacement .... After contact there were waves of mass die-off of people throughout the Americas due to disease brought from Eurasia: are we positing that those deaths still occurred? Because they were extraordinarily destabilizing. For example, if we hypothetically imagine that the balance of disease severity was the other way around and 90% of the population of Eurasia was wiped out over a century in several waves of horrific pandemics, then history would look quite different indeed, and it's all but impossible to predict precisely how. European states other than Spain also did horrific atrocities in their conquests and colonial projects. Are we positing that we just replace Spanish kingdom(s) with some alternative European monarchies? Or are we imagining a situation in which peoples of the Americas retained some autonomy?
- alex_smart 11mo agoIt is also worth noting that he was absolved of all crimes and eventually consecrated as a bishop.
- pqtyw 11mo agoIt's complicated in the sense that there were both people trying to burn and destroy anything and those trying to preserve the books and the language doing their own stuff in parallel.