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Comment by spanxx | Hacker News Reader

Not true at all. English made propaganda about supposed atrocities and that propaganda is alive today: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_legend

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Yes, it is alive because the Spanish did do things like cutting the hands and feet of entire indigenous settlements, as they did with the village from which the mapuche general who resisted the initial Spanish drive into Chile suffered.

The somewhat reasonable laws regarding the encomienda system were pervasively circumvented by the encomenderos by always demanding tribute in labor, and having it paid for generations.

The mestizaje and conversion to Christianity was used, in the end, to also circumvent laws regarding the treatment of natives by creating an entirely new underclass of people lacking in rights.

The Black Legend is what's known in Latin America as "history".

Spanish Crown edicted some laws to protect the natives https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Burgos

What legal protection had the native population in the American colonies or British Empire?

Australian native population did not have land rights until 1970-1979 [1]

[1] https://indigenousrights.net.au/timeline/1970-79

Pretty interesting how independent latin-american governments succeeded in conquering native lands and subjugating native population: See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Araucan%C3%ADa

Please note I'm giving sources.

I know that Latin American successor states then went on to do the same and worse.

The Chilean Congress only this year acknowledged the genocide of the peoples in Tierra del Fuego, perpetrated by mercenaries of settlers of various nationalities with total impunity from the Chilean state.

Do look up the Wikipedia article on the War of Arauco for accounts of the cruelty of Pizarro and Pedro de Valdivia. As I said, the enforcement of the various laws regarding the indigenous populations were... lacking in enforcement.

As time passes our society should be judged more severely. You can't judge actions of XVI century, bit you can sure judge actions of XX century.

Spain recognized independence of Mapuche Nation after more than one hundred years of war [1][2].

Chile and Argentina started a war campaign against them [2][3][4]. The Mapuches call it the Last Massacre (La última masacre in Spanish)[1].

[1] https://www.mapuche-nation.org/english/html/m_nation/main/m_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arauco_War

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Araucan%C3%ADa

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conquest_of_the_Desert

Yes, it's a complex issue that evolved over the course of centuries. But it's a remarkable exception that the Mapuche managed to settle a border with the Crown.

I've never said that Chile was any better. I mean, it was in comparison to some periods, the early conquest saw mutilation as collective punishment and impalement as execution of POWs.

What you just said isn't a defense of the Spanish Empire. If anything it is about the capacity to resist of the Mapuche and the power of decentralized self-organization. There just wasn't an emperor-high priest to kidnap and extort the Mapuche into surrendering like with the Aztecs or the Inca.

Aztecs were conquered with the help of other slaved tribes. Do you really thing that several sailors could conquering an empire of millions? Spaniards were helped by Aztec enemies.

I'm not defending anybody, just setting some historical context.

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