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Comment by the42thdoctor | Hacker News Reader

> When that happens, though, Colombia will face a challenge from Spain and an indigenous group in Bolivia to determine who keeps the bounty.

They should de divide the gold between all the natives (indigenous) of the region. I don't think the gold should go to Colombia simply because that country did exist back then, the Spanish were stealing from natives.

At the very least they should give all the gold to some branch of government concerned with indigenous rights.

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>Spain insists that the bounty is theirs since it was aboard a Spanish ship

This quote is making my head spin, what a damn bold statement from a modern democracy.

"Yeah you know how our ancestors enslaved, murdered and plundered your natives? Well, we're calling dibs on that bounty, after all conquistadors dropped it as they were heading home."

Granted, the article doesn't establish who exactly is "Spain".

That's standard practice for shipwrecks. I believe it's part of maritime law, but don't quote me one that.

Thanks, I did wonder as I was typing my comment if it's par for the course. Do you know of recent examples where historical empires/colonizers (basically France, UK, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands or Belgium, do I forget someone?) claimed shipwrecks of locally plundered loot? Granted, it wouldn't make me agree with the position morally even if it's not unusual.

Some Spaniard art or other cultural heritage on board sounds reasonable, but the obviously plundered bounty irks me.

Pretty much always, I think. The Black Swan Treasure is an interesting case. Peru, the US salvage company, and Spain all made cases for the treasure. It was found off the coast of Gibraltar, and Spain doesn't really agree with their borders/sovereignty. There were also allegedly some shenanigans involving the US State Department offering to facilitate the return of the treasure to Spain if Spain helped return a painting that had previously been stolen by Nazis.

There were not "shenanigans", US doctrine is that the shipwreck belongs to the original country that fleet the ship.

I would consider the implied quid pro quo to be the "shenanigans"

>>Spain insists that the bounty is theirs since it was aboard a Spanish ship

>This quote is making my head spin

It's one step up from "Finders...Keepers". It was in our possession last, so therefore it is still ours (shh, don't worry about how we got it or who we took it from).

I mean that's how the UK has still its museums filled to the brim with foreign objects. I dont support Spain on its claims but it is the same logic. This should go to Colombia, period, the treasure is in their waters.

Atleast UK can hide behind status quo. This is of next level.

Much of the population of hispanic America are descendants of both natives and conquistadors.

Plus the black african slaves brought by the conquistadores.

A truly mixed area. This mix gave way to a second generation of "mestizos", "zambos" and "mulatos". I imagine those words are problematic now, but that's what I was taught in school in south america

I would say sure let them have it and then make them pay all the stolen hundreds of billions back

Hmm, that get really fun when applied to modern day. Let's say some country invades and loots other one. Then sinks a ship carrying loot. Now they reclaim the loot from ship wreck. Is the loot fully theirs now?

If you win the war, you get the loot. That's what winning a war means. If you lose, you were the bad guys and need to hand it back plus maybe some other war reparations.

by this logic, all of the Americas should be returned to the descendants of the native peoples. I guess we’ll all just go home, all the Europeans back to Europe, Chinese back to China, Africans back to Africa. Quickly now, once we get back we’ll have to do the next round of figuring out how to return the stolen heritage looted by the Roman Empire and the Qin dynasty and the Rashidun Caliphate. We’ve got thousands of years of history to go through people! Look alive now!

There's ~50 million Colombians, if the wreckage is worth 14 billion, then 14 billion / 50 million = $280 USD per person. I think it'd be better to put it in a museum and donate proceeds to some social program. The museum could have a positive impact on the economy.

I think OP is suggesting to share it with museums across Caribbean and not just Colombia.

To be fair, the natives who would receive the money didn't exist either back then.

> To be fair

There's no way to be fair with this. There is no "rightful owner" of this gold, so anything that's done with it is unfair in some way.

It's true that the descendants of the people who were harmed in the collection (stealing, mining, or both) of that gold were not alive then, but their current conditions were determined by the behavior of the colonists who collected the gold.

They would have inherited a very different (likely better) life if the colonists had not arrived.

  > They would have inherited a very different (likely better) life if the colonists had not arrived.

This presents a very rosy-glasses version of history, likely based on the noble savage myth. Do you have any idea how the standard of living has changed in the past 600 years? Malnutrition, disease, lifespan, hours of leisure, infant mortality, are all far better today than they were in Precolumbian south america, even among the poor.

Better today that they were in Precolonial South-America and better that they were in Europe at the time.

They might have been up to the bronze age by now

>"They should de divide the gold between all the natives"

I wish. But in practice I'd say when the hell freezes over.

>when the hell freezes over

as if there is only one. i live at least 3 different hells per day

- Most of the Colombians are descendants of Spaniards.

- The law of the sea recognizes that the cargo of a shipwreck belongs to the country of the ship’s flag. There was no Colombia nation at the time of the shipwreck.

Is it in Columbia's waters? Then its Columbia's.

If I have a milkshake and you have a milkshake, but I have a straw that reaches all the way to your milkshake, then I have all the milkshake.

s/milkshake/sunken treasure/g

Colombia, Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_(personification) has everything she needs

I think it would be better to spend it on broad social programs. Around 90% of Colombians have some form of Amerindian ancestry. Less than 5% are fully Amerindians.

One solution is to make Spain pay for the retrieval plus charge them an astronomical finders fee. Spain can then keep whatever is retrieved, including the colonial baggage.

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