The international fight over a 300-year-old treasure-laden Spanish galleon
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It houses artifacts made by the indigenous people of Colombia. I hope the cargo of this ship ends there or maybe in a museum in Cartagena.
And remember, it only has the artifacts that Spain _didn't_ successfully steal.
Museums in Barcelona and Madrid still proudly display the bloody artifacts stolen from the hundreds of years they raped, pillaged, slaughtered and enslaved indigenous Americans.
Every time I see this, it kind of makes me chuckle.
Many of the colonisers never make it back to Spain. Round trips were absolutely not the norm, thus it is more than likely that most current inhabitants of the Americas are, in fact, their descendants.
Which is par for the course, History is full of that.
And it wasn't a complete annihilition, there were Hiberno-Norse elites and over time the conflict was superseded.
But what were the consequences of this conquest for me?
Blond hair that darkened to brown, bluish-gray eyes, and a red beard. And the surname Cussen, which is Norwegian.
Same goes for the Mestizaje: so in that event many Spanish women did come to the Americas, a quarter of the Spaniards were women, and on special like transport ships for families, personal belongings, and domestic animals. Women weren't allowed on ordinary expedition ships due to the danger. And their descendants don't consider themselves raped, it depends on the era and place, eg Kechwa yes, but Aymara partly, Xauxa not.
On the other hand the Spanish Conquest meant the Americanos could communicate, a Mapuche from Patagonia Argentina can speak Spanish with a Baja Californian perfectly, which was not the case before. They brought many things from the Columbian Exchange, and a religion that syncretised with the local faiths, for instance protecting the Cult of Pachamama, oppressed by the Incan rulers, by changing the format to the Cult of the Virgin Mary, adapted to those lands. Mestizo Jesuses in Central America, which surely resemble the Savior more than the blue-eyed European Jesus.
It's the Leyenda Negra and Leyenda Rosa, black legend and rose legend, neither is true.
There, you have the legal owner of the galleon.
Looting the whole continent for centuries was not enough. They want more, of course
Also, international maritime law is, well, international. Unless Colombia decides that they would withdraw from the UN and international courts, of course it will apply to them.
Colombia was under the Spanish crown rule between 1525 and 1810, thus there was not a country there, at least not legally.
Pretty horrible sight if you ask me, a shame on British soul and something former colonial countries still keep asking forgiveness for, for very good reasons
I get what you are saying, but legality and morality are two very different things.
Were there no indigenous people living there previously?
There were. But the de facto successor to the indigenous governments was the Spanish crown. And the ship sank during Spanish rule.
Spain is not going to claim a galleon loaded with goods taken from the Colombian territories _before_ the 1500s or _after_ 1810.
Why would that make the "rule" morally fine?
It doesn't, but that doesn't really matter. There are many legal things that are immoral.
Right now, Spain does have a claim on the ship.
A claim yes, a moral one? Not sure. A legal one? Also not sure.
> Technically speaking, they didn’t steal anything since they claimed the American territories as Spanish.
But of course, there are specific international treaties way older than that.
When it came to their European colleagues, 18th-century Spain was perfectly happy to follow international relations principles that we would recognize today. Their conquest of Central and South America was predicated on the Treaty of Tordesillas, in which they and the Portuguese agreed to some lines on a map (with the Pope's help) and went to play "loot the locals".
Not for lack of trying.
When the Spanish came to America, the people living here certainly weren't Spanish. It was even discussed if the indigenous peoples were human or not.
Against the will of all the natives living in the territory. You can't just show up to a house and claim that it's yours and simply take everything out of it and then take it somewhere else and claim that technically you didn't steal anything because you first claimed it yours lol.
My personal experience after visiting many of the former Spanish territories in Central and South America is that these countries do not fondly remember the las conquistadories--who pillaged, raped and slaughtered their way across the continent while proselytizing Christianity.
Many of the people I spoke with lay their countries poverty directly at the feet of Spain and American corporations -- who collectively pillaged their country's natural resources and humiliated indigenous people for over 200 years.
This is why Colombia just elected Petro--who's promised to end the looting of Colombia's natural resources, among other things.
Too little, too late, isn't it? If they have been fed up for the past 200 years.
Take the Battle of Boyacá[1] for instance. It was a key turning point where the indigenous population achieved victory over Spanish forces. An event that eventually resulted in the independence of Colombia from Spain and creation of several sovereign states.
Nobody likes this, but there is no alternative.
In the 1500s, you could.
I don't see any technical fact of the matter here. These legalistic claims may have been true in the eyes of the Spanish of the time. But the rest of us are free to reject this worldview and, thus, the claims of legality.
Spanish law may say that 1) Spanish law applied in these territories and 2) that they were allowed to take what they took. But none of us have to credit these assertions. We are free to conclude that these assertions of sovereignty were illegitimate and that Spanish law is, therefore, irrelevant.
This is not about Spanish law, but international maritime law. The ship is Spanish and departed from Spanish territories at the time, thus they have a claim over it.
> We are free to conclude that these assertions of sovereignty were illegitimate and that Spanish law is, therefore, irrelevant.
This is a bit anarchistic. In your scenario, _any_ country may be free from following international treaties and laws, thus why would anyone follow them in the first place?
This is about your original assertion that "they didn’t steal anything." And the answer to that depends on whatever the law was in the place where the supposed theft occurred. Spain would presumably take the position that this would be Spanish territorial law. But that merely begs the question, since the whole issue is whether Spanish colonial rule was legitimate.
> This is a bit anarchistic.
That's a bit ironic. One might say that it was Spain's colonization that was anarchistic, since it was done in obvious disregard of the laws and customs of the people living on that land at the time. Maybe today they are just dealing with the consequences.
In any case, I would imagine that the matter would be resolved by some sort of tribunal with competent jurisdiction. If they were to conclude that Spain's claim to the treasure were illegitimate because it was ill-gotten, that's hardly anarchism.
Of course, I'm not predicting that this will actually occur. In fact, I'm not sure I'm prepared to argue that it should occur. I'm merely pointing out that, if the assertion is "the Spanish stole," then arguing that they didn't, because the Spanish had colonized the country and claimed it as their territory, isn't very helpful, and perhaps missing the point. The person who thinks "the Spanish stole" would clearly also consider these unilateral Spanish proclamations to be illegitimate--and it's not obvious to me why they would be wrong.
> any_ country may be free from following international treaties and laws
An exaggeration, surely. The argument I'm making is specific to situations where today's legal rights directly depend on the legitimacy of historical territorial claims.
It’s akin to some day Northern California splitting from California and then claiming socal “stole it’s water” or similar argument.
There were some thefts before mining started taking place, but most of the gold was mined by and for the crown.
Also, this is Columbia making the claim, not the locale where the mines existed.