The numbers of the Aztec genocide that Spain stopped: it was a liberation, not a conquest

@ElentirENG ES 10·12·2021 · 6:55 0

The promoters of the anti-Spanish Black Legend have manipulated history to present genocidal savages, the Aztecs, as poor victims.

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Spain did not commit a genocide in America: it ended one

Four years ago I already addressed here the historical reality of the Spanish America. As I pointed out then, Spain not only not committed a genocide in America, but also put an end to one: the one that the Aztecs and other pre-Columbian peoples were perpetrating against their own indigenous neighbors. In recent years, archaeological excavations have brought to light clear evidence of these genocides, such as the tower of skulls discovered in Tenochtitlán in 2017, with thousands of remains of men, women and children in pre-Columbian Mexico, and the findings of the Holocaust of Huanchaco, with the remains of dozens of boys and girls sacrificed in Peru prior to the arrival of the Spaniards.

The figures of the genocide perpetrated by the Aztec Empire

In my post in 2017 I already pointed out that in 1524, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the first Bishop of Mexico, estimated at more than 20,000 people sacrificed in Tenochtitlán and more than 72,000 throughout the Aztec Empire each year, including 20,000 children. I also pointed out that the Mexican historian Mariano Cuevas (1879-1949) estimated those sacrifices at 20,000 per year in Tenochtitlán, and warned that "we fall short" if we estimate those perpetrated throughout the Aztec Empire at 100,000 per year. The question about these figures and other estimates is: what was the population of that territory at that time? That would give us an idea of the proportions of the slaughter.

A month ago, the Argentine historian Marcelo Gullo Omodeo pointed out that, according to the most serious demographic study carried out by the Venezuelan historian Ángel Rosenblat on the subject, "in Mexico there were, at the time of the arrival of Hernán Cortés, 4.5 million population." To give us an idea, it is a somewhat higher population than Panama currently has, and approximately half of the current inhabitants of Austria.

On the dimensions of the Aztec massacres, Gullo also cites the American William H. Prescott, whom he describes as "one of the most critical historians of the Spanish conquest and one of the most fervent defenders of the Aztec civilization." Prescott wrote: "The number of sacrificed victims per year immolated was immense. Almost no author computes it in less than 20,000 each year, and there are still some who make it go up to 150,000."

It would be equivalent to murdering up to 4.2 million people a year in today's Mexico

Gullo adds: "if Mexico had 4.5 million inhabitants in 1521, 20,000 people massacred per year were equivalent to 0.444% (periodic number) of the population at that time. This means, for you to take the real dimension of the holocaust executed by the Aztecs, which extrapolated that percentage to the current number of inhabitants of Mexico (127,792,000), would be equivalent to murdering 562,285 people (five hundred sixty-two thousand two hundred and eighty- five people) per year."

The Argentine historian also points out that extrapolating the average of 85,000 people murdered by the Aztecs, "it would be equivalent to 1,888%" of the inhabitants of present-day Mexico, which would mean 2,412,713 people killed per year if that genocide had been committed today. Finally, taking as a reference the maximum figure cited by Prescott, 150,000 murdered a year in the Aztec Empire, that would be 3.33% of its population, which would be equivalent to 4,255,474 massacred in present-day Mexico. Gullo is very clear in light of these figures: "It is imposed as a logical conclusion that the Aztec state was a genocidal state", and adds: "The Aztec state was a genocidal totalitarian state that oppressed its own people and that it carried out as a policy of It was the conquest of other indigenous nations to have human beings to sacrifice to their gods and to use the human flesh thus obtained as the main food of the nobles and priests."

The defeat of the Aztec Empire is as worth celebrating as the defeat of Nazism

The Argentine historian believes that "if Spain had to apologize for having defeated Aztec cannibalism, both the United States and Russia would have to apologize for having defeated the Nazi genocidal imperialism. The battle for Tenochtitlán was bloody, but as bloody as the battle for Berlin, which put an end to Nazi totalitarianism." For Gullo, the conclusion is clear: "Spain did not conquer America, but Spain liberated America."

The anniversary of the discovery of America and the beginning of the Spanish presence in that continent is, without a doubt, a reason for celebration equivalent to the anniversary of the defeat of Nazism in World War II, a victory that is not detracted by the fact that that the victors had to use force to defeat Hitler. However, there are two major differences between the two historical episodes: the Spanish did not commit anything remotely similar to the massive rapes of women and girls by the Red Army, and Spain did not impose a totalitarian regime in America like the one Stalin established in the countries occupied by the USSR. Rather, the first codes of fundamental rights that were established in that continent were the Laws of Burgos of 1512 in Spanish America.

Not even accusing Spain of the deaths caused by the contagion of diseases in four centuries - a fact that cannot be classified as genocide, as many Hispanophobes do - would we have anything that was even close to the more than 100 million deaths caused by communism in a single century, a colossal genocide denied by the same far-left that promotes and feeds the anti-Spanish Black Legend. If there is something that cannot be celebrated, it is the communist genocide and the tremendous hypocrisy of those who, refusing to condemn it, demand that Spain apologize for having liberated America from a genocidal empire like the Aztec.

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Main image Museo del Prado.Painting "Prison of Guatimozín, last emperor of the Mexicans, by the troops of Hernán Cortés, and his presentation to him in the Mexico Square" /em>, by Carlos María Esquivel y Rivas.