The anti-Spanish black legend, once promoted by rival countries and today by the extreme left, is based on hoaxes that do not withstand a slight analysis of the facts.
We have already reviewed here the hoax of the Spanish genocide in America, which is one of the most repeated lies by left-wing extremists today. But from that end of the political map, not only is Spain falsely accused of having committed an "extermination" against the indigenous peoples of America, but they also speak of a "cultural genocide", an even more ridiculous accusation. We are going to review some facts that throw that accusation to the ground.
The first grammars in history
In 1492, precisely the year in which Spain discovered America, Antonio de Nebrija published his "Castilian Grammar", which was the first grammar in the world, that is, the first study written about a language and its rules of use. To give us an idea:
The first grammars of pre-Columbian languages arrived before the English one
When they arrived in America, and with the purpose of transmitting the evangelical message to the indigenous people, the Spanish missionaries began to learn the pre-Columbian languages. This is how they were preserved for posterity. To give us an idea:
In America, books were printed in pre-Columbian languages before English
Let us also remember that in 1535 the Spanish installed the first printing press in America, in Mexico. The printing press was not used in America only to print books in Spanish:
To give you an idea, the first book printed in the British colonies of North America was published in 1640 ("Bay Psalm Book", in English). The first Spanish books in pre-Columbian languages were printed before the first printed works appeared in Romanian (1561), Irish Gaelic (1564) and Russian (1564).
Nahuatl and Quechua reached their maximum expansion with the Spanish Empire
It should also be noted that in 1580 King Philip II ordered the creation of chairs for indigenous languages in the universities of Lima and Mexico and in cities with Royal Courts, a milestone that is unparalleled in no other empire in history. Thanks to this work of preserving pre-Columbian languages, Nahuatl and Quechua reached their greatest expansion during the Spanish Empire, even more so than during the Aztec Empire and the Inca Empire (which were their places of origin, respectively) and that in the recent history of the countries where these languages are still used (Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, in the case of Nahuatl, and Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador and Colombia, in the case of Quechua).
Thus, Spain not only contributed a great vehicular language to the peoples of America (Spanish is the second language with the most native speakers in the world: 471 million), but it also helped to preserve pre-Columbian languages. The facts that we have just reviewed do not correspond, not even remotely, with that "cultural genocide" that some speak of. In any case, it would be good if the extreme left explained if its concept of the destruction of a language includes printing books and grammars and creating chairs to preserve it.
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