Thu Mar 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Colombo inaugurated the world trade

The facts are so well known that don’t need not be detailed. And no wonder, the arrival of Columbus to America was one of the most important events in all history. So, despite the 523 years that have passed, it still is worth wondering: what were the causes and the consequences of October 12, 1492?

 Caravels in search of wealth  

Far from “civilize” or “evangelize” the native people, the actual purpose of Columbus’ journey is always mentioned as secondary: the search for gold and spices. What is not said is that gold and spices were the commodities of that time, like today are soybeans and oil: goods whose value becomes the axis of the economy. Indeed, it was the scarcity of such goods that led some countries to launch ships to the sea searching for alternatives. So, while Portugal used the route around Africa to reach Asia, Spain chose to cross the ocean, finding an unknown continent.

This discovery changed everything. The natural resources expanded Europe’s economy to unimaginable levels, accelerating the development of the means of production and science and leading to the involvement not only of America but also of Africa and even the Middle East in this production chain. It was born the world market, which connected and connects the life of each country to the world situation. In a way, more than “coming” in caravels, modern civilization was born of these trips.

In most of America, the European powers established explorations based on the immediate extraction of natural resources, often employing slave labor. A type of industry too profitable for Europe, but that halted development of the American continent: an economic reality that has remained almost undisturbed over the centuries, and today we have to reverse it with a second and definitive independence.

The American “race”, whose birth is celebrated on every October 12 in many countries, developed as a byproduct of this way of doing business, and never ceased to reflect the “ethnic order” driven by the conquerors: societies in which the “white” Euro-Americans have the power while blacks and indigenous people are marginalized and impoverished.

The paradise of the indigenous people: myth and fact

Based on this, many claim that colonization had a particularly harmful character. Who shares this view – that does not take into account that the isolation of native peoples from the rest of the world was a lock for their development – describes the original cultures almost as utopias. There are even those who come to underestimate the Aboriginal resistance on the basis of this belief.

On the contrary, not only almost all native peoples had conflicts with each other and with other peoples as well, but in certain regions there were strong states, well organized and governed by castes, which oppressed entire nations. This is the case of the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), who were defeated by the Spaniards with the help of the tlaxcaltecas, often oppressed by the Aztecs.

Regarding the resistance of the native peoples, following the desire to denounce the genocide of the conquerors, they belittle the struggles against the European invaders, that have been successful in many cases. Indeed, it was only the second industrial revolution that allowed the destruction of the last areas in the hands of the natives, that is, in the late nineteenth century. In addition, supporters of the idealization of the original America also overlook, or treat as “exceptions”, the many cases of leaders and Aboriginal nobles who were absorbed into the colonial society and later American countries as part of the ruling classes.

So, the struggle of indigenous peoples, rather than against the European invaders, was against history itself. Their isolation – and the resulting political and organizational errors – could do little against the world market that was created from the colonization. This gave an even more tragic tone to their fight.

Capitalism was born wild

On the other hand, the focus on rejection in general of all crimes, destruction and looting committed by conquerors, makes the supporters of the idyllic view of the native past to dissolve the causes of such actions, as if they were a simple personal malice or the “spirit of the times” that led Europeans to act like that. Indeed, the same reason that led them to cross the sea made ​​them spill rivers of blood: to seek riches, to supply the market. The “conquerors” used to come from the lower nobility, the less favored sector by the share of wealth in the old continent, and colonization offered them a shortcut. This is the cause of so much greed as their lack of scruples. But they only fulfilled their social function: it didn’t exist at that time or now a “civilized” or “humanitarian” way to satiate the voracity of capital. Capitalism was born brutal and never ceased to be. In this sense, the crimes of the conquerors were only an advance of what would come later.

The “new world” is to be built

Still, America’s entry into the world market was allowing it a leap forward into the modern civilization and in all levels of life in these five centuries. This makes that, though, colonization has been a step forward for humanity.

It is true that the injustices and inequalities created by the conquest of America generated contradictions that helped to end the ability of capitalism to create progress. And that, if it had accepted the indigenous peoples, integrating them in the world market, rather than enslaving or exterminating them, perhaps the very development of science, industry and agriculture would have been faster: just imagine the Maya astronomers researching with Galileo!

But history can’t go back, we can only fight for the future. Therefore, in the face of capitalist decadence, it is time to replace this system that was born destroying entire cultures, enslaving and plundering with a more just society that integrates the knowledge and skills of each individual and human group to meet the needs of each person: a socialist world. And although it seems a paradox, it was the violent colonization of America, that unified the world into a single market, which laid the foundations to allow the construction of a new socialist society.

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