Ancestoral blame and moral judgements

And one more question - what is European?

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by Leonidas ...good pick up. Also pinguin how would you describe the more recent conflict in Guatemala? a particular quote from this resource tells the tale of a racist war conducted by Spanish speakers (supported by the USA) on the native Americans. ...   The Civil War in Guatemala was nothing particularly extraordinary in those dark days when the United States hijacked our militaries for its cause. They were trainned to torture and to kill in the infamous School of the Americas. Millions died in all Latin America thanks to that gently influence of our "cousins" of the north, and the local militaries they bough.   Oh Lord, we love Sammy, our Uncle.

Rubbish, who else but you would blame the USA for what the Guatemalan Latino's did against the Mayans. If I give you a gun its my fault you pull the trigger! wtf? no way i would only shoulder some responsibility and only as helping not doing.

 Did you even bother to read the material? This conflict was driven by class on one level but essentially was a war from (and resistance to) latino racist and voilent behaviour towards the natives. This isnt brutal conquistador stuff, its modern history and puts your heavily flawed and biassed position to shame.

again and again silly sweeping statements trip you up as a anti-western axe grinder..

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by Sparten I think words like genocide and holocaust get thrown about too easily. These days, 2 people die; a bloodbath, 10; a massacre,  50; genocide.   When we say genocide, we are talking 0f 6 million Jews, 2 millions of Amerindians or 1 million tutsis. Not just 10 people.

the Taino the caribs?

Still the mayan in guatamala fit into that category very well. 200,000 thousand dead.

people targeted for who they were.

The record of the Guatemalan security forces was laid bare in a report released Feb. 25 by the Historical Clarification Commission, which grew out of the U.N.-sponsored peace process that ended the war in 1996. The commission said the Guatemalan military had committed "acts of genocide" during the conflict, in which 200,000 people died.

www.washingtonpost.com

Originally posted by Styrbiorn .... I bet CIA is building the favelas as well.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn ... In pinguin's world all troubles and crimes in Latin America is created are commited by evil Europeans and/or evil Americans with European ancestry. It doesn't matter if the ancestors of the conquerors and colonists live in Latin America now, as long as you're born in Europe you bear all the guilt of everything bad in Latin America.

Edited by pinguin - 30-Jun-2008 at 01:04

Originally posted by pinguin Originally posted by Leonidas Rubbish, who else but you would blame the USA for what the Guatemalan Latino's did against the Mayans. If I give you a gun its my fault you pull the trigger! wtf? no way i would only shoulder some responsibility and only as helping not doing.  Did you even bother to read the material? This conflict was driven by class on one level but essentially was a war from (and resistance to) latino racist and voilent behaviour towards the natives. This isnt brutal conquistador stuff, its modern history and puts your heavily flawed and biassed position to shame. again and again silly sweeping statements trip you up as a anti-western axe grinder..   Well, if gringos founded the School of the Americas, and intervine in every civil war in the Americas during the last century, I have the right to suspect on them on this case as well. After all, tell me how do you distinguish an Indian from a "White" Guatemalan?   They were and are the same people, even the upper class Guatemalans share the same blood. So the killing were politically motivated rather than racist killings.

you may have a hard time since you cant read whats in front of you. The two sides don't belong to the one happy family and can easily be distinguished - language. One side doesn't speak Spanish. Apart from culture, geography and politics.

nor do comparisons to Argentina make any sense. I suggest you read up a little bit on Hispanics gone bad in Guatemala before you flog this off so cheaply. Nice try

i'll quote that source again (but ill do the whole section- my bolding)  just in case you missed it.

One of the most salient and divisive social constructs in Guatemala today is the issue of race. Ladinos (mestizo) make up approximately 40% and Native Americans make up the other 60% of the population. Ever since colonial times, Spaniards and Ladinos alike have subjected Native Americans to legal, social, political, and economic discrimination. Since these Maya cultures do not speak Spanish, ladino landowners often forcibly evict them from their plots of land and take over. Rigoberta Menchu herself describes how local plantation owners did this to her village community, forcing them to leave their land after tricking her father, an illiterate, Quiche-speaking village leader, into signing a document in Spanish binding the natives to leave the land after two years of occupation (Burgos-Debray, p.103-4). She also describes the blatant racism practiced against her and her family both in Guatemala city and the fincas (plantations). The ladinos (often assumed to be the agricultural elite, military, and government), cannot easily assimilate the Mayas into their culture because of the Mayas' deep commitment to preserving their own traditions. Despite the knowledge among the native peoples that to preserve and embrace their culture in Guatemala is synonymous with life-long suffering, destitution, death, hunger, and illness, they persevere as a community to maintain their practices through oral history and to reject most notions of ladino culture. One of the results of this internalized ethnic policy is that most Mayan parents refuse to send their children to public schools or to learn Spanish, because then their children become assimilated into Guatemalan culture and leave the community. Rigoberta Menchu's father, for example, did not want to send her to school even though he recognized that his daughter could learn important things there and increase her chances for happiness in life. He decided this because he said that children who go to public schools soon start dressing differently and trying to distance themselves from their Mayan communities. While this may preserve Mayan culture, it also passes down to new generations disenfranchisement through speechlessnes

but there's more! i'll now quote the other source so people can see laitinos can committ genocide based o their own home grown racism to.

The statements quoted in the Truth Commissions´ report are derived from military plans or manuals, and from newspapers. As the commissioners could not verify the extent to which these were programmatic and strategic statements, they decided to prove genocidal intent from the pattern of repressive acts. They found sufficient evidence of a systematic pattern of coordinated acts, which were committed with the intent to destroy Mayan groups.

page 14*

same page

Identifying the local population with the guerilla, the military first sought to kill community leaders. Increasingly, entire communities became target groups and massacres the cornerstone of repressive operations. The commission’s investigation revealed that a large number of children and women were direct victims of torture, rape, arbitrary execution, forced disappearance and massacres. Between 1981 and 1982, the military carried out scorched earth operations, often with helicopter support, killing community leaders, raping women, massacring entire communities, burning the field  and destroying sacred places. In the Ixil region, being one of the areas most affected by the scorched earth operations, between 70% and 90% of all communities were destroyed (the number is estimated, because the total number of communities had never been registered (CEH, Vol. III: 345, § 3311). According to the CEH, the percentage of Mayan victims was significantly higher than the percentage of the indigenous population in the regions analyzed: in the Ixil region, 97,8% of the victims were Maya (Rabinal: 98,8%, northern Huehuetenango: 99,3% and Zacualpa: 98,4%) (CEH, Vol. III: 417-418, § 3581).

*http://www.giga-hamburg.de/dl/download.php?d=/content/publikationen/pdf/wp19_oettler.pdf

same people its seesm can also be accessed here;
http://www.massviolence.org/Guatemala-The-State-of-Research?artpage=1#outil_sommaire_0



Edited by Leonidas - 30-Jun-2008 at 11:39

Originally posted by pinguin Good point. Not all europeans at all are guilty of what happened here, but the European colonial powers.

And those don't exist either.

There was lots of crimes during the Cold War, when fascists (allies of the U.S.A.) and communists (allies of the U.S.S.R.) fight each other in bloody civil wars.

So when Ríos Montt said Mayans should be rounded up to live in model villages (=concentration camps) because they are naturally more naive, simple and childish and therefore more likely to fall for communism that had nothing to do with racism?

When Rigoberta Menchú recently was not allowed to enter an international conference in Cancún where she was invited to speak that had nothing to do with racism? If she was looking European and wearing western clothes surely the same would have happened?

And the fact that students in Guatemala with Mayan surnames have to change their names into Spanish surnames because otherwise there's no possibility they'll ever be admitted to a university has nothing to do with racism either?

And the fact that all through Latin America the indigenous are significantly poorer, receive less education, have less acces to healthcare, and overall have their rights respected less than mestizos and whites has nothing to do with racism either?

And the fact that half the population of Guatemala is Mayan but nonetheless there has never been a single indigenous president has nothing to do with racism either? That's just the Cold War surely?

And Bolivia, with a comparable percentage of indigenous, only just having their first indigenous president is also coincidence?

And today when white Bolivians are protesting agains the government because it 'smells like Indian' that's not racist either?

People denying racism is rampant in Latin America you're either blind, naive or racists themselves.

Originally posted by Mixcoatl So when Ríos Montt said Mayans should be rounded up to live in model villages (=concentration camps) because they are naturally more naive, simple and childish and therefore more likely to fall for communism that had nothing to do with racism? When Rigoberta Menchú recently was not allowed to enter an international conference in Cancún where she was invited to speak that had nothing to do with racism? If she was looking European and wearing western clothes surely the same would have happened? And the fact that students in Guatemala with Mayan surnames have to change their names into Spanish surnames because otherwise there's no possibility they'll ever be admitted to a university has nothing to do with racism either? And the fact that all through Latin America the indigenous are significantly poorer, receive less education, have less acces to healthcare, and overall have their rights respected less than mestizos and whites has nothing to do with racism either? And the fact that half the population of Guatemala is Mayan but nonetheless there has never been a single indigenous president has nothing to do with racism either? That's just the Cold War surely? And Bolivia, with a comparable percentage of indigenous, only just having their first indigenous president is also coincidence? And today when white Bolivians are protesting agains the government because it 'smells like Indian' that's not racist either? People denying racism is rampant in Latin America you're either blind, naive or racists themselves.

Edited by pinguin - 05-Jul-2008 at 05:13

Originally posted by pinguin   Racism are conflicts between different races. Black Brazilians or Colombians can suffer racism in other parts of Latin America. Indians and mestizos, both are mixed. In many cases you can't distinguish who belong to a one or another group, at least you are informed. There are Indians that look white, and "Westerners" that look Indian. So, your charges of racism don't make much sense.   In this case we have discussing a different evil, which is ETHNIC discrimination.   The very fact that Indians change theirs names to Spanish, to escape discrimination clearly shows it is not easy to pick Indians in the melting pot that is Latin America, at least they "dress" as Indians, "speak" and Indigenous language or talk like Indians and carry Indigenous Last Names.   In other words, the conflict you describe -that exist- is not "racial" but ETHNIC.   As I explain it before, in the United States is the opposite. Blacks and White share the same culture, but the differencies are genetical between them, not ethnic.   Use the words and terms correctly, please, to continue the argument. As I say before, I don't deny ethnic conflicts exists between Indigenous and Europeized populations in Latin America.

Modern biology does not recognize the existence of human races, if there needs to be an actual racial difference for racism to be possible all racism is ethnic discrimination, so using your definition racism is per definition impossible. And even if one still believes human races exist it doesn't hold: both Jews and Germans are 'white', so that would mean the Holocaust had nothing to do with racism, which would of course be a ridiculous claim.

Differences in 'blood' or 'genetics' do not really matter, what is important is that there is a percieved difference. In any case mestizos and criollos that 'ethnically discriminate' indigenous definately don't consider themselves to be of the same race as indigenous people. The argument that people with indigenous ancestors can't be racist because of their heritage doesn't hold either; for example there are many examples of antisemites with Jewish ancestor.

If there is an actual (racial) difference or not is irrelevant: if racists percieve the other as 'different' it has the same effects irregardless of the question if the other is indeed different or not. After all, delusions are what racism is based on.


Edited by Mixcoatl - 05-Jul-2008 at 17:26