But Las Casas’s sympathy for “the Indians,” and later the laws he tried to pass to prevent abuses against them, did not become the dominant mood at court, did it?

Instead, there were multiple riots, death threats, and assassination attempts against Las Casas.

Demonstrably false:

“ What about Columbus himself? Try as they might (and they have tried mightily), historians have been unable to find any evidence that Columbus was genocidal, or had any particular ill-will towards the Native Americans that he encountered.”

Todorov (1982):

Choice sentence from Columbus himself: “With 50 men your Highnesses would hold them all in subjection and do with them all that you could wish.”

And this is a statement from Columbus’s 14-year old son after a family of “Indians” commits suicide rather than become prisoners of the Spanish:

“For those of us who were on board our ship, their death was not a great loss.”

And I’ll just let Michele de Cuneo, one of Columbus’s men, tell you himself about the time he raped a native woman that Columbus “gave” to him:

I will leave you with Aimé Césaire's words from Discourse on Colonialism: "They talk to me about progress, about 'achievements,' diseases cured, improved standards of living. I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot,

"institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.

"They dazzle me with the tonnage of cotton or cocoa that has been exported, the acreage that has been planted with olive trees or grapevines. I am talking about natural economies that have been disrupted — harmonious and viable economies adapted to the indigenous population —

about food crops destroyed, malnutrition permanently introduced, agricultural development oriented solely toward the benefit of the metropolitan countries, about the looting of products, the looting of raw materials.

"They talk to me about civilization. I talk about proletarianization and mystification.

"For my part, I make a systematic defense of the non-European civilizations.

"Every day that passes, every denial of justice, every beating by the police, every demand of the workers that is drowned in blood, every scandal that is hushed, every punitive expedition, every gendarme and every militiaman, brings home to us the value of our old societies.

"They were communal societies, never societies of the many for the few. They were societies that were not only ante-capitalist, as has been said, but also anti-capitalist.
They were democratic societies, always."

FIN.