★★★★★ 5
Disturbing but necessary read
Format: Paperback
Feels strange saying that I love a book that is as disturbing as this one is but I love that it's well-written and documented and it exposes some horrendous events in the history of the Americas as well as the world. Americans may well point fingers at the Nazis (and deservedly so) but it's a case of people in glass houses throwing stones. There is no question as to the repulsiveness and inhumanity of the genocide and mass murders perpetrated in Nazi Germany, Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, the Khmer Rouge's Cambodia, and in a host of African nations, to name a few; but in our own not too distant past similar atrocities were perpetrated on the native populations of the Americas by the Spanish, Portuguese, British, and colonists/Americans. While the inhumanity elsewhere in the world is touched upon to show where the mindset of this barbarity likely originated, the focus is on the impact in the Americas -- North, South, and Central. The book contains graphic, disturbing descriptions of the cruelty done to the natives by men who have long been esteemed for their alleged contributions in history. Most notably Christopher Columbus. In my time in grade school, he and the many other conquistadors and explorers were portrayed and men of courage and integrity. This book paints a different picture of them as greedy, bloodthirsty, remorseless killers of peoples who they considered inhuman or subhuman. More troubling is Christianity's participation in these actions. Not to blame Christianity for initiating it but to indict it for condoning and even commending the events. Peaceful races of people minding their own business, living in communities well planned and constructed and advanced for their time, and who welcomed the interlopers were obliterated them. Much of the death and destruction was caused by the introduction of European diseases such as smallpox that killed tens of millions but a large part was also caused by actions of odious proportions. Entire civilizations such as the Aztec and the Inca and the Arawak whose artifacts have since been admired and sought after were wiped off the face of the earth. Tens of millions of people slaughtered. Men, women, children butchered. In numbers likely to exceed those of the aforementioned genocides combined. The purpose being to acquire their lands and their riches. Considered to be no more than animals needed to be exterminated. This is our history.
This book should be required reading for everyone. The graphic descriptions of the savagery should cause outrage not only for the acts themselves but for a cultures that has covered up their crimes for centuries. And the holocaust has not ended yet.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2018
