“Not least among the speculations that stirred the breast of the Spanish commander (Francisco Pizarro) was the rumor that had reached his ear of discord between the rival candidates for the throne of the monarch lately deceased (1526). Civil war would be a providence indeed at this juncture, not less kind than that which gave Montezuma’s throne to Cortes.”
– pg. 16, HISTORY OF CENTRAL AMERICA, Vol II 1530-1800, by Hubert Howe Bancroft, Arno Press, San Francisco, 1886.
“Why do you delay?” cries the enraged monk (Vicente de Valverde) to Pizarro as he picks up the sacred volume. “In God’s name at them! Kill the impious dogs!”
– pg. 29, ibid.
At the time when Jack Johnson was struggling to get a crack of the heavyweight boxing title a century ago, white supremacy racism was so powerful that whites were arguing, with the greatest of confidence, that blacks were such inferior beings where character and guts were concerned, that they could not defeat a white man in the boxing ring. Today, such a view of black boxers has been proven to be laughable, but Johnson for many years was denied his rights in the ring because he was black.
Half a century ago when American cowboy movies were the vogue in movie theatres in Belize, the white producers and directors who made these movies, depicted Indians (native Americans) as silly where military tactics were concerned. In the propaganda cowboy movies, the white cowboys would circle their covered wagons and crouch behind them with their rifles at the ready. The made-for-movie Indians would then rush the wagons whooping and hollering in a suicidal frenzy, whereupon they would be coolly picked off by the “heroic” white riflemen. In real life, however, what the Indians would do was ride around the wagons just out of rifle range. The panicky whites would fire and fire at the noisy “savages” until their ammunition ran out, whereupon the Indians would deal with the matter.
On page 3 of last weekend’s issue of THE BELIZE TIMES, a Cabinet Minister elected in 2003 as a Belize City area representative on the ruling PUP ticket, gave his opinion on the conquest of Peru by Francisco Pizarro. The PUP Cabinet Minister was setting the table for a column whose purpose was the extolling of the abilities and accomplishments of the British corporate raider, Lord Michael Ashcroft.
Here is what the PUP Cabinet Minister wrote: “In 1532, Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro, with a handful of soldiers, entered Cajamarca, Peru, and within minutes captured Emperor Atahuallpa in the middle of his kingdom millions of subjects, surrounded by 80,000 of his soldiers. Pizarro promised to free Atahuallpa in return for gold, filling a room 22’ x 17’ x 8’ (high) – history’s largest ransom. Pizarro got the gold and executed Atahuallpa. He was able to pull off this spectacular feat because of superior technological weapons.”
This was the Minister’s first paragraph. In his second paragraph, he wrote: “When Michael Ashcroft came to Belize, he …. became the most dominant economic force in Belize. He was able to do this because he was, of course, already hugely wealthy, had international experience and deployed superior, sophisticated financial know how.”
Well, the average reader will conclude, because of the juxtaposition of the Minister’s paragraphs, that Mr. Minister’s intention is to compare Mr. Ashcroft to Pizarro, the former being the contemporary financial raider of Belize and the latter being the violent conqueror of Peru almost five hundred years ago.
I suppose it can be a good thing if one does not make much of one’s ethnicity. The American golfer Tiger Woods, who has become a billionaire in about ten years, is the son of a black American father and an Asian mother. He has referred to himself as a “Cablinasian,” taking into account his varied ancestors. He has avoided his African ancestry. He has married a white woman. Tiger never discusses race publicly. So far, so good. Remember, black people never elected Tiger to anything.
What happened in Peru in 1532, was very similar to what happened in Mexico in 1521. Peru, like Mexico, was a spectacular kingdom, but beneath the awesome power and wealth of Atahuallpa and Montezuma bubbled the resentment and hate of the tribes and peoples they had conquered in order to establish their kingdoms. When Pizarro reached Peru, the kingdom was in a state of civil war. Huayna Capac, the twelfth monarch from the foundation of the Inca dynasty, had died in 1526. The lawful heir to the throne, son of Huayna Capac’s sister–wife, was Huascar, next to whom as heir apparent stood Manco Capac, son of another of Huayna’s wives who was his cousin. But the deceased Huayna Capac’s favorite son was Atahuallpa, son of yet another wife, and just before Pizarro arrived, Atahuallpa had marched against Huascar, defeated and captured his brother, and had taken possession of the imperial city of the Incas.
Consider a modern example of a state falling quickly to an alien invader. Consider Iraq under Saddam Hussein. Saddam achieved power because he defeated all his opponents. But the majority of the Iraqis are Shiites, and they were bitterly opposed to Saddam. So were the Kurds, who are third in number after the Shiites and the Sunnis, who supported Saddam. Once the Americans entered Iraq, Saddam was blown out of the water, because the balance of power swung decisively against him. Shiites and Kurds supported the American invader. Basically, that was what happened to Montezuma when Cortes entered Mexico, and Atahuallpa when Pizarro invaded Peru. Yes, Cortes and Pizarro had superior technology, but it was not as simple as that. The Spanish conquistadores found native collaborators who had grievances with their own rulers.
If Michael Ashcroft has conquered Belize, one of the reasons for this is because he has found willing native collaborators, and through his column last week this particular Cabinet Minister has voluntarily exposed himself as one such. I can see that our Cabinet Minister must be a Belizean Tiger Woods, which is to say, a man who has no consciousness of his own ethnicity. Such a calculated ignorance has probably contributed to his remarkable political success.
The conventional story of Montezuma and Atahuallpa, as told in our schools by the priests and nuns, carries the unmistakable suggestion that the pagans were idiots. The fact that the Christians were murderers and rapists, is prettily glossed over.
On a whole, if ignorance is bliss, let me be unhappy. A Belizean politician who believes he can get away with this kind of tomfoolery, whether his problem is ignorance or treachery, is a Belizean politician who not only alarms me. Such a Belizean politician angers me.
Power to the people.