The Struggle for Justice in the Spanish Conquest of America

Abstract

Spaniards differ among themselves in many ways and on many subjects. So it has always been and so it is today, as the presence in the Americas of hundreds of Spain’s best scientists, scholars, and creative artists who no longer care or dare to live in their homeland testifies. Most Spaniards, however, agree in one belief — that the discovery and colonization of the New World was their country’s greatest and most significant contribution to the world. Of course they by no means agree on what precisely that contribution was and there have been some Spaniards, during and after the conquest, who bitterly and publicly protested part or all of Spanish policy and action in America. For Spaniards have never hidden from the world their robust and penetrating criticism of Spain. The phrase “My country, right or wrong!” could never have been struck off by a Spaniard.