The 'policy on barbarians' formulated by the early-nineteenth-century Colombian liberal Pedro Fermín de Vargas
池田光穂
The following sentences are cited from Benedict Anderson's "Imagied Communities," 1991, Verso verstion.
"Consider, for example, the following 'policy on barbarians' formulated by the early-nineteenth-century Colombian liberal Pedro Fermín de Vargas:
To expand our agriculture it would be necessary to hispanicize our Indians. Their idleness, stupidity, and indifference towards normal endeavours causes one to think that they come from a degenerate race which deteriorates in proportion to the distance from its origin ... it would be very desirable that the Indians be extinguished, by miscegenation with the whites, declaring them free of tribute and othercharges, and giving them private property in land. 6)
*6: John Lynch, The Spanish.American Revolutions, 1808-1826, p. 260. Emphasis added.
How striking it is that
this liberal still proposes to 'extinguish' his Indians in part by
'declaring them free of tribute' and 'giving them private property in
land', rather than exterminating them by gun and microbe as his heirs
in Brazil, Argentina, and the United States began to do soon
afterwards. Note also, alongside the condescending cruelty, a cosmic
optimism: the Indian is ultimately redeemable _ by impregnation with
white, 'civilized' semen, and the acquisition of private property ,like
everyone else. (How different Fermin's attitude is from the later
European imperialist's preference for 'genuine' Malays, Gurkhas, and
Hausas over 'half-breeds,' 'semi-educated natives,' 'wogs', and the
like.)" (Anderson 1991:11-12)
+++
Bibliography:
Do not paste, but [re]think this message for all undergraduate students!!!