16■Pedro Fermin de Vargasの先住民観
・コロンビアの19世紀Pedro Fermin de Vargas(liberal)の先住民観(邦訳NTT版:1997:36-37)

"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)

Imagined communities : reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism / Benedict Anderson: hbk, : pbk. - Rev. ed. - London ; New York : Verso , 1991.

※文中:'wogs'は、訳者白石らによると、Westernized Oriental Gentleman であり、訳文では「白犬」(=白人に聞き分けのよい現地人)となっている。