[Sca-cooks] Crusades and cannibalism and Humanity

[Ana Valdés]

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I think the point here is all the people in the world have a word for "us" and a
word for "others". The "others", the "foreigners", the "barbarians", the
"outlandish", the "heathens", the "impure" are always blamed of all nasty things
happen "us". It was the strategy the Jews used to see themselves as the "chosen
people", the Greeks to call others "meteque", or "barbarian", the same did the
Romans to call all "non-Romans", the Spaniards with the Indians, the Nazis with
the Jews, the white Southafricans with the black, the American today with the
Iraqui and others who are not "Americans".
I am an anthropologist and find very often we don't have clear historical facts
when we judge others behaviours. When the Spaniards come to South America (very
familiar for me, since I am born in Uruguay and my fathers family was among the
Conquistadores first wave, in the 1600-century), it was clear, if the Indians
have souls they were able to be converted to the Christianity. The Church held
many councils and discussions about that and the Nicea Council ruled in the
1600-century that the Indians hade souls but they were "underdeveloped", as
womens and childrens souls. They needed to be helped by men, the only ones with
complete developed souls. Women, children and Indians shared the same cathegory
of "otherness".
It was the only way to justify the imprisonement of people and the slavery and
the slaughter of the old American cultures.
It was the argument for the Crusades too, the people which lived in the Middle
East, jews and arabs, were not "we". The most fantastic thing was when Jerusalem
was conquered, in the 1100-century, 40.000 people were slaughtered and many
christen were killed there. They were Copts, black and brown people, the first
community converted to the Christianity by the Apostles, by the quality of
"black" or "brown" made dem invisible as christens to their burroughs.
Ana