Recently, several formerly colonized nations have renewed calls for reparations from their colonizers, who plundered resources and thrived on the backs of enslaved and indigenous peoples. It’s a parasitic history that stretches back to “Hey, stop acting superior and get out of our cave.”
These appeals have typically fallen into the dull indifference of history. Unless you count the occasional apology — though, looking back, nearly every major nation on Earth would owe one.
Still, the appeals carry legitimacy. The psycho-dynamics of colonization can ripple across generations, affecting even the descendants of the oppressers.
Mexico is a good example. Five hundred years after being conquered and transformed by the Spanish, Mexico lives today in a cultural haze of national identity. One culture placated their gods with human sacrifices to create world order while the new culture had a God sacrifice himself to achieve the same. The resulting cultural shift was a brain-bender, stirring guilt and psychic dissonance among modern Mexicans.
This brings up many unanswerable questions:
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