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Forum nameOkay Activist Archives
Topic subjectROUND THREE
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=22&topic_id=14078&mesg_id=14095
14095, ROUND THREE
Posted by guest, Thu Apr-19-01 04:08 PM
3)SOUTH AMERICA

The Peruvians were used to war, but it was a war conducted according to strict rules, it was relatively mild and humane, and victory was wisely and economically used. They now found themselves opposed to a new kind of human being who waged war à outrance, inspired by a terrifying religion which enabled them to use treachery, hypocrisy, cruelty, torture, and massacre in the name of a God of Love; who were indifferent to the suffering they inflicted and superhumanly stoical in bearing suffering which their own conduct entailed for themselves...(260)

God, gold and glory. These three words are often used to describe the conquest of the natives of the New World, and with the situation of the Incas it could not be more true. Because of these three words, an entire empire of people fell and will never return to their former glory. The Spanish gave little thought to it though. The Indians "were enslaved, tortured, and worked to death to provide the Europeans with gold. They were infected by the newcomers with tuberculosis, measles, and smallpox" (262). They were forced to convert to a religion that they did not believe in. Edward Hyams said it best with his use of an analogy. He compared the Inca civilization to that of a dance where all of the patterns are the same and it continues day to day without faltering or interruption. He says, "the great dance had been their reality; they awoke into the nightmare of chaos" (263). It was a chaos that destroyed to lives that they knew and that would be forever changed.

(((((PEACE)))))

"never do what they do." -the roots