I mean, Potosí was probably the worst thing Spain did on America, it was terrible and unexcusable, but it pales in comparison to what other people did.

People will always exagerate everything, or outright invent things. We didn't genocide, how do these people explain that Latinos, mixture of Spanish and Natives, exist if supposedly we wanted to exterminate natives? It doesn't make sense. Most of the deaths of indians were because of the smallpox, a thing we had absolutely no knowledge of or control over. Did we kill indians? Yes, of course, it was a conquest, but the number of people killed by Spanish blade are much, much, much less than the supposed "50 million", there weren't even 50 million indians in America since the downfall of the Mayans. And the colonial system's supposed brutality is again exagerated to a laughable extent. I'm not saying it was ideal, but I must remind people that the very indians oppressed by the Incas and Aztecs voluntarily joined the Spanish in order to overthrow their overlords, who saw them as lesser beings apt only for indentured servitude (slavery basically) at best or human sacrifice at worst. When Spain gained total control of the lands the pursue of civilization and Christianization took absolute priority above profit. No one mentions the Casta system, a rather lax societal structure, or the Repúblicas de Indios (reservations where a priest visited them once a week), or how about we reinverted 80% of the gold for public spending in the colonies (which Spanish, Indian and Mestizos shared), or the Leyes de Burgos or Leyes Nuevas for the protection of Indians from the encomenderos.

Spain is always vilified, people always say we were the worst and evilest, and it's utterly and completely false. No one knows about Juan Valiente, Estebanico, Juan de las Canarias, Juan Garrido... etc, these guys were black Africans (and Moorish) that went to America with their Spanish comrades. Juan Valiente was a Black Conquistador, helped found Santiago de Chile and was awarded a villa, so much for a racist Empire, eh? Truth is, Spain didn't care about race, it cared about culture, Spain deemed indian culture bad, quite understandably if you put yourselves on their shoes: We were fervent Catholics straight out of the Reconquista that lasted 8 centuries, against an enemy with a different religion and different values, we arrive to America and see beautiful peoples and cities, wonderful cultures, but also many shit stuff (mainly they're not Christian, but specially they couldn't tolerate the whole human sacrifice shite). So we go to war in order to bring the Light of Christ and civilization. Where we justified? Fuck no. Where we the bad guys? No, there are no bad guys in history, only different brightness levels of the same gray, and dare I say, our grey was brighter than the Aztec gray. I'll add the story of the city of San Agustín, which we opened to slaves running from the British, our King at the time, Carlos II, said the following «dando libertad a todos, tanto a los hombres como a las mujeres, sea ello ejemplo de mi liberalidad y dé lugar a que otros hagan lo mismo» translated means "Giving liberty to everybody, be it man or woman, let it be example of my liberality and may it make others do the same".

I am against the "black and white" history. History is grey, you cannot classify the past or the factions of the past in such broad cathegories as "the good" and "the bad", and much less when you judge them with a perspective of the 21st century and with the morals or ethics of our time. You have to put yourself in their shoes, and work from there.

I am against calling an Empire bad for having subjugated, because that was how the Big Game was played, and you either assimilated or bacame assimilated. I give Empires, regardless of racial, cultural or national background, the benefit of not having been ransacking brigands with no regards for the conquered, because just looking at the past we see that it's not true: from Alexander the Great, to the Moors in Spain, from the Romans to Spanish, the British and even the Americans, we see that each and every empire has brought progress and civilization to the conquered, some where harsher and rougher, some more humanitarian and benevolent, but no one was inhumane enough to outright erradicate the conquered or to completely erase the lands from existence.

I am against historical revisionism to taint the past in bad light in order to promote agendas. Like politicians saying to minorities "We treated you [exagerates greatly] super bad in the past, vote for me and I'll atone for the crimes", making themselves look like paladins of justice while in reality they're lying to both parties and fabricating barriers of divide so that they can gain some votes from the minorities.

All of this is so rampant nowadays that it literally "triggers" me when I read fabricated or exagerated stuff. It makes my blood boil that people can sully the names of millions of people of the past because they can't be arsed to investigate, or because they swallow the kool-aid of lies. Fuck that, I ain't gonna do that, I stand by the truth, the closer I can to it, my truth might not be perfect, but it is closer to that than the shit I have to read sometimes.