Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde is a historian, writer and lecturer. He specializes in history, philosophy of history and Western politics. His main areas of interest are the history of Spain and the Catholic Church, the New Right and Cultural Marxism. He is the author of nine books, including 1492. The end of barbarism. The beginning of civilization in America et L’Inquisition : Myth or reality? which have been translated and published in different parts of the world.
He received several awards in Argentina and Mexico, and in 2016 the United States Library of Congress acquired his works and added them to its catalog. We talked about his latest book Imaginary towns. The black book of indigenism (Imaginary peoples. The black book of indigenism), published in September 2024.
Our colleague Álvaro Peñas interviewed him for The European Conservative, translation by us.
A few weeks ago, on October 12, we celebrated Día de la Hispanidad (Columbus Day) and, as usual, we talked about “commemorating the genocide” or that “Spain must ask for forgiveness” , as did the President of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum. Do many people still believe this story?
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: There is a lot of opportunism, but this narrative is still relevant and many people believe in indigenism. What is this story? Basically, the good Indians and the bad Spaniards: the Spaniards occupied land that didn’t belong to them and did all sorts of bad things. This story is believed by many people and has political implications, because all the demands of indigenism, totally monopolized by the left, are accepted to compensate for this historical mistreatment. And then there is the rise of radical indigenousism, especially in Argentina and Chile, in the Patagonia region, where there are armed movements carrying out actions that can be described as terrorist. This radical indigenism was born in the 1970s under the leadership of Fausto Reinaga, a Bolivian intellectual who overthrew the original indigenism of the early 20th century, which defended indigenous culture but sought to assimilate it. From the 1970s, indigenism evolved towards a more radical discourse which opposed assimilation and spoke of the extermination of the white man.
In the 1930s, there was already a Marxist current which took up the indigenist discourse in the sense of “oppressor and oppressed”.
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: Yes, with José Carlos Mariátegui, founder of the Peruvian Communist Party, who was the first to consider the continent’s indigenous people as a revolutionary subject, replacing class struggle with race struggle. This caused a malaise in Soviet communism, which demanded extreme obedience from other communist parties, and marked the beginning of what might be called socialism a la carte. Mariátegui and others I quote in the book criticize the Hispanic period, but there is no radicalism like that seen from the 1970s onwards. There is even some recognition of the Hispanic period compared to the period of independence, and they recognize that the natives lived better with Spain than after the arrival of the “liberators”.
In the 1970s, indigenism was reinforced by its links with various terrorist groups. With the defeat or disappearance of these groups, is it Chavismo that takes up this banner?
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: There is a quote from Hugo Chávez in the mid-1990s, in which he says that the indigenous people will be the vector of building socialism on the continent. But before Chávez, indigenismo was already promoted by the Sao Paulo Forum in 1992. The left, forced to rethink itself after the fall of the Berlin Wall, is looking for new revolutionary subjects: feminism, LGBT, gender ideology, etc. The indigenous is the revolutionary subject par excellence chosen for the American continent, an artificial conflict created by a completely false narrative with the aim of undermining the foundations of the culture it wants to destroy, that is, Christian culture Western. By idealizing the native and criminalizing the European, it is the identity of Americans that is attacked.
This false narrative is built around myths. Could you name some of the most common ones?
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: I cite ten in the book, but I would like to emphasize the following three. The first is the myth of the “original Indian”, which would give him the power to decide everything that happens on the continent. However, it has been scientifically proven that there are no original Indians on the continent; the Indians arrived before the Europeans. The Indians did not even occupy the entire territory, and when the Spanish arrived, they only knew a tiny part of the continent; it was the Spaniards who traveled and discovered the territory, who populated it and who built its infrastructure.
The second big myth is that it is a conquest, whereas for indigenous peoples, as many of them claim in their historical accounts, it is a liberation. Mesoamerica had five million inhabitants. How were a few hundred Spaniards able to seize this territory? Because many natives were fed up with Aztec oppression and made common cause with the Spanish. Unlike what had happened before, Spain integrated the Indians into its empire and, within two generations, Indians were studying in the metropolis: they were teachers, priests, stewards, governors, etc. Faced with this fact, we try to explain the victory by the technological superiority of their weapons, but we know that this is absurd and that the truth is that 98% of the Spanish armies were made up of Indians.
Finally, there is the myth of genocide. It too has been repeatedly refuted, since 99% of deaths occurring in contact with the Spanish were due to smallpox and other diseases against which the Indians had no means of defense. But this was not new in Mesoamerica, and there were demographic massacres before the arrival of the Spanish, as shown by the indigenous codices themselves and anthropological research; this is even confirmed by Marxist anthropologists, whom I cite because I prefer to use sources that are not favorable to the Spanish. Many Europeans also died from indigenous diseases.
The government of Javier Milei released a video celebrating Columbus Day. It seems that something is changing.
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: Yes, this is the first time in eighty years that an Argentine government has recognized Columbus Day. This is a question of identity, and what we see before us is a big lie. For example, the name that has been used in Argentina to replace Columbus Day is “Cultural Diversity Day”, although there has been no greater enemy of cultural diversity and tolerance than indigenous peoples themselves, who waged constant wars for racial and religious reasons. There is no greater inconsistency than seeing LGBT and feminist banners defending ancestral cultures. In the book, I quote feminist and Marxist authors who argue that women have never been trampled and abused as much as in these cultures. Of course, what unites all these banners is the common enemy, but it is necessary to point out all these inconsistencies to the unwary who allow themselves to be misled by these ideas.
It is also important to dismantle the narrative of indigenous victimization. At present, the only privileged group is that of the indigenous people because, simply because they are indigenous, they have the right to own the best lands, to rent them and even to sell them; they benefit from tax exemptions and structural subsidies. The real losers are whites and coloreds, not indigenous people.
In your book, you talk about “plurinationalism”, a term which recalls the plurinational Spain desired by the left and separatism. What does this term mean in Hispanic America and how far has it spread?
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: I think one of the most accurate descriptions is that indigenismo, as a product of 21st century socialism, has managed to introduce the question of separatism in an open way. A Bolivian intellectual, Alvaro García Linera, vice-president of Evo Morales, affirms that indigenismo has two strategic ways of taking power: violent and constitutional. In the latter, the figure of plurinationalism appears, as in the Bolivian and Ecuadorian constitutions. What does plurinationalism mean? Previously, there was the idea of interculturalism, which recognized the existence of different ethnic groups and the equality of all before the law; but plurinationalism gives all indigenous cultures recognized in each country the same powers as the national state. For example, there are twenty in Argentina, ten in Chile and more than forty in Bolivia. This is in fact a de facto and de jure separatism, and a plurinational nation is an absurdity, an oxymoron, because it means dividing the State into ten, twenty or forty parts.
The current goal of indigenism is to introduce plurinationalism into national constitutions with the support of the UN, which seeks recognition of indigenous peoples as states within nation-states. In short, plurinationalism is a prelude to separatism and the breakup of the nations of the continent.
For what purpose?
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: So that the left, the socialism of the 21st century, has the strength to overthrow any conservative or right-wing government that faces it. It is a sort of Trojan horse, financed from Venezuela and promoted by figures like Nicolas Maduro and Evo Morales.
A Trojan horse from the Sao Paulo Forum?
Cristián Rodrigo Iturralde: Yes, and also international socialism, because we find foundations which support indigenism in England and Holland, foundations led by Marxists, and the same goes for the prestigious European and American universities which have become centers of ‘indoctrination. Indigenism is at the service of socialism. Then other actors appeared, such as radical Islam, with whom alliances were concluded against the common enemy: Western civilization.
Photo d’illustration : Pixabay (cc)
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