It is the story of a human tragedy, that of the discovery of the Americas by European empires, starting in 1492. ‘Épinal, that of the explorer Christopher Columbus setting foot on an almost virgin continent full of riches. However, the reality was quite different and less glorious. Many specialists and anthropologists have since set the record straight, including the American historian David E. Stannard who, as early as the 1990s, maintained in his works that the European colonization of the Americas led to one of the most major series of genocides in history.
In The Genocide of the Americassociologist Moema Viezzer and doctor of social sciences of Quebec origin Marcel Grondin, both based in Toledo, Brazil, give us a brief but well-documented overview of the gradual disappearance of the first peoples of America, the Land of Fire at the North Pole.
The challenge of such an undertaking is daunting. The authors attempt, in 360 pages, to draw up an inventory of the destruction across an immense territory which they divide into five major regions: the Caribbean, Mexico, the central Andes, Brazil and the United States. The whole, which can be read in one go – despite the disasters and dramas discussed – is above all intended to be didactic.
Always with a pedagogical concern, the book, intended for a wide audience, looks back on several key moments which pushed, from the XVe century, the European powers to seek new sea routes.
The increasingly heavy rights of passage imposed by the Ottoman Empire convinced the Spaniards and the Portuguese to venture on the shores of the Atlantic.
From the point of view of the oppressed
The Genocide of the Americas also highlights the springs of the colonial, “capitalist and imperial” machine that motivated the first invaders, whether they were Spanish, Portuguese, English or French.
Like Howard Zinn with his People’s History of the United States (2003), the authors recount the consequences of the discovery from the perspective of the oppressed. On a continental scale, Viezzer and Grondin count more than 70 million victims, not hesitating to qualify this slaughter as “the greatest genocide in human history”.
Note that the last chapter, devoted specifically to Canada, is written by Innu historian Pierrot Ross-Tremblay, originally from Essipit on the North Shore, in collaboration with lawyer Nawel Hamidi. We also learn that in 1492, the country had 2 million Aboriginal people. They were only 120,000 in 1913.
But faced with these staggering figures, the essay also returns to the many struggles and attempts at resistance on the part of the first peoples. In the heart of the Amazon jungle or in the prairies of the American West, men and women, dispossessed and humiliated, rose up against the oppressor. A fight for survival that continues in the four corners of the Americas, the authors recall.