Similarities Between Slavery And Spanish Slavery

Portuguese and Spanish Slavery
Thus when Portugal and Spain established the first American colonies, they first introduced Africans as a labor source in the New World. Both encountered difficulties turning the native American people into a slave labor force. The Spanish were more successful as they encountered the settled agraian societies of the Andes and central Mexico. The Spanish engaged in a debate concerning the humanity of the Native Americans. The Native Americans were in the end turned into serfs with a status similar to slavery. Actual slavery, however, became the lot of the Africans imported from Africa. The democraphics of Latin America shows the dichotomy. Spanish colonies where the Native Americans were reduced to serfdom have
Slavery helped build America. It is a major reason why America developed differently than Europe. It is also a major cause of the disparities that now exist among Americas (much greater than in Europe), and the roots of major social problems are rooted in slvevery. Two historians write that the legacy os slavery, "... remains in the history and heritage of the South that it shaped, in the culture of the North, where its memory was long denied, in the national economy for which it provided much of the foundation, and in the political and social system it prfoundly influenced." [Horton and Horton] Despite the importance of slavery in the Americam epoch, slavery until recently has been a subjected avoided by American historians. To the extent that slavery was addressed, it tended to be discussed in terms that accepted the southern myth of idelic plantation life and benign white masters struggling to deal with lazy, workers ith a child-like mentality. This has changed in recent years as historians produce more realistic treement of slavery. One area in which progress has been disappointing is school textbooks. The egregiously racist treatment has been removed from textboks, but for the most part school rextbooks still give little attention to slavery and the discussion presented is usually not illuuminating. One problem here is the economics of school textbooks and the need to meet the editorial demands of large states. Here Texas is a particular problem. American schools have attempted to deal with the racial issue bu designating February as Black History Month. Unfortunately rarely does Black History Month address slavery. Rather it generally amounts to an innoucous effort to point out Blacks who have contributed to America which do little to explain social inequities in America. The avoidance of slavery is not just a matter of white unwillingness to address slavery, but many Black