BY MICHAEL WALSH
https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-great-cultural-revolution-american-style/
October 4, 2018
(AP)
Who knew that even Gold Rushers were symbols of the racist hegemonic toxic male patriarchy that has plotted against women and minorities from time immemorial? First Father Serra, now Prospector Pete:
Towering over the courtyard at California State University, Long Beach, is the barrel-chested statue of Prospector Pete, the epitome of the rugged 49ers who came to the state looking for gold and land. To some, it is an innocuous icon harkening back to the university’s first president, Pete Peterson, who frequently spoke of having “struck the gold of education.” For others, the bearded and weathered statue is an upsetting relic that sanctions the brutish treatment of indigenous people in the state during the Gold Rush.
As scholars and students on campuses across the country grapple with debates over free speech and political correctness, Prospector Pete has emerged as a divisive symbol in California. “Walking by a statue that’s put in a prominent place on campus, in an almost honorary way, that’s another type of trauma that’s being imposed on me. This is a part of our family history,” said Miztlayolxochitl Aguilera, 20, who is of Tongva Indian descent. “I heard the stories of murder and rape and genocide growing up. Somebody else, they might not notice the statue. They might not feel what I feel as a California Indian when I see that symbol on campus.”
With a name like that, perhaps Miztlayolxochitl Aguilera ought to check out the history of the native peoples of the Americas, such as the Aztecs:
For decades, historians were skeptical of Spanish accounts documenting Aztec human-sacrifice rituals. They were generally thought to be historiographical—intended to portray indigenous Mesoamericans as more savage than they actually were, thus necessitating “civilized” colonial governance. This was, after all, a common justification employed throughout the 500 or so years of European colonialism around the world.
But archaeological evidence suggests human sacrifice was indeed a regular aspect of Aztec religious practices. And the zeal with which it was practiced can be traced back to the political reforms of one man—imperial vizier Tlacaelel, who, in 1428, launched a campaign of religious codification, military development, and territorial expansion that would, for lack of a better term, really piss off the Aztec’s neighbors.
“[The Aztecs were] a culture obsessed with death: they believed that human sacrifice was the highest form of karmic healing. When the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan was consecrated in 1487 the Aztecs recorded that 84,000 people were slaughtered in four days. Self-sacrifice was common and individuals would pierce their ears, tongues and genitals to nourish the floors of temples with their blood. Unsurprisingly, there is evidence that Mexico was already suffering from a demographic crisis before the Spanish arrived.”There’s no use denying it: Aztec sacrifice was a bloody, messy, brutal affair. There was nothing noble about it.
But hey let's blame Prospector Pete:
The school was built on the former site of the sacred village of Puvungna, where the Tongva indigenous people lived long before European contact. And beyond its early branding by Mr. Peterson, the university has no historical ties to the Gold Rush, having been founded a century after the so-called 49ers struck gold.
Now, after years of activism and a formal committee inquiry, Jane Conoley, the university’s president, announced last month that the statue will be formally moved. The cartoonish Prospector Pete costume mascot used at athletic games, which has been slowly phased out in recent years, will also be formally retired.
Ms. Aguilera, who recalled when her grandmother forbade her from acknowledging her indigenous ancestry, out of fear that it would lead to further marginalization, praised the move. “This is an acknowledgment of our trauma as indigenous people who suffered,” she said. “And it’s also an acknowledgment that we have to learn about these histories, about what’s going on around us.”
Ok, Ms. Conoley, let's learn some more!
Conquistadors sacrificed and eaten by Aztec-era people, archaeologists say
Spanish conquistadors, women, children and horses were imprisoned for months, sacrificed and eaten by contemporaries of the Aztecs, archaeologists report after unveiling new research from ruins near Mexico City. Although Spanish chroniclers including Hernán Cortés, who led the conquest of Mexico in 1520, recorded the capture of a convoy that year, archaeologists are for the first time uncovering details of what happened when a native people first encountered the Spanish, Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History said in an announcement of its findings.
Only a few dozen miles from the relative safety of the Spanish army, the convoy of conquistadors and allies encountered a local people known as the Acolhuas, allies of Tetzcoco, a major Aztec city. Somehow, the caravan – archaeologists estimate it included 15 Spaniards, 45 soldiers from the colonies, 50 women, 10 children and a large number of indigenous allies – was captured. Over the next six months, its members met a grisly end.
Traces of construction show that the Acolhuas had to remake Zultepec, a town just east of the capital, then called Tenochtitlan, to accommodate the prisoners, archaeologist Enrique Martinez said in a statement. The town was eventually renamed from Zultepec to Tecoaque, which in the native Nahuatl language means: “The place where they ate them.”
The archaeologists said the townspeople sacrificed people in honor of the serpentine fertility god Quetzalcoatl, the jaguar god Tezcatlipoca and the aquiline warrior god Huitzilopochtli. “Different deities needed different sacrifices,” Rosemary Joyce, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Guardian.
To seize the future, the Left must first erase the past.So to which deities are today's progressives sacrificing American history?
