So you're saying that because when Spain was in charge they didn't train Mexicans to lead, they haven't learned how since?
Wakeup Call From Mexico: Wilson Beck: 9780692003404: Amazon.com: Books
Just an excerpt or two from a book review:
Chapter II – The Collapse of the Golden Age of Mexico
>" Beck makes an important point about the differences between the British settlement of what is now the U.S. and Spain's settlement of Mexico. When Cortes landed in 1519 there were between 10 and 30 million people in Mexico. When pilgrims arrived in 1620 there were fewer than 5 million Indians in what is now the U.S. And, the culture south of the border was well developed based on agriculture, whereas American Indians were hunter-gatherers.
"When the Spaniards first gazed upon the city and floating gardens of Tenochtitlan (Mexico City), they were dumbfounded by what they saw. It was planned and built in a geometric grid with wide avenues, floating vegetable and flower gardens and beautiful pyramids." "the cultures of central Mexico rivaled most European cultures in terms of architecture, engineering, math, and Astronomy, " Beck Reports
To the north, the indigenous population was either dead or on reservations by 1900. To the south the Spaniards began to intermingle with the indigenous people of Mexico. "The vast majorities of modern day Mexicans cling to their indigenous roots rather more than they do their European or Spanish roots," Beck writes.
"The biggest difference between Mexico and the U.S., historically, is that the Spaniards interbred with the indigenous people and the English did not."..."<
Chapter IV – The New Mexican-European Hybrid
Following the fall of the Aztec empire Spain moved to consolidate its power over Mexico. "The Spaniards had no respect for a people they considered inferior and almost subhuman by any measure," Beck writes. "The resulting Mexican became one of the most extraordinary misfits, incapable, maladjusted, human beings imaginable," he opines.
"The impact of the Spaniard on the Mexican culture was diametric. On the one hand he was liberating the Mexican from a barbarous, inhuman past. On the other he was enslaving the culture to in order to exploit the continent of its riches. Which was worse?"
The population of Mexico was decimated. Death due to battle, smallpox, typhus and "attrition caused by the brutal treatment from the Spaniards" amounted to extinction of the Mexican people. After 1521 and toward the end of the century, the native population of Mexico was reduced by from 78 to 95 percent. Beck says demographers agree that by 1595 the Mexican population had been reduced to somewhere between 1.1 and 3.5 million people.
Beck says Mexico became New Spain and immigrants from Spain began arriving by the thousands and then tens of thousands. Beck says for the first 50 years after the conquest very few Spanish women came to Mexico. As a result Spanish men took Mexican concubines, but very few married. Since many of the Spaniards were already married, they were committing bigamy or polygamy – illegal under Spanish law, but permitted in Mexico. "The Aztecs had practiced polygamy, so he Spaniards quickly followed suit," Beck says.
The children of Spaniards born in Mexico were called Criollos. They were white, but didn't have the same rights or privileges as their Spanish-born equivalents. The mixed offspring of Spanish and Crillos with the Mexican were called Mestizos.
Beck draws a parallel between the makeup of the Mexican family unit in the U.S. resulting from the co-mingling of illegal immigrants and citizens to the situation in 16th century Mexico. He says many Mexican men who come to the U.S. illegally leave families behind. Many of these men, Beck says, find a U.S. partner who is a U.S. citizen female to marry and acquire U.S. citizenship.
"It was acceptable for the 16th century Spanish immigrant to father and then shirk the familial responsibility of fatherhood," ..."<
Book Review by Glenn Spencer: A Wakeup Call from Mexico
