(Diego López Colín/CNA) For renowned historian Jorge Traslosheros, who holds a doctorate in Latin American studies, the so-called “black legend” of the Spanish conquest of lands in the Americas arose “essentially and fundamentally as a profoundly anti-Catholic narrative.”
Traslosheros, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, explained to the Spanish edition of EWTN News that the “black legend” emerged in the 18th century and was consolidated in that same period, driven by the competition between England and Spain for “dominance in the American colonies.”
In this context, he said, England constructed a narrative, commonly known as the “black legend,” in which it presented its people as “the good guys in history — Anglicans, Protestants — against the perverse Spanish Catholic empire.”
For further reading:
- On this site, “The Black Legend,” by Eleonore Villarrubia
- The book by Bishop David Arias, Spanish Roots of America
And speaking of the Black Legend, if you have never seen BBC’s “The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition,” you should. It’s a 46-minute documentary that undermines the Black Legend with sound scholarship. This helps to undermine claims of the Church’s supposed malice and cruelty that we hear so much about from her enemies. The YouTube video of it is below.
