Mayan Imperialism

When we rewind time and go back further in history, we begin to review a historic pattern of brutish colonization, to which the oppressors took it up themselves as champions pursuing a manifest destiny. For the most part, it was all about gaining a foothold on a region's resources and programs of asceticism for the locals. Our first example can be found in Central America with a young man named Deigo de Landa. Shortly after 1519 when the Spanish conquistadors conquered the Aztec Empire and stripped its temples of gold and other riches, a motivated young Landa was sent in with a group of monks whose task was to convert 300,000 natives on the Yucatán Peninsula. Wanting to serve the catholic church the best he can, he learned the Mayan language with such proficiency, that he was able to deliver his holy dogmatic message in a way that the locals could understand.

Landa and his monks began their occupation of conquest by first taking captive of the weaken Mayan Empire’s temples.

Seeing them in all their glory, he looked upon the buildings of T’ho and then converted them into catholic cathedrals and forced the locals to worship, while convincing them about their evil ways. Soon, those that were freshly converted were filled with the same religious zeal expressed by Landa and were ordered to destroy their own shrines, followed by their culture. While observing the full conversion, Landa documented, “We found large numbers of books with illustrations, but these contained only lies and devilry. We burned them all, which sorely aggravated the Maya causing them to sorrow greatly.” One can imagine all the useful historical documents that were set ablaze amongst the chaos, and as a consequence of this historic blunder, many researchers and archeologists are still picking up the pieces

today.

Colonization and Africa go together synonymously, and although a lot of people are unaware of it, the South African Boer Wars in 1899-1902 played a crucial role on how it shaped the South African landscape. The war was engaged between the British Empire, Australia, Canada and 80,000 Boer farmers, with the British mobilizing more than 470,000 troops, making it the most expensive war in British history. According to South African researcher and author of African Temples of the Anunnaki, Michael Tellinger, the British Empire sent everything they had to control the Boer situation. He adds, “This was a quite spectacular achievement on its own: to get as many troops, horses, canons, weapons, and more to the southern tip of Africa to fight against a band of farmers on horseback. Why? Because of the gold.” Gold, again, like in Central America with the Spanish conquistadors, seems to be the most sought out resource. But unlike the temples decorated in gold from the ground up in the Aztec Empire, the vast deposit of this precious metal was beneath the ground, under a dozen villages. Tellinger continues, “To achieve this victory over the Boer army, the British had to go to drastic measures. They adopted the “scorched earth” policy: burning farms, killing or confiscating livestock, and putting women and children into concentration camps across South Africa.” It’s been recorded that the death toll from these concentration camps exceeded 34,000. This insanity of collective efforts was all for the gold.

And here we are today.