The brutality of believing we are superior

We tend to live in the now, which is healthy, but that also leads us to think that the problems we have today are "the problems of today".current"generations before us have not had them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

If today we accuse digital social networks to amplify and disseminate falsehoodsThis is not something that has been triggered by these communication platforms, it was something that had been going on for a long time.

And the fact is that, going back through history, there are thousands of cases in which wars, humanitarian disasters and various other calamities have been influenced by interested parties who have "manipulated"a speech for "adapt it"to their needs. One of these cases, which is still in our psyche today, is the belief in the inferiority of the African people in contrast to the European people. A fallacy born of commercial necessity. Colonialism.

Since 1870, the European powers have competed to seize as much of the world's african continentwhich I pass from a low 10% to a low 10%. European control then, to 90% in 1914.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Kingdom of Benin was the main trading power along the coast of the Nigeria. And the Dutch and Portuguese, who were doing business with this kingdom, wrote impressed about the prosperity of the same.

Benin was characterized by being an important cultural centerThe royal palace, with flourishing guilds of carpenters, potters and weavers, as well as having a monumental architecture. A merchant of Amsterdam, in 1668, said of the royal palace: "It is a great place to visit.Each roof is adorned with a small tower in the form of a spire on which are cast copper birds, sculpted with great dexterity".

Although trade with Benin began in 1472, with the Portuguese, it was not until the mid-19th century that the British wanted to take over the kingdom, claiming that it was a "place of gratuitous barbarism that reeks of death"words of the British explorer Richard BurtonThe consul in West Africa at the time, who was frustrated because the kingdom refused to negotiate commercial treaties with them.

In February 1897, the British invaded the capital of the Kingdom of Benin, dethroned the king and an extensive fire ravaged the whole place, in a battle that lasted for 10 days. The British justified it as a response to the ambush, which the previous month, the warriors of the kingdom had carried out on a group of hundreds of British men who had the objective to depose the king of the kingdom and to establish a government that was favorable to them.

And then began the narrative on Beninthe kingdom where human sacrifices took place, there was a slave trade and it was a barbaric and violent state. A discourse that sought to portray the "Negro" as an unevolved being, a being that should be rescued and civilized under European rule, or else annihilated outright.

After the invasion (and annihilation of the kingdom of Benin by the British), the press would publish for months accounts of beheadings in religious ceremonies and other scares of that place of blood and bloodshed.

It would not be until a year later, when the works looted from the royal palaceThe European museums to which they had been sent were so well reviewed that there was an arching of the eyebrows.

How was it possible that a "race"How could such a barbarian have created such a developed art?asked the curators of the British Museum in 1898 in "Works of Art of the City of Benin", giving voice to what many others thought.

And it is that the detailed bronze reliefswhich came from decorating the pillars of the palace of the king of Benin, the heads of queen mothers and other ancestors, snakes and hunters, and other treasures. were exquisite.

It has been 125 years since the British wiped the Kingdom of Benin off the map. because it had managed to maintain its independence and monopoly of precious natural resources, such as palm oil, pepper, blue coral or ivory, something that deeply irritated the British colonizers.

And it has been 125 years since a discourse was created to hide this reason and that the idea of the lower african cultureand the European Westerner as the intellectual savior bringing civilization to those lands. Although it was an unsustainable discourse with the evidence that those same invaders brought back, that is the idea that globally prevailed, and still prevails today. Introduced in our psyche from a very young age.

This is the power of self-interested discourse and manipulation of facts. Where not even the evidence leading to the contrary logic manages to alter the false discourse. Does the printing press of Guttemberg? the media outlets?, ¿Internet? the digital social networks? It does not matter. Humans always find a way to adapt the discourse and increase its diffusion according to their interests.