I had a conversation with a person from Argentina. Like me, she is aware of, and articulate about, the racism within her country and we shared comparisons between Argentina and Australia. I have to admit I was absolutely amazed at what she told me. Argentina seems like the paragon of institutional, state racism - the total obliteration of peoples, from nearly every single person of indigenous origin, and every single person from Patagonia, to the total annihilation of every black person (slave origin) and other "fringe" mixed people, like Gauchos.
And while she told me, my own steroeyptes of the Spanish came to mind. There is an old myth that we of the British colonial project had the best kind of colonialism, the most humane, the most productive. That actually we benefited in many ways from British colonialism.
And look, I thought to myself, how true it is. Look at what the Spanish did. I had to force myself to remember the examples where the Spansih colonisers created a more equitable society than any British colony - like Cuba - but they're communist I guess, or Uruguay, maybe.