Disease, not Spanish brutality, destroyed the native Arawak population.

Evidence

Proponents of the default position emphasize attrition by disease despite other causes equally deadly, if not more so. In doing so they refuse to accept that the colonization of America was genocidal by plan, not simply the tragic fate of populations lacking immunity to disease. In the case of the Jewish Holocaust, no one denies that more Jews died of starvation, overwork, and disease under Nazi incarceration than died in gas ovens, yet the acts of creating and maintaining the conditions that led to those deaths clearly constitute genocide. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 103 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Disease deaths under colonial conditions constitute genocide by neglect. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 103; European colonization triggered demographic collapse and forced removal that shattered existing Indigenous societies — The Social Consequences of Colonialism; Disease emptied native villages years before settlers occupied their maintained lands — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 888

Related

• Disease, not Spanish brutality, destroyed the native peoples of the Americas (similarity 0.88)
• Disease deaths under colonial conditions constitute genocide by neglect. (similarity 0.87)
• Disease, not cruelty, destroyed the Arawaks despite brutal exploitation. (similarity 0.82)
• Disease emptied native villages years before settlers occupied their maintained lands (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Disease deaths under colonial conditions constitute genocide by neglect. #expands (0.60) — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the…, 103