But they also did a lot of wonderful things. The Black Legend easily could have been applied to all of them. In fact, both the British and the Spanish explorers did a lot of terrible things in the New World.

While hiding or minimizing the Anglo-Saxon massacre of Native Americans, they hypocritically condemned the Spanish for doing the same thing to the natives of Latin America. And when they alluded to the Spanish explorers, it was to describe them as people who did not settle and colonize, but merely explored, sought gold and killed natives - while the English were described as pious, industrious people, who came to build homes, establish settlements and raise families. They mostly ignored the pre-British century of Spanish presence and accomplishments in North America. Unfortunately, that pattern was continued by American historians, who refused to recognize that the early history of North America was Spanish, not English. Latinos - is rooted deeply in that well-orchestrated distortion of history that started in the 16th century.ДЄs described by many Spanish scholars and authors who backed JuderГas' assertions, part of The Black Legend was the effort by Anglo-Saxon historians not only to denigrate the Spanish explorers and portray them as crueler than other European colonizers but also to minimize their accomplishments in North America.

debate over illegal immigration, the movement to make English the official language and other efforts to decelerate the growth and influence of U.S. Today's anti-Hispanic rhetoric - fueled by the U.S. JuderГas described The Black Legend as 'the environment created by the fantastic stories about our homeland that have seen the light of publicity in all countries, the grotesque descriptions that always have been made of the character of Spaniards as individuals and collectively, the denial - or at least the systematic ignorance - of all that is favorable and beautiful in the various manifestations of culture and art, the accusations that in every era have been flung against Spain.'

The black legend described