Is there any reason as to why the average North American says "When we colonized America" while the average Latin American says "When the Europeans invaded us" referring to the same time period?

by TTS32

After this topic came randomly while talking to some American friends (I am Mexican), I realized they keep saying things such as "When we colonized America" or "When we set up the colonies". Whereas at least from what I can remember we say in Mexico (and talking to some friends from Guatemala and Panama agreeing with me) things such as "When the Europe invaded us" or "When the Spanish conquered us"

Is there a historical reason as to why this two different postures about the same topic change drastically between North America and South American? Could it have been because of the miscegenation being a bigger situation in the Spanish territories? or is it something more recent rather than in the culture from the past?

ThesaurusRex84

Mostly yes, primarily because the English, French and Dutch method of settlement was markedly different from the Spanish method.

The former countries sent their own people to colonize economically valued areas (such as places rich in furs or timber), for strategic benefit, to simply add territory etc. Here they were dependent on the fact that they wouldn't be living with anybody else -- if someone (natives) already lived in a certain area they'd attempt to buy them out peaceably or drive them out forcibly. What they wouldn't do is annex the region, bestow the local leader(s) with limited administrative power as a vassal or replace him with a military-backed governor, placing the natives under domain, control and taxation of the colonizing power; in other words, conquering them.

In the latter's case, many of the areas the Spanish encountered already had their own state-level societies, kingdoms, and empires. Rather than send their own people and their own resources to shape the land from the ground up, they simply hijacked the existing system and used the infrastructure already in place to obtain resources and revenue; in other words, conquest.

The Spanish interactions in Mesoamerica and parts of South America very much played out exactly how a military invasion would go. They did not send settlers of families to found a new city on 'virgin' land. The army of the kingdom of Spain waged military campaigns to forcibly annex existing native cities, many of which still stand today though their pre-Columbian heritage is nearly invisible at the surface. Though Spaniards and other Europeans would later migrate in large numbers, the native populations were, for the most part, never driven out -- they simply had a change of leadership; again, an element of conquest.