The Bulgarian linguist Tveztan Todorov wrote a book about the encounter between the Europeans and what they called the New World. The New World was an old world, inhabited by ancient cultures which had achieved a great level of civilization and wealth. In the Inca empire hunger was unknown, the distribution of the food by the State made Marx to write an enthusiastic pamphlet about the Incas.
But Todorov argues the European were not prepared for a such encounter, the Spaniards who came to America (my ancestors), destroyed and humiliated the natives inhabitantants and colonized them with the help of more advanced weapons and technics.
It's the same topic I find in the chronicles of Anna Commena, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Alexis Commeno. She describe the hords of the European barbarians killing all people in sight, destroying old shrines and raping and abusing the local populations. "They are as children, they distroyed whát they loved and the things they didn't know in their eagerness to master those wonders".
I and a group of artist and curators are working with the Crusades subject and I encourage all people attending Tarifa meeting to contact me if you are interested in participate in some way.
We are going to work in similar forms Catherine David do when she started the network "Arabic Representations in the Contemporary World", what means a loose network of institutions and people working under the umbrella of the Crusades as red thread.