I don't know that Columbus was genocidal. He was a slaver, rapist, murderer, gold digger and all-round motherfucker for sure, so much so that the Spanish monarchy sent an envoy to arrest him, bring him back to Spain to be tried, and threw him in jail I think for a couple years. Aside from gold and spices sent from him back to the Spanish monarchs after his first arrival, he also sent back slaves and the queen was, presumably, utterly disgusted. But as far as I know, his exploits did not amount to "genocidal". I'm less certain about this than my other points, though.
Closer to "genocidal" would be Hernan Cortes, who pretty much took down the Aztecs.
Calling Cortes genocidal is also quite farfetched, considering that he conquered the Aztec territory, despite being vastly outnumbered, because every native tribe and settlement they found on the way banded together to overthrow the Aztec.
I wouldn't call the Aztecs genocidal either, despite the ritual sacrifices, brutal treatment of other peoples, and everybody in mesoamerica who came to know them hating them so much that they preferred the uncertain fate of joining the white bearded men from the east.
Yeah I think the light use of the word genocide doesn't make justice for the instance where there was actual genocide, which is when you murder people with the explicit intent of destroying a nation/culture/group.
> Closer to "genocidal" would be Hernan Cortes, who pretty much took down the Aztecs.
Well that's what you get when you go about enslaving and committing genocide against your neighbours for centuries prior. Cortes didn't even have to try - all the neighbouring nations eagerly joined the Spanish to wipe out the Aztecs. Even after that, the Aztecs weren't wiped out - they were just converted hard to Christianity and assimilated into Spanish society, even though they even had their own divisions in the armed forces. They eventually culturally assimilated the rest of the meso-Americans and gave us what Mexican culture is today.
Now what happened to the Maya is a tragedy. Books burnt, people enslaved and relegated to the lowest rung even today.
The Maya suffered for sure, but they survived in numbers that exceed all of native American population in the US, for example, and kept their language. Others had it much worse.
