Juan and Ilhuitl, I can only say that more things will have changed in the next five hundred years, between the year 1519 and this current year of 2017 than all the changes that occurred in the previous ten thousand. Our understanding of the dignity of persons and of human rights will undergo a bloody and violent birth in less than three hundred years through two revolutions: in America, then in France. America, which is to say, the states that will take form in the great land mass north of Mexico, or the land of the Mexica, will fight for their independence from England. That's right, Juan, I'm afraid that Spain's great rival and competitor and sometimes enemy, is going to grab most of the territory to the north, except for a generous portion even further north, here in Canada, that France will take hold of, but then will lose to the English. I can tell already that this for you is not exactly happy news.
Both America in the north, and France, are going to break their ties with their monarchies. America will simply become the world's first independent democracy. Then in a couple more decades, France will follow in their footsteps, but with a lot of bloodshed and slaughter, to the point of beheading even their own king and queen. These newly-minted democratic republics will serve as a kind of experimentation: the rule of the common man. People of all classes and positions are going to awaken to their worth as human beings. They will awaken to the knowledge that their worth, their value is not in relation to the king, nor to the feudal lord, but to the very innate humanity that we all share in common. This will be a kind of rapid evolution, beginning with the middle classes revolting in America and France against arrogant and brutal aristocracies. Then slavery will be abolished and all people will be considered free. But the march to freedom for the ex-slaves, especially those of African heritage, is going to be long, difficult and bitter. Even now, in 2017, people of colour, as we tend to call them now, especially in America, but elsewhere in the world, are going to be doing battle against prejudice and the derogatory treatment and attitudes of those who mistakenly think that the whiteness of their skin gives them an inborn superiority over others.
Over the coming years, many others will fight and struggle for equality: people from what you call Cathay or the Orient, are going to encounter very poor and cruel treatment here in this country Canada, and elsewhere. Eventually they will gain their full rights as equal human beings and they will win the right to vote and fully participate in society, as will our own indigenous peoples. In Canada are those similar, Ilhuitl, to your own Mexica, and the Toltec, the Maya, the Zapotecs, and many others. Like your own people, their numbers will be decimated by war, disease and mistreatment and abuse by the European colonizers. Juan, the English, like the Spanish, have much to answer for.
Women will win the right to vote and will have to struggle to overcome entrenched historical prejudice from men in order to come into their own as true equal partners in our shared humanity. Homosexuals and transgendered people, which is to say men who believe they are really women and women who believe they are really men, will also be given recognition as people of worth and will fight hard against the prejudice, persecution and oppression that has been their experience of life, especially by so-called Christian Europe.
Juan, I can tell that this offends you, but you have to learn to live with this, unless you want to return to the Sixteenth Century. Ilhuitl, you appear to welcome this news.
Juan says, with huge indignation and in high dudgeon: You mean to place me at the same level as black slaves and perverted men with desires against nature?
I reply, Juan, I mean to tell you that we are all equal, and that we are all equally loved by our same God and creator.
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