Spanish "treasure"

I have been following with some amusement the legal (now maritime) tussle between the Spanish government and Odyssey Marine Exploration from Tampa.  Basically Odessey found an sunken Spainish "treasure" ship with actual treasure - to the tune of about $75 M.  No one is actually sure since Odyssey is keeping the location of the sunken ship a secret, but it is supposed to be off the coast of Florida.

I loved playing pirate growing up and would  have loved to be on the team that found "sunken treasure" - but I digress.

Yesterday, when The Odyssey Explorer, a 250ft salvage vessel was trying to leave Gibraltar, where it had been effectively blockaded for three months after Spain claimed a share of millions of dollars of "treasure'  it was taken at gunpoint by the Spanish navy to a Spanish Port - where it still is.

Now what facinates me about all this is the fact that this "treasure" does not belong to the Spanish government either - I do not wish to offend anyone - but the fact is this treasure was stolen from the native people's of the "New World" ie the Caribbean where I am from.  Now I do not intend to file a claim in court, since the native peoples were all desimated by colonial wars and desease - none of them survive.

It does raise the interesting point, if European Jews can file court claims over property stolen during World War II , why can't the people of the Caribbean?

Now I am not seriously advocating this since at some point and eye for an eye makes the whole world blind - but genocide is something we human beings have been doing to each other for a long time - it is not the unique experience of just one racial or ethnic group.

The economic drive for cheap labor and access to resources tends to bring out the worse in us, and the effects of the colonial mindset is still with us - be it sunken treasure or Iraq.