The Spanish Conquistadors And The First Genocide In
Modern History (II)
Written by Vladislav
B. SOTIROVIC on 11/01/2021
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The Spanish Conquistadors And The First Genocide In
Modern History (I)30/12/2020
The Crusaders, Christianity, and the conquistadors
It has to be clearly noticed that, in fact, the Spanish conquistadors, have
not been like medieval West Roman Catholic Crusaders at least from the very
formal meaning of this word as the conquistadors did not ever receive some
special indulgence from the Roman Catholic pope for their services in the New
World. However, from the very practical point of view, the conquistadors’
methods and attitudes were extremely closely related to those of the Vatican’s
military-confessional campaigns in the Middle East against the Muslims, in
South Europe against the heretic Cathars, or in the Baltics against the local
pagans like Prussians and Lithuanians up to 1410 (the Battle of Tannenberg) by
the Teutonic Order. The main Crusades were a series of expeditions from the 11th to the 14th centuries for
the sake to establish Christian (the Roman Catholic) power over the
Muslim-controlled holy places of Palestine.
In general, the Spanish “conquistadores” were soldiers and adventurers in
the 16th century of whom the most known have been Hernán Cortés who conquered
the Aztec Empire in present-day Mexico, and Francisco Pizarro, the conqueror of
the Inca Empire in today’s Peru. The conquistadors discovered and occupied the
Caribbean, Latin America (without Brazil), South and South-West today’s USA,
and the Philippines. Many would-be conquistadors explored immense areas but
conquered nothing and founded no permanent settlements. Nevertheless, as proper
and functional colonial administrations have been established their role and
activities diminished and finally disappeared.
H. Cortés, during his conquest of Mexico for Roman Catholic Spain, carried
with him an image of the Blessed Virgin Mary and fought and conquered under the
flag of the Cross, decorated with the Crusader slogan, “in hoc signum vinces”
(With this sign, you will win) which originally comes from the time of the
Roman Emperor Constantine the Great. In other words, according to the official
tradition of the Christian Church, Constantine saw in a dream the sign of the
cross. The cross was with the inscription “With this sign, you will win”. That
was a night before the battle of 312 near Rome against Maxentius. It was made
by Constantine’s order a great “Labarum” – a long cross. And, he won the battle
and civil war. From the time of Constantine the Great, the “Labarum” became the
banner of the East Roman Empire or the Byzantine Empire. The Spanish
conquistadors, as well, brought with them a form of racism that became derived
from post-Reconquista Roman Catholic prejudice against converted Muslims and
Jews. The Spanish idea of both their racial and religious superiority, combined
with material inducement, brought final disaster for the Native Americans.
The Spanish conquest of the New World, the “European” microbes, and forced
laborers
The initial timeline of the Spanish conquests of the New World from Ch.
Columbus first landing in the Bahamas (1492) until the mid-16th century was
probably the most terrible period of genocide in the world’s history but,
nevertheless, for sure, it was the first genocide in the global history of
Modern Time. It is calculated that the death toll may have reached around 70
million native inhabitants of the New World out of 80 million in this period.
There were several reasons for such a demographic catastrophe of the Native
Americans. Millions of them died of diseases brought by the Iberians like
influenza, measles, smallpox, or typhus. Alien microbes traveled more quickly
compared to the West European conquerors themselves. Those “European” microbes killed
between half and 95% of the pre-Colombian Native American population who have
been totally helpless in fighting against them.
The first voyage of
Ch. Columbus in 1492
From one point of view, there is no evidence, i.e. historical sources, that
the Spanish conquistadors with purpose infected the autochthonous peoples of
the Americas, but on the other hand, the Iberians imposed living conditions
upon the American Indians which made them more vulnerable to the imported
diseases. It is an undisputable historiographical fact that the native
population of the Americas was harshly exploited as forced laborers and were
concentrated in labor camps (konz.-lagers), especially in the cases of the
search for gold and silver. The Native Americans have been forcibly deported
from their homes to other locations for the purpose of replacing the local
labor of natives who died. However, the newly brought peoples have been
deprived of food, water and were housed in unsanitary dwellings. They were
separated from their families and normal support systems being beaten,
brutalized, and deprived of free movement – in one word, being the slaves.
According to some Spanish historical sources (like the Dominican Bartolome
de Las Casas), the conditions of forced labor usually led directly to the death
of the Indians in the mines of Hispaniola. According to de Las Casas, women and
men were given to eat only wild grasses. The mothers of babies promptly saw
their milk dry up and their children die. With the women and men being
separated and never seeing each other, as a result, no biological reproduction
was possible, i.e., no new children have been born. The males have been dying
in the golden and silver mines from overwork and starvation. Similar truth was
about women too. The local inhabitants, who have been so numerous before 1492,
began to die out as would do any nation being subjected to such terrible
treatment.
In principle, the local types of such brutal mistreatment of the Native
Americans by the Spanish colonists and authorities have been manifold. There
were many cases that enslaved women killed their babies and children and
sometimes themselves too due to the harsh living conditions. In addition,
mining supervisors often raped and sexually exploited the local Indian women,
regardless of the fact that their husbands, brothers, or sons have been already
working in the mines. There were some recorded cases that the number of dead
mineworkers was so high that their corpses were not buried but rather left to
be eaten by wild animals and vulture birds. Many Indian laborers fell victim to
the plague but no one took care of them or get them food. In conclusion, the
Spaniards did not with purpose transmitted different kinds of diseases to the
Indians, but so many died of these diseases as a cause of the harsh living and
working conditions imposed on them by the Spanish conquerors.
Racial superiority and genocide
On one hand, different types of diseases were the focal source of the
killing of millions of the Native Americans who had thickly populated the
Americas in the pre-Columbus time, the Spaniards as well as have been killing
the Indians in a series of genocidal episodes across the American continents.
The Spaniard conquerors insisted on their inherent biological and cultural
superiority as human beings over the native inhabitants. It practically meant
that the Spaniards had the “divine” right to rule over the Indians and moreover
to dispose of their lives in any way they proper for them. Such ideology
included and physical elimination of the Native Americans or “barbarians” not
being equal with the Iberians regarding their humanity. Even Mexican Aztecs,
who had a superior culture in the region, built cities, being engaged in
commerce, owned no property, and lived totally at the mercy of their ruler for
the Spaniards have been demonstrating the servile and base spirit of the
barbarians (“inhumane little men”). The Spaniards have been especially offended
by the Aztec religious practices which included human sacrifice and, therefore,
proclaimed that the waging a war against Aztec barbarians is justified not only
on the foundations of their paganism but even more so because of their
prodigious sacrifice of human victims, the extreme harm that they inflicted on
innocent persons, and the impious cult of their idols. From the facts’ point of
view, human sacrifice was unquestionably a part of Aztec religious life and
tradition. The Aztecs have been as well as in some cases engaged in extreme
cruelty against their enemies. However, the Spaniards have not been much better
at dealing with the Aztecs and other Native Americans.
It is important to say that the philosopher and Roman Catholic theologian
Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda justified the Spanish behaving with the Indians by
warring against them using the reference to the pope’s blessing of the Spaniard
venture in the Americas. The fact was that the imperative for conversion into
Roman Catholicism accompanied this new type of crusaders to the Americas. The
Roman Catholic priests who usually followed the conquistadors in the majority
of cases did not condone either the torching or killing of the native
inhabitants of the New World even at the time when stable Spanish civil and
military colonial authorities were established. According to de Las Casas in
his expression of grief written to the Spanish King Phillip II (1556−1598, who
became the King of Portugal in 1580 as well), the Spanish colonists have been
treating the native Indians worse than animals, having little concern for their
souls as for the bodies.
The question of slavery in the Spanish New World
However, there were those Roman Catholic priests who have been defending
converted Indians with two crucial arguments: 1) they became Christians; and 2)
they became the subjects of the Spanish crown – therefore, they could not be
reduced to forced labor and especially slavery by the Spanish colonial
authorities. The Catholic monarchs of Spain, King Ferdinand II (of Aragon) and
Queen Isabella I (of Castile) showed very little enthusiasm for slavery and,
consequently, Ch. Columbus’ design to transform the territories in the
Caribbean into a prosperous slave trade for Spain was rejected by the Crown and
he was imprisoned for a short while. Queen Isabella I, tried to improve the
situation for the Native Americans by creating a system of indentured
landholding, whereby the Indians were, in theory, to cultivate the land of the
Spaniards four days a week having the rest of the week to take care of their
own portions of land (the well-known system of corvée in feudal West Europe).
Nevertheless, in the very practice on the ground, the local Spaniards in the
Spanish colonies in the New World did everything to successfully avoid any
restrictions on their practical ability to exploit the natives. The Queen died
in 1504, and her will was that the Indians have to be well and justly treated,
but her husband, King Ferdinand II practiced the right of the Crown to enslave
the Indians and, therefore, their position became worse after 1504.
H. Cortes’ route of
exploration 1519-1526
The West European idea of what to do with the Native Americans has been
slowly in progress since the mid-16th century. A new Spanish King (and
German Emperor), a Habsburg Carlos I (Charles V) (1516−1556), explicitly
ordered the abolition of slavery among the native Indians in 1530 followed by
the new laws against slavery in the Spanish colonies in 1542. Pope Paul III in
his Papal Bull issued in 1537 declared the Indians to be real human and,
therefore, capable to receive the Christian faith (to be converted).
Consequently, Native Americans should not be deprived of their freedom and the
ownership of their property. However, the peak of the demographic catastrophe
of the native inhabitants in the Spanish colonies already occurred and, as a
result, the Spaniards brought the black slaves from Portuguese Africa to the
New World to do the harsh physical work that the Native Americans practiced
previously to do in the first half of the 16th century. Soon, the numbers of
black Africans overcame the numbers of their Spaniard masters but still, the
Spanish governors of the colonies and their representatives continued with the
practice of the brutal exploitation of both the native inhabitants of the
Americas and the newly brought slaves from Africa.
The greediness for gold and silver of the Spaniards
From several contemporary Spanish historical sources is clear that pure
greediness was, in fact, the focal character of the Spanish conquest that led
to the deaths of millions of the Native Americans and later African slaves. For
instance, B. de Las Casas clearly wrote that sheer greed (especially for the
gold and silver) was the focal stimulus that was behind the criminal deeds
committed by the Spanish colonial authorities.
The same B. de Las Casas wrote that the insatiable greed of the Spaniards
reached proportions which simply removed any reservation they may have had
about abusing the Indians when both gold and silver became accessible by
occupying the mines run by the Aztecs and Incas. The Spaniards were like men in
desperation, crazy, mad, out of their minds with only greed for gold and silver
and, therefore, the lives of the Native Americans meant next to nothing.
When Ch. Columbus first landed on the Bahamian Island of Santa Maria de la
Conception he met there very peaceful, friendly, and hospitable native
inhabitants. He was, however, immediately attracted with small golden rings in
Indian’s noses and tried to get them to take him to the mine of this precious
metal, which he thought is located in the southern part of the island. It is
true that Ch. Columbus did not come to the Americas to enslave or destroy its
native peoples as he arrived just for gold, silver, and riches. However, in
practice, for the reason of the absence of the fortune that he hoped to find
there for both his sovereigns Ferdinand II and Isabella I and himself, he
turned to the Indians themselves and their labor as a source of wealth. He was
thinking that he could easily conquer the Native Americans and used them as
labor slaves and servants either in the New World or back in Spain to cultivate
agricultural fields, collect harvest crops, and work in mines. However, the
reality of newly discovered islands spoiled his personal designs as the number
of local dwellers was not so promising for massive exploitation as forced
workers.
Depopulation
Ch. Columbus discovered several islands during his first trip to the Americas.
He described them as the fertile and lush lands (Hispaniola and Cuba)
expressing his vision of highly productive agriculture manned by native Indian
slaves. He took with him back to Spain 20 Indian captives and promised the
Spanish monarchs that he would bring them such great wealth that the King and
the Queen could be able to finance new Crusades for the sake to liberate
Jerusalem from the Muslims. However, when he returned to Hispaniola in November
1493, he found there abandoned small garrison he left and fortress destroyed.
That was the Indian response to the Spanish rape of the local females and
attacks on the Indian property. However, such a situation led to the reprisals,
kidnapping, and killings of the local Indians by the Spanish soldiers that were
the beginning of the Iberian genocide over the Native Americans. It was soon
followed by forcing them to do harsh physical works that were fully exploited
by the Spaniards.
Statue of Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes in the plaza of the same name
in Medellin, Extremadura, Spain
In 1509, the Spaniard expeditions sailed to the islands of Puerto Rico and
Jamaica. Much as in those discovered lands, Ch. Columbus and his conquistadors
killed native elites and forced the native into forced labor in both mines and
on the land. Here, as elsewhere, the Spanish soldiers behaved as the dogs of
the war upon the Native Americans. Similarly, it was done in Cuba where
Spaniards established their control in 1511. In this conquistadors’ expedition
participated de Las Casas as a chaplain who described once again the horrific
cruelties inflicted on the Indians by the Spaniards. For example, only on one
occasion, provoked by no one, the conquistadors butchered some 3000 Indians
including children and women. In many cases, the local Indians in order to save
their lives were running to the hills from their villages, and for those who
left there were only two options: death or forced labor. In Cuba, the Native
Americans (both men and women) even routinely committed suicide (by hanging) as
the only way to avoid the Spanish plunder and destruction. However, according
to de Las Casas, more than 7000 children died of hunger when their parents were
captured and forced to work in the mines.
As a matter of fact, the more the native Indians tried to escape the
exploitation yokes imposed on them, the more harsher punishments have been
inflicted by the Spanish masters. The natives have been living on a narrow
subsistence level in pre-1492 times. However, since the beginning of the 16th century, the
Indians were obliged to support a new Spanish population by their work,
services, and food gathering. Due to several reasons, soon they started to die
in big numbers. It is impossible according to historical sources to reconstruct
the exact numbers of those inhabitants of the Caribbean Islands who died during
the first half-century of the Spanish administration. Nevertheless, de Las
Casas wrote that the native population of Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic
and Haiti) when the Spaniards arrived was some 3 million but only 200 of them
left in the mid-16th century. The island of Cuba became totally depopulated due to the
forced transfer of around half of a million of the natives to Hispaniola for
the sake to replace the Indian workers who had already died there. The natives
of the Bahamas were very much eliminated like the islands around Puerto Rico.
All of these islands in the mid-16th century were abandoned and
desolate.
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A Vilnius-based
independent researcher and scholar. University lecturer. Historian &
Politologist. Owner & Editor of POLICRATICUS - Electronic Magazine On
Global Politics www.global-politics.eu Contact address:
sotirovic@global-politics.eu
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