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BARTHOLOME
DE LASCAS
PROTECTOR OF THE INDIANS
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La
leyenda Negra ( The Black
Legend ): Myths and Truths
about the Spanish
Colonization of the
Americas
part
2
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Spanish
Colonization and the difficult
consilience between God and Gold:
The contradiction between the two Gs
The quest for Gold was the center of
the Spanish Colonization of the
Americas. Christopher
Columbus, as a representative of
the Crown, pursued Gold with a vengeance. and
used it as a mean to boost the value
of his accidental discovery of the
West Indies. After all, he
promised the Crown that he would find
a new route to the East by going West
but he came back with the news of
finding lots of islands full of naked
people. He did not meet the
Great Khan and sign a trade treaty
with him but the new lands seemed to
contain lots of Gold mines. The
naked people of the islands appeared
to be ready to be enslaved and used as
labor in the mines.
The Crown wanted to consider the
Indians as subjects of Spain if they
accepted Christianity. (See
King Ferdinand
letter to the Tainos people).
The Whole colonization it self was
done within the agenda of bringing
salvation and the word of Jesus Christ
to the Indians. So the Spanish thought
that the pain and the suffering
imposed on the Indians were a small
prize compared to what they were
offering which was salvation and eternal
life.
There were no contradiction in their
minds between the pursuit of Gold, the
massacre of the Indians and their
faith in God through Jesus Christ the
Redeemer. Bernardo Diaz
del Castillo who
was with Cortez in Mexico sums up this
situation by writing: "We came
here to serve God and also to get
rich." Diaz wrote a book
entitles : True History of the
Conquest of Mexico" in which he
describes the events which happen from
the time Cortes landed on the coast at
Veracruz on Good Friday, April 22,
1519; to the surrender of the Aztec
capital on August 13, 1521.
The conquest of Mexico by Cortez
is one of the darkest chapters of the
Spanish colonization of the
Americas. It is a strong testimony about
the absolute disregard for the humanity
of the Indians. The Aztecs
viewed Cortez and his companions as
returning Gods but Cortez viewed them
as a barbaric people that should be
destroyed. The conquistadors
were in awe in front of the beauty of
the main city and the achievement of
the Aztecs but they forged ahead with
their destruction of the city and the
killing of the population.
Certainly, the conquest and the destruction of Aztecs was not
done only by weapons, brutality and
alliances with the enemies of the
Aztecs but was due in large part to
the European infections that weaken the
population and killed the defenders of
the city. Never the less,
the Spanish showed not an once of
mercy toward the Aztecs and made no
effort to save anything that was not
Gold. In a short period of time
most of what was build through
centuries was destroyed. The
Aztec Calendar, for instance, was only
given importance when it was rediscovered
on December 17th, 1760 buried in
the "Zocalo" (the main
square) of Mexico City. The magnificent
Calendar is probably the most famous
symbol of Mexico and a vivid reminder
to the world of the achievements of
the Aztecs.
The Aztec Calendar
Click on image to get larger picture
The acts of destruction, massacres and
systematic enslavement committed by
the conquistadors are certainly
shining examples of the worst
atrocities perpetrated by humans
beings against other human beings but
they were part of a the context of the Spanish
perception of the Indians as
infantile, barbaric savages regardless
of what they had accomplished.
In the eyes of Spanish they were just heathens and as such did
not belong in the vision of what was
real humanity. Destroying their
city became then an act of religious
zeal which also brought the added
reward of seizing lots of
Gold.
General
European view of the indigenous people
of the world
However, this kind of vision of the Indians was
not exclusively Spanish. There
is a tendency to blame the Spaniards
as if they were the only people of
Europe who displayed a huge amount of gratuitous
cruelty to the Indigenous people of
the Americas and of the rest of the
world. The other
conquering power of Europe did not
treat the Indians better and sometimes
treated them worse. The black
legend is based mostly on accurate facts but Spain
did not have the monopoly of the bad
treatments of the Indians. It was certainly the result of an
effective propaganda campaign but it
created an unfair anti Spanish bias
powered by the political imperatives
of the competition between the
European nations for the leadership of
the world. La leyenda negra, in
its true depiction of the Spanish
brutalities, is nothing but an
instance of the inhuman behaviors of
the Europeans toward the indigenous
people of the world.
Spain, like the other nations of
Europe, based its behavior
toward the Indigenous people of the
Americas and of the world on the Aristotelian
Classification of human beings in a
group of naturally superior people
born to lead and a group of naturally subordinated
people born to serve as slaves.
The incorporation of this concept into
Christian morality gave the European
the moral justification they were
looking for to appease their
conscience. This concept will
serve as the intellectual
foundation not only for the dispossession
of the indigenous people of the
Americas but as the justification for
the enslavement of millions of African. Further more, it will be
used later during the evolution of European
colonialism and imperialism as an
implicit intellectual anchor for the
"white man burden concept"
which portrayed the white man as the natural
leader of humanity and consequently as
the naturally anointed steward of the
riches and the natural resources of
the world.
It does not take much imagination to
understand that the indigenous people
of the world and their lands became
inside this perspective simple
commodities. As such they
existed in a limbic zone of Humanity
classified as spiritually imperfect,
culturally inadequate and
intellectually unfinished. This vision
of the indigenous people and the non
European people of the world was
latter humanized when the modernistic
movement fuelled by a contextually European
rationalism
recognized the humanity of all humans
but considered the European model as a
goal and a level of evolution to
which they should aspire in order to
become civilized.
One can even see the primitive version
of this concept in the efforts of the
friars who tried to convert the Indians
and help them set up social structures
where they could live like European
Christians. Some of the priest
were even given the latitudes to
experiment with this vision but they failed
because of the preconceived ideas that
the Indians had no culture and needed
to be raised like children.
Seeing how misguided the friars who wanted to treat
the Indians well were, in spite of
their good intentions, shows the
roots of the brutality toward the
indigenous people, their
dehumanization and their portrayal as
savages closer to the animals than to
men. Killing them became,
in this context, a simple act of
cleansing of the environment to allow
civilization to sprout. They
became pests that needed to be
eradicated . One can see this
vision in action in the colonization
of North America by Anglo Saxons
where the only good Indian was a
dead Indian.
At best, they Indians were viewed by
all Europeans powers as human
commodities which, when they became
almost extinct by disease and
massacre, were replaced by other human
commodities more suitable for the
purpose of the masters, the self anointed
natural leaders of humanity.
Being the first to make contact with
the Indians, the Spanish set in
motion the machinery of the European
Colonization of the Americas but the
dehumanization of the Indians, the
capture and enslavement of millions of African were guided by a
General European Vision of
Humanity. As the monopolistic
power of Spain declined, those
action became a European affair which
gave an astronomic amount of
riches to all the colonial powers of
Europe.
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