by Marie Arana
Supreme Creator—Ometeotl, Life Giver: Miguel Léon-Portilla, “Ometeotl, el supremo dios dual, y Tezcatlipoca ‘Dios Principal,’ ” Estudios de Cultura Náhuatl (México, DF: UNAM, 1999), 30.
The little band of Franciscans: Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta, Historia eclesiástica indiana (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1997), 60–62.
The spiritual conquest of Mexico: See Robert Ricard, The Spiritual Conquest of Mexico. Also Stafford Poole, “Expansion and Evangelism: Central and North America, 1492–1600,” in Charles H. Lippy, Robert Choquette, and Stafford Poole, Christianity Comes to the Americas, 1492–1776, 32.
as rapacious in his appetites: The passions of Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) “were for gold, women, and the careers of his [illegitimate] children.” Norman Davies, A History of Europe (New York: Harper, 1996), 484.
far less stable, far less unified as an economy: Steven J. Keillor, This Rebellious House: American History and the Truth of Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 21.
As one historian put it, Europe had become dangerously off kilter: Ibid., 20.
the richest nobleman in Europe: Giovanni de Medici, who was worth about two hundred thousand ducats (or the equivalent of $36 million) at the time. Carrie Hojnicki, “Famiglia De Medici,” Business Insider, last modified July 5, 2012.
officials paid their toadies a pittance: Keillor, This Rebellious House, 22.
To raise the money, he ordered a Dominican friar: Ibid. This was Johann Tetzel, whose indulgences and financial transactions provoked the ire of Martin Luther and the start of the Reformation.
“As soon as the gold in the basin rings”: Ibid.
nailed it to the chapel door of the University of Wittenberg: Reformation historian Andrew Pettegree of the University of St. Andrews doubts the ancient legend about the nailing and claims that, since the chapel door was the common notice board of the university, it was probably pasted or affixed in another way. Billy Perrigo, “Martin Luther’s 95 Theses,” Time, October 31, 2017.
Within two months, Martin Luther’s accusations were circulating: Richard J. Evans, “The Monk Who Shook the World,” Wall Street Journal, March 31, 2017.
Soon after the arrival of the Franciscan delegation: Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 32.
just as Bartolomé de las Casas was coming to the conclusion: Las Casas, History of the Indies (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 35. Las Casas arrived in 1508. His reckoning covers 1492–1508. The figure of three million dead is hotly argued by historians, who posit that Las Casas couldn’t possibly have known either the numbers for the general population or the numbers who fell victim to the Conquest. See David Henige, Numbers from Nowhere: The American Indian Contact Debate (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1998), 133–35.
something needed to be done about the dying: In 1510 a delegation of Dominican friars arrived in Hispaniola and immediately expressed outrage against the treatment of the Indians. The Dominicans then led a formidable campaign against what they considered a genocide of the population of the Indies. H. R. Wagner and H. R. Parish, The Life and Writings of Bartolomé de Las Casas (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967), 11.
“If you do not comply”: El Requerimiento. Ficción jurídica: Texto completo. Monarquía Española, 1513, redactado por Juan López de Palacios, Scribd, accessed March 16, 2019, www.scribd.com/document/125487670.
Epigraph; “I find only one fault, o most Christian of kings”: Gaspar Pérez de Villagra, Historia de la Nueva México, epic tale written in 1610 (México, DF: Museo Nacional, 1900), quoted in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, Puritan Conquistadors: Iberianizing the Atlantic, 1550–1700, 243.
with no attention to spiritual matters: Poole, in Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 82.
“In the nine years of his government of this island”: Las Casas, in reference to Governor Ovando of Hispaniola, in Obras, 4:1355; also quoted in Lawrence A. Clayton, Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas, ed. Jürgen Buchenau, 30.
The Indian Juanico, who was promptly put in the service: When Columbus was being investigated for his alleged crimes, Queen Isabella angrily insisted that Juanico, and all the others, be sent back to Hispaniola. “What right does the Admiral have to give my vassals to anyone?” she exclaimed. Las Casas, Obras 4:1243. Also in Clayton, Bolivian Nations, 17.
So entrenched was he in the slave economy: Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 82.
“Tell me by what right, what writ of justice?”: This was Fray Antonio de Montesinos. Luis Alfredo Fajardo Sánchez, “Fray Antón de Montesinos: His Narrative and the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the Constitutions of Our America,” SciELO Colombia, accessed February 2, 2019, www.scielo.org.co/pdf/hall/v10n20/v10n20a14.pdf; also George Sanderlin, ed., Witness: Writing of Bartolomé de las Casas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993), 66–67.
In the presence of none other than Christopher Columbus’s son Diego: Clayton, Bolivian Nations, 41.
the butchering of thousands—“without provocation or cause”: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación (Medellín, Colombia: Universdad de Antioquia, 2011), 39.
He had been present at the massacre of Caonao: Las Casas, Historia, 3:1243, in Obras completas 4:1363ff.
He had looked on as slaves were forced to march: Ibid., vol. 2, ch. 7, 1318–19.
if war were truly necessary to convert Indians: Lewis Hanke, “A Modest Proposal for a Moratorium on Grand Generalizations: Some Thoughts on the Black Legend,” Hispanic American Historical Review 51, no. 1 (February 1971): 124.
where he narrowly escaped assassination: M. Giménez Fernández, “Fray Bartolomé de las Casas,” in Bartolomé de las Casas in History, ed. Friede and Keen (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University, 1971), 67–126.
King Carlos I, Holy Roman emperor: He was also known as King Charles V or Carlos V, ruler of the Duchy of Burgundy from 1506, Spain from 1516, and the Holy Roman Empire from 1519.
Las Casas himself . . . had suggested it: Clayton, Bolivian Nations, 135–36.
Five million would be sent to Brazil: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, www.slavevoyages.org. These figures reflect the slave trade between 1500 and 1875. No other country would receive as many slaves as Brazil.
Somehow Las Casas had managed to enter: Clayton, Bolivian Nations, 36.
Ironically, even Motolinía, one of the Twelve Apostles of Mexico: This was the priest who named himself Motolinía—Nahuatl for “beggar”—whose original name was Toribio de Benavente and who supported the notion that Indians were savages and needed to be Christianized in order to be protected. Ibid., 146.
“a grievous man, restless, importunate”: “Motolinía,” in James Lockhart and Enrique Otte, eds., Letters and People of the Spanish Indies, Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 226.
the “Black Legend,” the damning, exaggerated notion: Eventually this legend (la leyenda negra) produced a counterargument, when twentieth-century Spanish historians proposed a “White Legend,” arguing that Spaniards were no worse than other Europeans and that the accusations of Las Casas and others were unjust and overblown. See also Hanke, “A Modest Proposal,” 112–27.
long, spirited debates against Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda: The description of the debate with Sepúlveda is adapted from Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 86–87. Aristotle’s theory of natural slavery is in the fifth book of his Politics.
Sepúlveda had just produced a treatise: This was The Second Democrates, or Reasons That Justify War Against the Indians, circulated in 1546–47 and produced at the request of Cardinal Juan García Loaysa, president of the Council of the Indies and a staunch critic of Las Casas.
claim that the laws would undermine their livelihoods: Clayton, Bolivian Nations, 119.
In Mexico, the emissary who was sent: Ibid., 119–24. The emissary in Mexico was Francisco de Tello Sandoval. The viceroy in Peru was Viceroy Blasco Núñez de Vela.
“we are as disturbed as if the public executioner”: Benno Biermann, “Bartolomé de
las Casas,” in Bartolomé de las Casas in History, 468. Quoted in Clayton, Bolivian Nations, 116.
the New Laws were having no effect: Benjamin Keen, “The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities,” Hispanic American Historical Review 49, no. 4 (November 1969): 704.
When King Carlos relinquished all power and his son, Philip II, took the throne: I owe much of this information to the context provided in Lawrence A. Clayton’s excellent biography of Las Casas, Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas, 145–50.
“We who were once brave and noble”: Guaman Poma, 2:357.
Epigraph; “With the faith, the scourge of God came”: The quote continues—“and, in proportion as the one increased, the other smote them more severely.” Francesco G. Bressani, Jesuit Relations (1653), vol. 39, no. 141 (New York: Pageant, 1959). Jesuit Relations was the collection of documents and chronicles compiled by missionaries in the field in New France and printed between 1632 and 1673.
Bringing the Indians to Jesus: All the information about Xavier and his opinions is either from my interviews with him in La Paz in 2016, email correspondence from 2015 to 2018, or from his own memoir, Xavier Albó Corrons and Carmen Beatríz Ruiz, Un curioso incorregible.
“What care have you ever given”: Fray Antonio de Montesinos, Ibid.
the rudiments of his first book, a Quechua primer: Xavier Albó, Un Metodo para aprender el quechua (La Paz: Instituto Jesuita, 1964).
José de Acosta, a liberal-minded priest who: Manuel M. Marzal et al., The Indian Face of God in Latin America, 2.
“To eradicate idolatry by force before Indians”: José de Acosta, quoted in Marzal et al., 3.
The Crown approved heartily, on the assumption: Massimo Livi Bacci, Estragos de la Conquista (Madrid: Grupo Planeta, 2006), 235.
more than half the Indian population: Ibid., 237.
“forever extinguished and silenced”: Pope Clement XIV, in his papal brief Dominus ac Redemptor Noster, issued on July 21, 1773.
Many were prey to slavers and lubricious landlords: Jorge A. Ramos, Historia de la nación latinoamericana (Buenos Aires: Continente, 2011), 97–101.
dying in far greater numbers than births: Bacci, Estragos, 265.
the “pope’s black guard”: Jorge A. Ramos, Historia, 97–101. Quoted also in Galeano, 190–91.
Title: Preaching the Gospel Among Barbarians: This is an echo of the Jesuit José de Acosta’s treatise De promulgatione Evangelii apud Barbaros [On promulgating the gospel among barbarians], written in 1575 and published in Salamanca in 1589 by Apud Guillelmum Foquel.
Epigraph; “Don’t you understand that all that these friars say is lies?”: Andrés Mixcoatl to the people of Metepec, Zacatepec, and Atliztaca, in Gruzinski, Man-Gods, 54.
The first was Gerónimo de Aguilar, the hapless: Díaz, Historia verdadera de la conquista, ch. 36–37.
Bartolomé de Olmedo, and it is to him that Cortés owes: Ibid., ch. 38–40; Ricard, 82–84.
Cortés, a man of grand ambition and carnal inclinations: Ricard, 79.
without the easy conversion of the Nahuas: Lippy, Choquete, and Poole, 38.
For all the giddy claims that Cortés was a consummate hero: I owe these insights to a remarkably original book, When Montezuma Met Cortés, by the historian Matthew Restall. In this case, see especially 301–54.
“a man of unfeigned piety”: The oidor Alonso de Zorita to King Philip, letter, 1 April 1562, General de Indias, Patronato, 182, ramo 2; partially transcribed in Ignacio Romero Vargas y Iturbide, Montezuma el Magnifico y la Invasion de Anáhuac (México, DF: Editorial Romero Vargas, 1963). Quoted in Restall, When Montzeuma Met Cortés, 334–35.
Viejo Capitán: Among the indigenous, Pizarro was variously known as “Apu” (earthly god) or “Machu Capitán” (old captain). Among the Spaniards, he was referred to as “Marqués” (marquis) for the honor bestowed on him by the Crown, Marqués de los Atavillos. R. Cunéo-Vidal, Los hijos americanos de los Pizarro (Alicante, Sp.: Miguel de Cervantes Virtual Library Foundation, 2006), www.cervantesvirtual.com/obra-visor/los-hijos-americanos-de-los-pizarros-de-la-conquista-0/html/00a6b998-82b2-11df-acc7-002185ce6064_2.html.
it was Valverde who shook a cross at the royal Inca: Guaman Poma, 353–57.
keen capacities for courage, fatalism, stoicism: Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 4.
missions became . . . the vanguard of empire: Ibid., 3.
In the thick of exploration’s wildest improvisations: Arciniegas, Latin America, 139.
The mendicant friars . . . who made the first inroads: I owe much of these insights to J. H. Elliott’s superb synthesis Empires of the Atlantic World, especially his chapter “America as Sacred Space.”
Oblivious to the profound shock that this mass deracination: Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 40.
An intense rivalry emerged: Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 201.
invading their territory and hijacking their operations: Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 90.
Augustinians complained that Dominicans preaching in Spanish: J. L. González and O. González, Christianity in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 51.
they found a fully functioning ecclesiastical system: Stafford Poole, Pedro Moya de Contreras: Catholic Reform and Royal Power in New Spain, 1571–1591 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 80.
As one historian put it, a deep fissure ran down the very heart: Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 198.
Passions would grow so heated, brawls so common: Thomas Gage, The English-American His Travails by Sea and Land (1648), 71–72, quoted in H. McKennie Goodpasture, Cross and Sword: An Eyewitness History of Christianity in Latin America (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1989), 56.
Mendicants versus bishops, Creoles against Spanish-born: Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 201.
“There are not above fifty churches and chapels”: Gage, in Cross and Sword, 71–72.
“so that twenty thousand ducats”: Within the Gage quotation above, the worth of the brazilwood stays “wrought with golden colors.” The amount quoted is equivalent to $2.7 million today. “Current Gold Gram Bar Values,” GoldGramBars.com, last modified January 25, 2019, www.goldgrambars.com.
“enrich themselves than to mind the salvation”: Roberto Levillier, Organización de la iglesia y ordenes religiosas en el virreinato del Perú en el siglo 16 (Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1919), 148. Cited also in Ricard, 424.
persuading the courts in Spain to classify Indians as miserabiles: Woodrow Borah, Justice by Insurance: The General Indian Court of Colonial Mexico (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 81.
the Church established a General Indian Court: Hanke, “A Modest Proposal,” 118.
perhaps the greatest single educational force in the New World: Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 42.
which the Crown and the Inquisition found convenient: The Spanish Inquisition was far more aggressive in Spain than it would ever be in the Americas. The Black Legend, perpetrated by England and France, exaggerated its reach and terror. English efforts against witchcraft—both in the British Isles and its colonies—executed thirty to fifty times more people than the Inquistion did. Arciniegas, Latin America, 139.
Eventually Bolívar would claim that a single faith: Arana, Bolívar, 353.
The Franciscans imposed harsh corporal punishments: Poole, in Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 57, 124.
Presidios and missions employed armed soldiers: Ibid., 38.
missionaries destroyed much of pre-Columbian culture: Ibid., 41.
a full-scale war of extermination: Ibid., 38.
the head of the Franciscan order in Yucatán, Diego de Landa: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The Americas: A Hemispheric History, 68; “Diego de Landa,” Encyclopæedia Britannica online, www.britannica.com.
One might argue that it is unfair for us to pass judgment: Poole, in Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 124–25.
That, along with the slave raids, violent incursions, reductions: Ibid., 123.
As one humble Mexican put it: Ibid.
Anglo-America never produced a single defender of the American Indian: Ibid., 126.
nothing to equal that impassioned deliberation: Ibid.
But Spain’s mission frontier system: This paragraph in general owes much to Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 268–69.
It was because of priests that Mexico had a printing press: Ibid., 205.
Dominicans, heritors of a great intellectual tradition: The Dominican schools did not found a single secondary school, and they refused to teach Indians or mestizos Latin (Lippy, Choquette, and Poole, 42).
Epigraph; “All monks have achieved”: Tupac Inca Yupanqui, “Reos de la sublevación de la provincia de Huarochiri” (1783), fs. 277–78, Audencia de Lima 1047, Archivo General de Indias.
the Indians suspected that they were demons: Marzal et al., 222.
These were surely the pishtacos of Quechua lore: Ibid; C. Wofenzon, “El ‘Pishtaco’ y el conflicto entre la costa y la sierra,” Latin American Literary Review 38, no. 75 (January–June 2019): 24–45.
The practice was common enough in an age: R. D. Forrest, “Development of Wound Therapy from the Dark Ages to the Present,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 75, no. 4 (April 1982): 268–69.
How could a celibate priest be a fully realized man: Marzal et al., 222.
“Dentro de este padrecito hay un hombre!”: Albó and Ruiz, 54.
the healthy, the educated 20 percent: Latin American income-inequality levels were among the highest in the world in the 1950s, and they still are today. E. Frankema, “The Historical Evolution of Inequality in Latin America: A Comparative Analysis, 1870–2000” (thesis, Groningen University, 2008); United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research, UNU/WIDER (2005) World Income Inequality Database (WIID), version 2.0a, www.wider.unu.edu/project/wiid-world-income-inequality-database?query=Latin+America.
Some observers in Europe went so far as to say: Girolamo Imbruglia, The Jesuit Missions of Paraguay and a Cultural History of Utopia, Studies in Christian Mission, vol. 51 (Boston: Brill, 2017), 22–23, 144.