AMERICA:
CONQUEST AND EVANGELIZATION – EPIC OR
GENOCIDE?
Prof. JORGE RAUL VERA
The atmosphere of the merciless repression in which America’s
Conquest developed, including its relevant wars, is widely known by its
aftermaths. In
1492 there were approximately 90
million indigenous people living in America (66.5
millions in South America; 13.5 in Central America and
10 millions in North America).
A hundred years later (1592), the
demographic equilibrium had been so severely disrupted by wars, diseases and
man slaughter, that South America’s native
population was reduced to 40 million people. This implies that during 36,500 days
about 1,096 indigenous people were annihilated per day. So, for a
period of 160 years (1492 - 1652), the 13.5 million
natives living in Central America (in 1492) gradually decreased till
amounting to 540,000 by 1652. That is to say, 12,960,000 people disappeared at
a rate of 222 per day.
And in 1692, the 200th anniversary of the
European disembarking in America, the total indigenous population was no more
than 4.5 million people 85,500,000 people (children, women, men and old people)
were annihilated (in different ways), at the rate of 1,171 people per day.
I do not
remember to have heard, in any of the school ceremonies I attended for fifty-four
years, firstly as a student, and then as a teacher, any speech related to the
“Conquest of America” express compassion for the cruelties and sufferings
inflicted on the natives, the legitimate owners of these usurped lands. Millions of children, women, men and elderly people despicably died after
suffering the ordeals only
human beings are capable of imagining.
The Slavery Scenario went on and on for so long that even today, more than
five hundred years later, the "Conquest’s civilizing” effects can still be
felt in many of the American peoples.
Thousands of human beings survive
under the most wretched Reductions, undergoing a slow and irreversible
extinction. All
this does not seem to count not only for the ideologists of the “official
historiography”, but also for those who in their mendacious speeches extol the
most abhorrent crime the Human Race has suffered.
Their greed for possessing the natives’ lands and wealth, the destruction
of ancient cultures, which surpassed the contemporary European ones in many
aspects, are “trivial facts" that are justified adducing the “spiritual
benefit” that would allegedly represent the changing of their cult for another.
Therefore the euphemism which summarizes the aberrant process of conquest
and colonization as the “encounter of two cultures” is absolutely improbable.
This research work presents a comparison between the
"official History" and the real
facts and events occurred during the
period of conquest, narrated by those who were the participants or witnesses of
the events.
It is impossible to attempt to
summarize in a couple of pages all the events occurred during the Conquest, so,
this abridged version of the facts intends to disclose – though to a minimum
extent- the predatory acts carried out by the conquerors, facts which were very
well concealed by the official History.
Therefore, the readers should notice that the accounts offered in this
piece of work do not have the chronological order schoolbooks have. Facts and geographical scenarios are depicted in broad
terms in order to provide more information in a small space.
More summaries about the America: Conquest and Evangelization. Epic or Genocide?