The Legacy of Columbus
1992; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2327-641X
Autores Tópico(s)History and Politics in Latin America
ResumoFIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER THAT FAMOUS AND INFAMOUS LANDFALL OF 1492, we find ourselves a fight -- a fight establish the truth our past, finally; it is a fight how we teach our history our children. Four hundred and fifty years ago, 1542, Bartolome de Las Casas published his Very Short Account of the Devastation of the Indies. De Las Casas was no rebel but a rather solid Establishment man. A bishop Mexico and an early admirer of Columbus, he had the light 1515 during the Spanish conquest and pacification of Cuba, which cruelty even surpassed the subjugation of Hispaniola Columbus and his two brothers during their rule of that unhappy island (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, from 1493 till 1500). De Las Casas put that short (brevisima) his title the hope that it would entice his read the account, but if the did, it was already too late for the Caribbean, the Early Spanish Main. Those islands of the West Indies, perhaps no paradise, but surely blessed nature and climate and with a peaceful population, had then been turned into empty wastelands: Hispaniola alone, more than a million of your vassals have been destroyed, a Dominican priest, Pedro de Cordoba, wrote the as early as 1518, by common consent there will be none left four five years. De Las Casas himself had started his account with these words: Hispaniola was the first land the New World be destroyed and depopulated the Christians.... Into this sheepfold came Spaniards who immediately behaved like ravening and famished wild beasts ... with the strangest and most varied methods of cruelty, never seen or heard of before.... I have not described the thousandth part of what the Indians endured. God is my witness. He writes of men, women, and children burned alive over slow fires of green wood, and rows of 13 in honor of our Redeemer and his twelve Apostles. He describes the butcher shops where flesh of dead Indians was sold for dog food, because it was considered good military policy the Spaniards give their dogs a taste for Indian flesh. He describes the system for collecting that Columbus set into motion when the of gold he had promised his and Queen were not be found: all Indians over 14 years of age were set collect alluvial dust from the streams of Hispaniola. Every three months they had bring a quota a Spanish fort where they got a copper token hang around their necks. Indians caught without such a token had their hands cut off. In Haiti, I have seen the old prints illustrating this: you see them tumble away, looking with surprise at their air stumps pumping out their life's blood. Indians who fled into the mountains were chased (hunted is the proper word) with those man-eating dogs. After two years of this, even Columbus himself had admit there was no more gold; he then tried deliver the promised wealth shipping Indians as slaves Spain. They died too quickly promise good business and then, lastly, he switched the encomienda system: the land was divided up among his followers and the Indians who still remained became slaves of the new owners. The latter could also rent them out do forced labor anywhere else, under circumstances where their life expectancy was rated as about three months. In all his many letters, apologias, and petitions the Spanish court, Columbus continued his dying day with announcements that he was just reach King Solomon's Treasures, that he was indeed Asia, no matter what his detractors said, that he was surrounded ungrateful Spaniards and savages, and that he alone knew the way those treasures as well as to the Earthly Paradise that he had found. In all those writings there is very much talk and not one word of regret, let alone of remorse, those gentle and shy people (to quote his first letter of 1492) whom he had destroyed. …
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