Any historian will tell you that the Spanish colonists had three main aims when they came pillaging and enslaving their way through the Americas: wealth, status, and souls.  This could be said of more than just the Spanish–you could easily suggest that most of the horrible atrocities (and lesser actions) ever taken in history have been because of those three ideas.  Of the three, however, souls is the one we use to justify our atrocities–and the Spanish were no different.  The natives were made out to be savages, lesser creatures to be saved from their brutal lives.  It was this view that was so often used to enslave, oppress, and condemn people throughout the centuries. Unfortunately, it is still everywhere in our society, exhibited by Jihadists and enthusiastic evangelicals alike. 

Where did this mentality come from?  In the history of the European world this has been one of the most unfortunate views to develop out of the middle ages.  As explained in Born in Blood in Fire, by John Chasteen, the crusade mentality was something that had been ingrained in the Spanish through centuries of religious struggling with various foriengn invadors.

Born in Blood and Fire, by John Chasteen

 ”In 711 Muslims from northern Africa, called Moors, began to cross [the straits separating the two continents], heading north and seized most of the peninsula from its Christian kings (whose predecessors generations earlier had taken it from the Romans, who, in turn, had seized it from the Carthaginians, and so on).”   Ironically, these Africans were more civilized in almost every respect than the current Spanish–they were better physicians, engineers, and farmers, knew more about history and learning (they were the ones to introduce Greek and Roman learning into the area), and had much more developed sciences and technologies.  How then did cultural and religious intolerance form?  

Unfortunately, as Chasteen states, “the peninsula’s (Iberia, where Spain is located) eight hundred years of multicultural experience dissolved in an intolerant drive for religious purity.”  This quest for purity seems to be a common theme among all divided and heterogenous societies–even one like America, where the drive for a pure “American ideal” and patriotism leads people to pursecution, oppression, and misunderstanding. In Iberia’s case, this task of reconquest led to the seemingly glorious task of  annexing new land and subjugating the infidel populations.  Not only did they claim new territories but they forced Christian ideals on the people as they went.  The same pattern was applied to the conquest of the Americas. According to Chasteen:

“When Queen Isabel of Castile decided to bankroll the explorations of Christopher Columbus in teh 1490s, she did so in hopes of enriching her kingdom, true enough….But we should not underestimate the religious mystique that also surrounded the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs. Isabel was above all a Catholic monarch. Centuries of reconquest had created a true crusading mentality in Iberia, and the monarchies used this fervor to justify their increasingly absolute power.

“…Overseas exploration also took on religious significance. The earlier Christian reconquest in Portugal allowed the Portuguese to extend their crusading activities into Africa ahead of Spain. As Portuguese ships edged down the coast of Africa during the 1400s, bringing back gold and slaves, they found religious justification in tales of a lost Christian kingodm that supposedly lay beyond the Sahara, waiting to be reunited with the rest of Christendom.”

Chasteen does not beat around the bush. He states clearly:

“Religious ideas became particularly influential at the level of formal rationalization. Whenever the invaders of America had to explain and justify their actions, they invoked religious goals for reasons no more sinister than the common human wish to present oneself in the best light.”

Painting of Diego de Landa burning Mayan books. Photo credit: kwalbolt

The list of atrocities behind such ideals could and does fill thousands of volumes of historical texts. One particularly striking example from early colonial history is the case of the Priest Diego de Landa, who spent almost his whole life trying to Christianize the natives in the Yucatan peninsula in the mid 1500s. When the natives continued their “idolotrous ways” he proceeded to conduct massive torture campaigns. It is estimated that about 4000 natives were tortured in the course of 3 months.  Just because these people were living the way they had always known to live, but it was viewed as somehow savage by an outsider. 

The reason I tell this story of Spanish religious crusading is because it says alot about a mentality that still exists throughout our society.  When someone sees another culture or society and sees a strange world with different customs, beliefs, and ways of living, we automatically assume that they are somehow lesser or somehow deprived. We tend to think that we need to save them from their poor, wretched plight.  This occurs still within religious proselyting but also occurs within cross cultural mixing.  Unfortunately, The United States is the most obvious society to accuse of this practice and mindset. In the name of certain ideals the US has spent the last fifty years intervening in foriegn affairs, repressing different ideas, and supporting all kinds of atrocities and persecution.  The whole of the Cold War consists of a list of one violent and repressive intervention after another–whether it is Guatemala, Iran, Vietnam, Korea, El Salvador, Cuba, Venezuela–the list goes on.   But even now the US has troops in foreign lands. And what is our justification? It is the same as has always been used: you hold up some ideal like “Freedom, Liberty, and Democracy!” and proceed to kill, torture, and oppress people rather indiscrimantely for it.  

This does not mean that the ideals themselves are bad ones, by any means. The problem is when one is so set on spreading a certain idea that you are willing to kill for it.   Yes, the Jihadist and Taliban are just as guilty as the US, but the war is still fed on both sides by same problem. In other words, we are no better than they.  In a world the resembles a clash of civilizations, in the sense of Samual P. Huntington, how does this still make sense? How can we hope to ever have peace when we continue to fight over ideals and cultures, looking upon the other sides as savages? Are we not past this?  The accusation goes equally to both sides, but particularly to America, where we are supposed to be the flagship of freedom, liberty, and the promotion of diversity and equality.  Surely we could go about this war in a way that didn’t resemble the same oppressive, imperialist methods that have plagued this world since the Europeans first ventured off their little continent? 

But the blame doesn’t just fit in a global context, but for individuals as well.  I cannot tell you how often I see this conquest, “saving souls” mindset in some of our best people as they try to help others.  The so-called Green Revolution (the one in the 50s, not the current one) was a push by individuals and organizations to “modernize” agriculture in what was viewed as decrepit and deprived countries. Only now do we realize, as millions of children are dying of starvation due to the monoculture we’ve created, that we grossly misunderstood these people’s needs and culture.  The lesson continues to repeat itself in these more mild forms as we crusade with our ideals, thinking we know what is best, trying to “free people from the chains which bind them” or something of that sort, with our glorious new ideas. 

Seeking for a better world is one thing. Thinking you know what that better world is, and trying to force that ideal on others regardless of their beliefs, circumstances, and desires, that is a path to atrocities, misunderstanding, and suffering.  Please, let’s learn our lesson from history and seek to improve the world with an eye to local needs and individual desires, allowing those people to direct their own change rather than us being so conceited as to think we can instill in them the “better path” or way of life. 

This article was written using information taken down from lectures delivered at the University of South Carolina under Gabrielle Kuenzli and Joseph November. However, they do not directly endose any of the views contained in this article.