The Conquest of America by Spain was overall positive

Apologies for the forfeit, something came up with my family which took me away from the internet for a while. I only now just logged in here with an hour to go until the deadline, so this may be a bit rushed but it is what it is. I don't think much will be required to show that the resolution of the debate has not been proven.Pro states: "The position of influence of Las Casas was not a matter of pure luck but was rather given him by the Spanish Crown and regents. The contention ignores the fact of the consistent position in favor of the Indians by the Crown from the very days of Isabelle the Catholic." So was the Crown in favor of allowing the native people to practice their own religion? Were they were against the destruction of countless Mayan codices? When you say the Crown was 'in favor of the Indians', do you just mean that while they were being enslaved and their culture was being destroyed, they shouldn't have been also tortured? Is that really "overwhelmingly benign"?Again, I contend that you are talking about exceptions, not rules. Even if the Crown was included in the exceptions, their edicts were almost entirely ignored by the Spanish living in South America. Pro states: "This general goodwill is also seen in other projects that took place in America, such as the creation of schools, hospitals and the first university: all for the use of both Spaniards and Indians."You did not offer a source for this statement, and I would be interested in seeing the ratio of enrollments at these schools, but I'll accept your statement at face value for the sake of argument. After destroying the culture of the natives, of course they needed to replace it with something else. From my point of view, this is just another instrument of cultural hegemony. The actions essentially say "Forget everything about the past of your peoples, learn things the way we learn things." And this was forced upon them, no native person had a choice to follow the ways of their ancestors. Is this overwhelmingly benign?Pro states: "Now, it is true that these laws and this general goodwill faced difficulties in their implementation. Especially at first with the rebellion of the encomenderos, however the fact is that they not only held and were eventually implemented in full, but they were also subsequently expanded."Pro again gives no source for this statement, so I am not sure what he is referring to when he says that they 'held and were eventually implemented in full', and I do not intend to do Pro's homework for him or assume what he means by this statement.Pro states: "What my case hinges on is this protection and interest for the material and spiritual well-being of the natives being the general tenor of the conquest."Well, the proof is in the pudding. You have not proved the material well being of the natives in any way whatsoever. How do we know what we know about the Incans and the Aztecs? From archaelogical evidence and eyewitness accounts of the Spanish. Why were they not allowed to speak for themselves? In what condition are these people in today? Pro has pointed out an important difference between the conquest of the North Ameican continent and the South American continent. In one, the culture and people were nearly entirely destroyed while for the most part they were kept separate, whereas in the South, the culture was basically entirely erased from history while the people were mostly assimilated into Spanish culture (or, more accurately, eventually they intertwined enough to create their own culture which looked to Spain for guidance). Is one better than the other? It's difficult to say. In both cases, the cultures were decimated and huge portions of the population were killed, enslaved or tortured. Perhaps the Conquest in South America was ever so slightly more tolerable, but was it an overall positive, or extraordinarily benign, as Pro states? I don't see how this case can be made by any stretch of the imagination.