From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: Columbus & the Conquest
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: PACH
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 03:34:08 GMT

/** native.1492: 211.0 **/
** Topic: GL:Columbus & the Conquest **
** Written 12:29 pm  Oct  8, 1992 by hrcoord in cdp:native.1492 **
From: Human Rights Coordinator <hrcoord>
Subject: GL:Columbus & the Conquest

/* Written  6:22 pm  Oct  6, 1992 by greenleft@peg.UUCP in igc:greenleft.news */
Columbus and the conquest of the Americas

October 12 is the 500th anniversary of the arrival in the
Americas of Christopher Columbus' expedition. Often referred to
as a ``discovery'', the event in reality was the beginning of one
of the most brutal conquests in all of history. Western Europe,
and later the United States, rose to wealth and power through the
destruction of whole peoples and their civilisations. The
information here was put together by the US organisation Witness
for Peace.

When Columbus arrived on the island of Hispaniola
(Haiti/Dominican Republic) in 1492, it is estimated that he
encountered 1.5 million ``Indians''. By 1519, through murder,
torture, suicide and disease, the indigenous population had been
reduced to 500 individuals.

Howard Zinn relates in A People's History of the United States:

``In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he [Columbus] and his
men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons
fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold
every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper
tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper
token had their hands cut off and bled to death.''

It is estimated that between 70 million and 120 million people
lived in the Americas when Columbus' ships arrived, a population
larger than that on the European continent. Civilisations such as
the Mayas and Aztecs lived in highly organised communities with
intact cultural, artistic, religious and economic systems.

According to Zinn, the systems of government employed by Indians
were ``complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than
in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children,
and nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any
place in the world''.

With 300,000 inhabitants, Tenochtitln, the capital of the Aztec
empire (upon whose ruins Mexico City is located today) was twice
the size of London, the largest European city of the time. To
supply a city that size, the Aztecs had developed sophisticated
agricultural production and distribution systems.

The Mayas had a highly developed knowledge of mathematics and
astronomy. They had developed the concept of zero, which the
Europeans learned from the Arabs. They were agriculturally self-
sufficient, working the land communally and producing enough to
feed their entire population.
The Incas in the central Andes were also a highly developed
people. They were self-sufficient, producing many varieties of
corn corresponding to different soil types. They developed
terracing as a way to use scarce water to irrigate large
extensions of land along steep slopes. Llamas were used for
transportation, and the Incas traded as far south as Chile and as
far north as Central America.

The conquistadors relied upon their superior weapons (the Indians
had never seen guns or steel swords) and military might to force
the European political and economic systems onto the original
inhabitants of the ``New World''. Hernan Cortes disembarked in
Mexico in 1519, and by 1521 he had conquered the great Aztec
empire. Over the next several years, conquistadors conquered for
the Spanish crown the lands of what is now Central America.

In the early 1500s Spain established the system of encomienda in
Latin America, which granted colonists large tracts of land as
well as the Indians on that land to serve as labourers. Millions
of Indians were literally worked to death by their colonial
slave-owners.

Uruguayan writer and journalist Eduardo Galeano writes in Open
Veins of Latin America: ``The Indians of the Americas totaled no
less than 70 million when the foreign conquerors appeared on the
horizon; a century and a half later they had been reduced to 3.5
million''.

While sparse records remain of some groups of peoples, other
civilisations were completely destroyed. The land, resources,
cultures, societies and religions of the indigenous peoples were
violated and exploited, beginning a cycle of enslavement of
indigenous and African peoples.

The extraction of wealth and resources from the colonies expanded
at an astounding pace after the arrival of the first
conquistadors. Between 1503 and 1660, 185 tons of gold and 16,000
tons of silver were extracted from the colonies. Eduardo Galeano
estimated that between 1760 and 1809 silver and gold exports from
the Mexican mines of Zacatecas and Guanajuato exceeded $5
billion.

Where silver and gold could not be found, the colonists turned to
agriculture. Production of crops for export became one of the
main sources of wealth. Sugar was the first crop produced on a
large scale for export. Introduced in the Americas during
Columbus' second voyage, sugar cane plantations soon spread
throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America.

Land and indigenous people were seized by the Europeans for the
lucrative business of sugar production. Not only were the Indians
enslaved, but between 1500 and 1650, 10 million Africans were
brought to the Americas as slaves. It is estimated that 20% of
the Africans died on the voyage across the ocean. Expansion of
sugar production brought expansion of the slave trade.

Environmental plunder

The indigenous societies of the Americas had developed scientific
systems of agriculture based on the conditions of their
environment. Farmers, through trial and error, developed the best
seeds for their crops, the right amount of irrigation and the
best time for planting to produce the greatest yields.

The ability to work with the environment to maximise benefits
without destroying it was the principal reason that Incan and
Mayan empires (among other societies) were able to grow and
prosper.

The European invaders cleared huge tracts of land, over-planted
indigenous crops (maize, tobacco, potatoes and tomatoes) for
export and introduced alien crops better suited to the
agricultural techniques and climate of Europe. This caused the
destruction of much flora and fauna, a depletion of nutrients in
the soil and the eventual degradation of the land.

Because the Europeans mined gold and silver as a commercial
enterprise, entire indigenous nations throughout the Americas
were moved, enslaved or destroyed. Huge tracts of land were
damaged, trees were uprooted, topsoil was destroyed and land was
removed from agricultural use for the purpose of extracting
minerals that would be shipped to Europe.

After the most accessible minerals and metals had been extracted
using indigenous methods of mining, the ``patio process'', which
causes irreparable damage, was introduced by Europeans to extract
more minerals. To get at the mineral riches in lower grade
mineral bodies, the Spaniards used mercury to separate silver
from the crushed rock and silt in the mines. According to the
North American Council on Latin America:

``Mercury was amalgamated with silver ore in large tanks or
patios where humans and animals crushed ore with their feet. The
Indians and mules that labored in the patios soon became
chronically ill and most died. Rivers in the mining regions
became saturated with mercury, initiating a chain of ecological
transformation, since the element accumulates in animal and plant
tissue. Fish caught in waters laden with mercury were eaten by
humans, animals and birds, spreading toxicity. Soils were so
affected by contaminated river water even in areas far from the
mines that the plants they supported mutated over time.''


Women

Women had long been accorded enormous respect among native
peoples. Many indigenous societies were matrilineal. Communal
power was often found in the hands of the women.

For example, in the Apache tradition women have always had
influence, working toward a balanced sense of power within the
culture. Apache women had control of the household food supply
and primary roles in the inheritance of property. Similarly, clan
mothers among the Iroquois nations (the Seneca, Oneida, Mohawk,
Onondaga and Cayuga) elect leadership of the nation and have the
power to remove leaders (sachem) who are unfit. They are seen as
the keepers of the family and of the nation.

The European notion of women was strikingly different from that
of the indigenous Americans. Women in Europe had long been
relegated to subservient positions in society, in the church and
in the family. At issue was more than a ``division of labour''
between the genders; the status of women was deemed inferior to
that of men, and women were not accorded the same rights and
power as men.

The ideology of female inferiority directly benefited the male-
dominated power structures and the men who were in power,
including the church hierarchy and the evolving mercantile class
- two of the sponsors of (and benefactors of) Columbus' voyage.

European colonists brought with them the ideologies of both male
superiority and racism. Many of the conquistadors viewed
indigenous, and later African, women as prey for their sexual
gratification and domination. Rapes and forced cohabitation were
common. Racially, indigenous women were considered ``impure'',
and children born of white European and indigenous unions were
also considered impure and inferior.

An attitude of the superiority of the European culture and
religion served to justify the conquering of the Indians and the
plundering of the resources of the Americas. The Europeans came
to the Americas searching for gold, silver, wood, slaves, land -
whatever they could steal or usurp. They did so in the name of
the church, but dispensed with the religious charge or Christian
virtues whenever it was expedient.



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