Accept Our King, Our God − Or Else: The Senseless ‘Requirement’ Spanish Colonizers Used To Justify Their Bloodshed In The Americas

Art from Madrid’s Museo de America depicts enslaved Indigenous people forced to build Mexico City on the ruins of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images

BY DIEGO JAVIER LUIS

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Across the United States, the second Monday of October is increasingly becoming known as Indigenous Peoples Day. In the push to rename Columbus Day, Christopher Columbus himself has become a metaphor for the evils of early colonial empires, and rightly so.

The Italian explorer who set out across the Atlantic in search of Asia was a notorious advocate for enslaving the Indigenous Taínos of the Caribbean. In the words of historian Andrés Reséndez, he “intended to turn the Caribbean into another Guinea,” the region of West Africa that had become a European slave-trading hub.

By 1506, however, Columbus was dead. Most of the genocidal acts of violence that defined the colonial period were carried out by many, many others. In the long shadow of Columbus, we sometimes lose sight of the ideas, laws and ordinary people who enabled colonial violence on a large scale.

As a historian of colonial Latin America, I often begin such discussions by pointing to a peculiar document drafted several years after Columbus’ death that would have greater repercussions for Indigenous peoples than Columbus himself: the Requerimiento, or “Requirement.”

Catch-22

In 1494, the Treaty of Tordesillas infamously divided much of the world beyond Europe into two halves: one for the Spanish crown, the other for the Portuguese. Spaniards lay claim to almost the entirety of the Americas, though they knew almost nothing about this vast domain or the people who lived there.

In order to inform Indigenous people that they had suddenly become vassals of Spain, King Ferdinand and his councilors instructed colonizers to read the Requerimiento aloud upon first contact with all Indigenous groups.

The document presented them with a choice that was no choice at all. They could either become Christians and submit to the authority of the Catholic Church and the king, or else:
“With the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can … we shall take you and your wives and your children and shall make slaves of them … the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault.”

It was a catch-22. According to the document, Indigenous people could either voluntarily surrender their sovereignty and become vassals or bring war upon themselves – and perhaps lose their sovereignty anyway, after much bloodshed. No matter what they chose, the Requerimiento supplied the legal pretext for forcibly incorporating sovereign Indigenous peoples into the Spanish domain.

At its core, the Requerimiento was a legal ritual, a performance of possession – and it was unique to early Spanish imperialism.

‘As absurd as it is stupid’

But for all of its seeming authority, the reading of the Requerimiento was an absurd exercise. It first occurred at what is now Santa Marta, Colombia, during the expedition led by Pedrarias Dávila in 1513. An eyewitness, the chronicler Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, stated the obvious: “we have no one here who can help [the Indigenous people] understand it.”

Even with a translator, though, the document – with its lofty references to the Biblical creation of the world and papal authority – would hardly be intelligible to people unfamiliar with the Spaniards’ religion. Explaining the convoluted document would require nothing less than a long recitation of Catholic history.

Oviedo suggested that to deliver such a lecture, you’d have to first capture and cage an Indigenous person. Even then, it would be impossible to verify whether the document had been fully understood.

However, for the Requerimiento’s greatest critic, Bartolomé de las Casas, translation was merely one of many problems. A missionary from Spain, Las Casas criticized the spurious requirement itself: that a people should be expected to immediately convert to a religion they have only just learned exists, and
“swear allegiance to a king they have never heard of nor clapped eyes on, and whose subjects and ambassadors prove to be cruel, pitiless and bloodthirsty tyrants. … Such a notion is as absurd as it is stupid and should be treated with the disrespect, scorn and contempt it so amply deserves.”

Las Casas, who documented abuses against Indigenous people in multiple books and speeches, was one of the most outspoken denouncers of Spanish cruelty in the Americas. While he believed Spaniards had a right and even an obligation to convert Indigenous people to Catholicism, he did not believe that conversion should be done under the threat of violence.

Wars and forced settlement

Indigenous people responded to the Requerimiento in numerous ways. When the Chontal Maya of Potonchan – a Maya capital now part of Mexico – heard the conquistador Hernando Cortés read the document three consecutive times, they answered with arrows. After Cortés captured the town, they agreed to become Christian vassals of Spain on the condition that the Spaniards “leave their land.” When Cortés’ men remained after three days, the Chontal Maya attacked again.

Farther north, Spanish expeditioners Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca and Melchior Díaz used the Requerimiento to forcibly relocate various Indigenous groups.

A bloodthirsty governor of the province, Nuño Beltrán de Guzmán – so violent that the Spanish themselves imprisoned him for abuses of power – had driven Indigenous residents out of the Valley of Culiacan in a series of brutal wars. But in 1536, Cabeza de Vaca and Díaz forced several groups, including the Tahue, to repopulate the valley after convincing them to accept the terms of the Requerimiento.

Resettlement would enable the collection of tribute and conversion to Catholicism. It was simply easier to assign missionaries and tribute collectors to established Hispanic townships than to mobile communities spread out across vast territories.

Cabeza de Vaca encouraged Indigenous leaders to accept the proposition by claiming that their god, Aguar, was the same as the Christians’, and so they should “serve him as we commanded.” In such cases, conversion to Catholicism was just as farcical as the Requerimiento itself.

Violence and colonial legacy

Even when Indigenous people accepted the Requerimiento, however, Las Casas wrote that “they are (still) harshly treated as common slaves, put to hard labor and subjected to all manner of abuse and to agonizing torments that ensure a slower and more painful death than would summary execution.” In most cases, the Requerimiento was simply a precursor to violence.

Dávila, the conquistador of present-day northern Colombia, once read it out of earshot of a village just before launching a surprise attack. Others read the Requerimiento “to trees and empty huts” before drawing their swords. The path to vassalage was paved in blood.

These are the truest indications of what the Requerimiento became on the ground. Soldiers and officials were content to violently deploy or discard royal prerogatives as they pleased in their pursuit of the spoils of war.

And yet, despite the viciousness, many Indigenous peoples survived by stringing their bows like the Chontal Maya, or negotiating a new relationship with Spain like the Tahue of Culiacan. Tactics varied greatly and changed over time.

Many Indigenous nations that exercised them survive today, long outliving the Spanish Empire – and the people who carried the Requerimiento on their crusade across the Americas.

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Black Portuguese Plan A Memorial To Honor Enslaved Ancestors

Gomes Dias' parents were immigrants from Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa. (Jake Cigainero for NPR)

BY JAKE CIGAINERO,

NPR TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2018

LISBON (NPR)--Growing up in Portugal's capital Lisbon, Beatriz Gomes Dias says she couldn't identify with the people she saw on TV, in ads or in museums. Her parents were immigrants from Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony in West Africa. There were other black Portuguese, but Gomes Dias says she felt invisible.

"I remember being a child, looking at the majority of Portuguese people and not being like them, and not having a place for me and people like me," she says.

So, the 47-year-old high school biology teacher and her anti-racism association Djass proposed to erect a memorial to colonial slaves in a grassy square along Lisbon's port, where ships once unloaded their human cargo.

Gomes Dias says Portuguese history often portrays slaves as no more than goods for sale. Her Afro-descendant group Djass wants to honor their ancestors who were enslaved and trafficked by the Portuguese.

The memorial would be the first of its kind in Portugal to acknowledge the country's role in the colonial slave trade, according to Gomes Dias, who envisions the monument in the form of a statue or sculpture.

The project was approved in a public vote and won funding from the city last year.

Meanwhile, Afro-Portuguese advocates like Gomes Dias are critical of another historical project planned in Lisbon. The tentatively named Museum of Discoveries, which would tell the story of heroic Portuguese navigators who first charted routes around Africa, India and South America. But the dark side of that rich history entials colonialism and slave trade.

The proposed slavery memorial and the unbuilt museum have become lightning rods for public debate about Portugal's colonial past.

Critics say the museum's theme would whitewash the violence of Portugal's colonial rule. But, in turn, the supporters of the museum accuse their detractors of denying the triumphs of Portuguese explorers.

Renato Epifanio, an academic and the president of the International Lusophone Movement, a group that promotes Portuguese language and culture around the world, says some people make it sound like Portugal invented slavery.

"All other issues, like scientific discoveries, cultural relationships, do not exist. Only the question of slavery," Epifanio said at his office in Lisbon's Palace of Independence. "For us that is profoundly wrong."

He says the slavery memorial and the museum of discoveries would complement each other in the right context. But that context doesn't exist in Portugal, according to anthropologist Bruno Sena Martins.

"Portugal has a self-representation in which the violent history of colonialism is not part of it," Martins says.

Portugal proudly claims to be one of the first countries to abolish slavery following a 1761 decree. But that was only in the homeland. Portuguese slave traders just diverted traffic to the colonies in Brazil, and full abolition didn't come until more than a century later.

Historians estimate Portugal trafficked between 4.5 million and 6 million of the many millions of enslaved Africans. Its large colony in Brazil was a prime destination.

Portugal does not collect or publish data on its citizens' race and ethnicity, so it is difficult to establish the size of its current Afro-descendant population, what portion are descendants of those forcibly brought to the country centuries ago or are more recent arrivals.

But descendants from former colonies, such as Angola and Mozambique, say they have been denied a place in Portugal's history.

"The black Portuguese are not recognized as Portuguese, because they are always relating black Portuguese to the countries in Africa that were occupied by Portugal," Gomes Dias says.

Martins lectures at Portuguese high schools about slavery and colonial violence. He says there's a clear resistance to talking about slavery, and the official history curriculum downplays the subject.

"The argument is that if you go back to this colonial past and this racist history, we are only hurting Portugal," Martins says. "But ignoring racism or colonial history is to accept the continuing violence of racism in our society."

This isn't a new debate for Portugal. Portuguese historians have often claimed the country exercised a "softer" colonial rule compared with its European neighbors. However, Portugal was one of the last European powers to decolonize in Africa in 1975 after colonies resisted for over a decade of bloody war.

Fernando Rosas, a retired Portuguese historian and former parliamentarian, says the difference today is a new generation of historians and researchers of African descent, like Martins, is changing the way Portugal talks about its past. That's why he thinks the Museum of Discoveries will need a different name.

"Museum of Discoveries... of course the Portuguese discovered the world," Rosas says laughing. "We didn't discover anything because people were there, and the people that were there also discovered the Portuguese. The right name is Museum of Colonialism because it is about that we are speaking."

Gomes Dias and her group are still looking for an Afro-descendant artist to design the slavery memorial. But when the monument is unveiled next year, Rosas says it will be a milestone in the fight between Portugal's past and its future.

Portugal Approves Citizenship Plans For Sephardic Jews

Jewish prayer shawls are stored on a shelf at the entrance of the Jewish synagogue in Lisbon. Portugal is following Spain and granting citizenship rights to the descendants of Jews it persecuted 500 years ago.

LISBON, PORTUGAL (AP) — Portugal's government on Thursday approved a law granting citizenship rights to the descendants of Jews it persecuted 500 years ago, following Spain's adoption of similar legislation last year.

Cabinet spokesman Luis Marques Guedes said the government passed changes to its nationality law, providing dual citizenship rights for Sephardic Jews — the term commonly used for those who once lived in the Iberian peninsula.

The rights will apply to those who can demonstrate "a traditional connection" to Portuguese Sephardic Jews, such as through "family names, family language, and direct or collateral ancestry." Applicants will be vetted by Portuguese Jewish community institutions, as well as by government agencies. Applicants will also have to say whether they have a criminal record.

Similar legislation is pending in Spain's parliament. The Portuguese Parliament unanimously endorsed the law in 2013. Since then, the government has been drawing up the legal details and establishing administrative procedures. The effective date of the law was not immediately announced, but will be when the legislation is published soon in the country's official gazette.

Jewish community leaders say they expect the application procedure to take four months. Applicants will not need to travel to Portugal. Portuguese monarchs, eager for tax revenue and Jewish talent that helped Portugal become one of Europe's wealthiest nations during the Age of Expansion in the 1400s, had protected their thriving Sephardic community.

After Spain drove out Jews in 1492, some 80,000 of them crossed the border into Portugal, historians estimate. King Joao II charged the fleeing Sephardic Jews a tax to shelter in Portugal. He promised to provide them with ships so they could go to other countries, but later changed his mind.

In 1496 his successor King Manuel I, eager to find favor with Spain's powerful Catholic rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella and marry their daughter Isabella of Aragon, gave the Jews 10 months to convert or leave. When they opted to leave, Manuel issued a new decree prohibiting their departure and forcing them to embrace Roman Catholicism as "New Christians."

The "New Christians" adopted new names, inter-married and even ate pork in public to prove their devotion to Catholicism. Some Jews, though, kept their traditions alive, secretly observing the sabbath at home then going to church on Sunday. They circumcised their sons and quietly observed Yom Kippur, calling it in Portuguese the "dia puro," or pure day.

Though officially accepted, the New Christians were at the mercy of popular prejudice. In the Easter massacre of Jewish converts in 1506 in Lisbon, more than 2,000 Jews are believed to have been murdered by local people.

The Portuguese Inquisition, established in 1536, was at times more cruel than its earlier Spanish counterpart. It persecuted, tortured and burned at the stake tens of thousands of Jews. Now those events are widely viewed as a stain on Portuguese history.

In 1988, then-president Mario Soares met with members of Portugal's Jews community and formally apologized for the Inquisition. In 2000, the leader of Portugal's Roman Catholics issued a public apology for the suffering imposed by the Catholic Church, and in 2008 a monument to the dead was erected outside the Sao Domingos church where the Easter massacre began.

Centenarian Gets Honorary High School Diploma

 AP Mary Moniz holds her honorary high school diploma at her home in East Providence, R.I., awarded by the Fall River, Mass., school department. On Monday she celebrated her 100th birthday. Moniz attended high school in Fall River for two years until her family moved back to the Azores amid the Great Depression. She moved back to the United States in 1949, but never completed school.

EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — A Rhode Island centenarian has received something she'd wanted for more than eight decades: her high school diploma.

East Providence resident Mary Moniz (MOH'-neez) received the honorary diploma from the Fall River, Massachusetts, school department on Saturday. She turned 100 on Monday. Moniz attended high school in Fall River. But she went for only two years because her family moved back to the Azores amid the Great Depression.

In 1949, she moved back to the United States. But she never completed high school. Her son says she always regretted not finishing. She says she had wanted to be a history teacher. She worked for a metal products company for 16 years. She says she's honored to get her degree.

Her family arranged the honorary diploma by contacting the education commissioner in Massachusetts.

Eusebio (1942 - 2013)

Eusebio da Silva Ferreira of Benfica Football Club in Lisbon, shown at London Airport, England on May 19, 1963, when he arrived with the team. On May 22, Benfica play Milan in the European Cup final at Wembley Stadium. Eusebio, ranked one of the best forwards in the world, says his ambition is to score a goal at Wembley. Benfica has won the European Cup two years running. (AP Photo/Victor Boyton)

Eusebio was a Mozambican-born Portuguese football forward. He is considered one of the greatest footballers of all time. During his professional career, he scored 733 goals in 745 matches.

He helped the Portuguese national team reach third place at the 1966 World Cup in England, being the top goal scorer of the tournament with nine goals (including four in one match against North Korea and received the Bronze Ball award. He won the Balon d'Or award in 1965 and was runner-up in 1962 and 1966. He played for Benefica for 15 out of his 22 years as a footballer, thus being mainly associated with the Portuguese club, and is the team's all-time top scorer with 638 goals scored in 614 official games. There, he won eleven Primeira Liga titles, five Taca de Portugal titles, a  European Cup (1961-!962) and helped them reach three additional European Cup finals. He was the European Cup top scorer in 1965, 1966 and 1968. He also won the Bola de Prata (Primeira Liga top scorer award) a record seven times. He was the first ever player to win the European Golden Boot, in 1968, a feat he replicated in 1973. He died Sunday January 5, 2013. He was 71.

Captain of England's World Cup football team, Bobby Moore, left, holds his BBC Sportsview Personality of the Year award as he chats with Eusebio da Silva Ferreira, Portugal's inside forward who is holding a special Individual International award, at the British Broadcasting Corporation's Television Centre in London, England on Dec. 15, 1966. On the table in front of them is the Jules Rimet Cup, held by England after their World Soccer Championship series win. (AP Photo/Peter Kemp) 

Eusebio da Silva Ferreira and his wife Sophie admire the special Individual International award presented to him at the British Broadcasting Corporation's Television Centre in London, England on Dec. 15, 1966. This was one of several annual awards made by the BBC's Sportsview Programme to sporting personalities, both for team and individual efforts. (AP Photo/Peter Kemp)