Part 5, Las Casas Details the Cruel and Unusual Treatment Committed by the Spanish Against the Indigenous People of Mexico

In the fifth part of our condensed version of Bartolome De Las Casas’s ‘Account of the Destruction of the Indies’, published in 1542, Las Casas describes the infamous invasion and genocide commited against the indigenous people of present day Mexico by Spanish military personnel. At the time, Mexico consisted of various nations: Aztecs, Mayas, Tlaxacalans, Zapotec etc. Through initially allying with the Tlaxacalans, the Aztecs biggest rivals, the Spanish would go on to terrorize, massacre, and conquer each nation one by one. Eventually, the Spanish would gradually go on to forcibly subjugate their biggest indigenous allies, the Tlaxacalans. This was done all in the name of riches, land, and Chrisitianity, or in other words Power.

The following is selected portions of Las Casas’s 1542 Account, where he describes the sickening atrocities commited against the Native people of Mexico, who, he describes, had not done the Spanish any wrong.

“New Spain [Mexico] was discovered in 1517…And from that year until this — and it is now 1542 — …. the outrageous acts of violence and the bloody tyranny of these Christians have steadily escalated, the perpetrators having lost all fear of God, all love of their sovereign, and all sense of self-respect.

From the very first day they set foot in New Spain [Mexico], which was the eighteenth of April 1518, until 1530, there was no respite whatever in the carnage and mayhem provoked by these cruel and bloodthirsty Spaniards. Throughout those twelve long years they pillaged their way over an area of some four hundred and fifty leagues around Mexico City…This area had originally boasted four or five great kingdoms, each of them as large as Spain and a good deal better favoured…during the course of what they term the ‘conquest’ (which is really and truly nothing other than a series of violent incursions…incursions condemned not only in the eyes of God but also by law…

the Europeans have, throughout these four hundred and fifty leagues, butchered, burned alive or otherwise done to death four million souls, young and old alike, men, women and children. And this figure does not include those killed and still being killed today as a direct result of the tyrannical slavery and the oppression and privation its victims are forced to endure on a daily basis.

Among other massacres was one which took place in Cholula, a great city of some thirty thousand inhabitants. When all the dignitaries of the city and the region came out to welcome the Spaniards with all due pomp and ceremony…the Spaniards decided that the moment had come to organize a massacre…in order to inspire fear and terror in all the people of the territory.

What they did was the following. They requested the local lord to send for all the nobles and leading citizens of the city and of all the surrounding communities subject to it and, as soon as they arrived and entered the building to begin talks with the Spanish commander, they were seized without anyone outside getting wind of what was afoot…Spanish soldiers unsheathed their swords and grasped their lances and proceeded to slaughter these poor innocents…

One of these dignitaries…managed to get free and took refuge, along with twenty or thirty or forty others, in the great temple of the city…But the Spaniards…set fire to the temple, burning those inside alive, the victims shouting all the time: ‘Oh, wicked men! What harm had we done to you? Why do you kill us? Wait till you get to Mexico City, for there our great king, Montezuma, will avenge our deaths’…

They were responsible also for another huge massacre in Tepeaca, a city bigger than Cholula and one with a larger population. Here the Spaniards put countless thousands to the sword in the cruelest possible manner.

From Cholula they made their way to Mexico City. On their journey, they were showered with thousands of gifts from the great king Montezuma…gifts of gold, silver and apparel from the great lord. At the city gates, Montezuma himself came out to meet them…He escorted them into the city to the great houses where he had directed they should be lodged…the Spaniards seized the great king unawares by means of a trick and held him under armed guard of eighty soldiers, eventually putting him in irons…

All the local citizens, great and small, as well as all the members of the court, were wholly taken up with entertaining their imprisoned lord. To this end, they organized fiestas, some of which involved staging traditional dances every afternoon and evening in squares and residential quarters throughout the city…Thither the Spanish captain made his way, accompanied by a platoon of his men, under pretense of wanting to watch the spectacle but in fact carrying orders to attack the revellers at a prearranged time…

The nobles were totally absorbed in what they were doing and had no thought for their own safety when the soldiers drew their swords and shouting: ‘For Saint James, and at ‘em, men!’proceeded to slice open the lithe and naked bodies of the dancers and to spill their noble blood. Not one dancer was left alive, and the same story was repeated in the other squares throughout the city.

This series of events caused horror, anguish and bitterness throughout the land; the whole nation was plunged into mourning and, until the end of time, or at least as long as a few of these people survive, they will not cease to tell and re-tell, in their areitos and dances, just as we do at home in Spain with our ballads, this sad story of a massacre which wiped out their entire nobility, beloved and respected by them for generations and generations.

Once the native population learned of this barbaric and unprecedented outrage, perpetrated against innocent individuals who had done nothing whatever to deserve such cruelty, the whole city, which had up to then tolerated the equally unmerited imprisonment of its lord and master simply because he himself had issued orders that no one was to fight the Christians nor to offer any resistance to them, took up arms and attacked them. Many Spaniards were wounded and only narrowly managed to make good their escape. They ordered Montezuma out on to the terrace at dagger point and forced him to order his men not to attack the house and to cease their insurrection. But the people ceased altogether at that juncture to obey such orders and there was a feeling that they should elect another lord in Montezuma’s place who would be able and willing to lead them in battle.

At this point, it became known that the Spanish commander was on his way back from the coast after his victory over the rebel forces and that he was not far off and was bringing reinforcements…Once the commander arrived, the natives attacked with such unrelenting ferocity that it seemed to the garrison that not one of them would be left alive, and they decided to abandon the city in secret and at night. The locals got wind of this…killing them in great numbers, as, indeed, they had every right to, given the attacks we have described that had been made on them: a reasonable and fair-minded man will see that theirs was a defensive action and a just one. The Spaniards then regrouped and there followed a battle for the city in which terrible and bizarre outrages were committed against the indigenous population, vast numbers of whom were killed and many others, several leaders among them, burned alive.

After the vile outrages and abominations perpetrated by the Spaniards, both in Mexico City itself and throughout the whole region…they transferred their pestilential attentions to the densely populated Panuco province, where once again they swept through the territory, pillaging and murdering on the grand scale as they went. They then moved on to the provinces of Tuxtepec… and finally Colima, each one of them greater in extent than the kingdoms of Castile and Leon, and in each they wrought the same destruction as they had in Mexico City and its province…

It should be recalled that the pretext upon which the Spanish invaded each of these provinces and proceeded to massacre the people and destroy their lands…was purely and simply that they were making good the claim of the Spanish Crown to the territories in question. At no stage had any order been issued entitling them to massacre the people or to enslave them. Yet, whenever the natives did not drop everything and rush to recognize publicly the truth of the irrational and illogical claims claims that were made, and whenever they did not immediately place themselves completely at the mercy of the iniquitous and cruel and bestial individuals who were making such claims, they were dubbed outlaws and held to be in rebellion against His Majesty…

Any reasonable person who knows anything of God, of rights and of civil law can imagine for himself what the likely reaction would be of any people living peaceably within their own frontiers, unaware that they owe allegiance to anyone save their natural lords, were a stranger suddenly to issue a demand along the following lines: ‘You shall henceforth obey a foreign king, whom you have never seen nor ever heard of and, if you do not, we will cut you to pieces’…when the local people do obey such commands they are harshly treated as common slaves, put to hard labour and subjected to all manner of abuse and to agonizing torments that ensure a slower and more painful death than would summary execution…their wives and their children all perish and the whole of their nation is wiped from the face of the earth…”