Requerimiento

The Requerimiento—a Spanish word meaning “requirement” or “demand”—was a document that was read aloud by the Spanish conquistadores of the early sixteenth century to native peoples in the Americas, demanding that they submit themselves to Spanish rule and to Christianity. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI, in the wake of Christopher Columbus's first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, had claimed the authority to grant the Spanish monarchy dominion over the New World. The Spanish jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios then composed the Requerimiento in 1513 to justify the subjugation of the American peoples in the name of God, forcing them to convert to the Catholic Church or face the Spaniards in war.

In Spain people were beginning to debate the morality of colonization of the Americas. Some supported colonization, in large part because of the wealth it would bring to Spain but also because colonists and missionaries would win new souls for Christ. Since the 700s Spain had been embroiled in war with the Moors—Spanish Muslims—in trying to expel them from Granada, in southern Spain. Proponents of that war, principally clerics, justified it by saying that the Moors knew of Christ but consciously rejected him; accordingly, they had no rights. The war against the Moors was then used as precedent and justification for subjugating the peoples of the New World. Other Spaniards, however, pointed out that the Amerindians (a modern term for the indigenous peoples of the Americas) had never heard of Christ, so religious warfare against them was unjustifiable. These Spaniards opposed colonization because of its violence, slavery, exploitation, and crime. Nevertheless, the prospect of enrichment won out, with disastrous consequences for the indigenous peoples of South, Central, and North America.