Requerimiento

Context

In the fifteenth century, maritime powers such as Spain, Portugal, and the Italian cities of Venice, Naples, and Genoa dominated the region around the Mediterranean Sea. Merchants and traders were interested in establishing trade routes, particularly a sea route to Asia in view of the wealth it promised. Rulers wanted to replenish their public treasuries, which had been depleted by war (such as the Hundred Years' War of 1337–1453), disease (especially the bubonic plague—the Black Death), and famine. Additionally, Europeans were growing intensely curious about the wider world, a curiosity sparked in large part by the Crusades, the two-hundred-year series of wars in the eleventh through thirteenth centuries between Christian Europeans and Muslim Arabs over control of Palestine. Thousands of crusaders traveled to the Middle East, either on pilgrimage to the holy sites in and around Jerusalem or simply to make their fortunes through war, and their travels introduced them to entirely new cultures. The result of these factors was that the fifteenth century was an age of widespread exploration.

During the fifteenth century—and well into the sixteenth—the Portuguese led Europe in world exploration. They were the first Europeans to sail south of the equator, discovering the islands of Madeira, the Azores, the Cape Verde Islands, and the Congo River in Africa; and in 1487–1488 Bartolomeu Dias led an expedition around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa's southern tip. Meanwhile, others, including the Italians, were conducting similar explorations.

It was in this context that Christopher Columbus, a Genoan, made his voyage of discovery to the New World in 1492. Columbus initially had difficulty finding a patron for the voyage, the actual purpose of which was to find a sea route to Asia by sailing west. He approached the king of Portugal, John II, as well as King Henry VII of England and King Charles VIII of France, but all turned him down. He then sought support in Spain from Ferdinand II, the king of Aragon, and Isabella I, the queen of Castile and León. They declined his proposal at first because they were preoccupied with efforts to reclaim Granada from the Moors. Finally, in April 1492, the Spanish king and queen agreed to Columbus's plan. Part of their motivation may have been to recoup the income lost from that year's expulsion from Spain of some 160,000 to 200,000 Jews, who had formed a major portion of the nation's business, financial, and entrepreneurial class. The expedition set sail to the west from Palos de la Frontera, in southwestern Spain, on August 3, 1492, and the history of the Americas changed forever when sailors stepped ashore on an island in the Bahamas on October 12. In the weeks that followed, Columbus explored other islands, principally modern-day Cuba (which he thought was Japan) and Hispaniola, before departing in January 1493 and arriving back in Spain, via Portugal, to a hero's welcome. In the years that followed, Columbus made three more voyages to the New World.

One of the major players in European politics at the time was the pope, particularly because the early Renaissance was a time of “secular popes”—that is, popes who were politicians and kings rather than religious leaders (and whom history has derided for their greed, extravagance, illegitimate children, and outright criminal behavior, including murder). Since the mid-fifteenth century, popes had inserted themselves into the unstable relationship between Spain and Portugal as they competed for control of the Atlantic. In 1452, 1455, 1456, 1481, and 1484, popes issued papal bulls whose purpose was to divide spheres of influence between these two nations, particularly along the western coast of Africa. (A bull is a papal pronouncement, so named because it was secured with a round leaden seal called a bulla.) The conflict between Spain and Portugal gained added intensity after Columbus's voyage, and in the months after his return, Spanish and Portuguese negotiators attempted to hammer out an agreement over the rights to possess and rule the new lands. Portuguese authorities had actually arrested Columbus after he returned from his first voyage, on the charge that he had violated Portuguese territorial sovereignty under the terms of the 1479 Treaty of Alcáçovas, which had been sanctioned by a bull issued by Pope Sixtus IV on June 21, 1481.

The pope at the time of Columbus's voyage was Alexander VI, a member of the infamous Borgia family who spent his papal career mired in political intrigue, shifting alliances and brokering agreements that would preserve his power and that of the papacy. Alexander was born in Valencia, Spain, as Roderic Llançol, but he later adopted the Italian name Rodrigo Borgia. He assumed the papacy on August 11, 1492—just eight days after Columbus set sail on his first voyage. As a Spaniard by birth, he had a close personal relationship with the Spanish king, who urged him to issue a new papal bull favorable to Spain's interests. Alexander agreed and issued Inter caetera (Among Other Works) on May 4, 1493, giving Spain sovereignty in the New World, specifically the right to acquire any lands that lay to the west of a meridian one hundred miles west of the Azores and Cape Verde. In essence, Portugal would keep its islands, but Spain was granted dominion over two continents. This bull was supplemented by a later one, dated September 26, 1493, and titled Dudum siquidem (Some Time Ago), which granted Spain virtually unlimited rights in the Americas and beyond; for this reason the bull is often referred to by the title “Extension of the Apostolic Grant and Donation of the Indies,” or simply “Extension of the Donation.” Meanwhile, Spain proved willing to compromise and signed the Treaty of Tordesillas on June 7, 1494, which moved the dividing meridian line to the west, enabling Portugal eventually to colonize Brazil. In January 1506, Alexander's successor, Pope Julius II, issued the bull Ea quae (This Which), confirming the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas. But Inter caetera and Dudum siquidem were what provided the legal underpinnings of the Requerimiento.

The colonization of the New World began apace. The earliest colonies were built on Hispaniola, inhabited by the Taínos, an Arawak people. On his first voyage, Columbus established the settlement of La Navidad on what is today Haiti's northern coast. On his second voyage, in 1493, he brought some thirteen hundred to fifteen hundred men and established La Isabela in today's Dominican Republic. Another settlement, Nueva Isabela, was built in 1496; after being destroyed by a hurricane, it was rebuilt as Santo Domingo, which survives as the oldest permanent European settlement in the Americas. At first the Taínos were cooperative, helping the colonists build their settlements. Rapidly, however, treatment of the Taínos turned harsh, with the Taínos forced to work in gold mines and subjected to beatings, starvation, and mass killings. Additionally, disease, especially smallpox, began to ravage the population; some historians assert that the population of Hispaniola dropped from a million to just thirty thousand within twenty years after Columbus's arrival and to as few as six thousand by 1535. As early as 1502, African slaves were imported to replace the shrinking labor population. Additionally, turmoil surrounded the governorship of the island, so Spanish settlers began dispersing throughout the islands of the Caribbean, establishing new settlements wherever they landed, primarily in modern Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, and Jamaica.

As of 1513, Spain's colonies in the New World were relatively new. Columbus's initial voyage had occurred just twenty years earlier, and during the early years of the 1500s Spain had little in the way of legal and administrative infrastructure in place in Central and South America. Reports began to reach Spain that Spanish settlers were abusing the Amerindians. The cardinal archbishop of Seville and president of the royal council, Domingo de Mendoza, tried to stop this abuse by dispatching a group of Dominican priests to Hispaniola. The priests, led by Antonio de Montesinos, were unable to end the abuses, but they were able to disturb the comfort of the colonists by preaching that their treatment of the Amerindians was sinful. In response, the colonists selected a Franciscan friar named Alonso de Espina to return to Spain and defend their interests to the king. Ferdinand responded with outrage, and to address the problem he appointed a group of theologians and professors to make recommendations for solving it.

On December 27, 1512, the group promulgated the Laws of Burgos, named after the city where they met. The Laws of Burgos, the first legal code designed to regulate the activities of the Spanish colonists, was a set of thirty-five laws enacted to ensure that the Amerindians were converted to Christianity and to forbid their mistreatment, initially on Hispaniola but later in Puerto Rico and Jamaica as well. The chief effect of the laws was to create a system called encomiendas. Under this system, Amerindians were placed under the supervision of a master in groups ranging in size from forty to 150. The laws regulated how the Amerindians would be paid, fed, and housed, and they required that any punishments be carried out not by the settlers themselves but by public officials. The requirement that Amerindians be converted to Christianity and practice the faith was one of the chief aspects of the Laws of Burgos. The laws thus necessitated the construction of churches, each containing a picture of the Virgin Mary and a bell used to call the Amerindians to prayer. Amerindians were obliged to sing hymns, cross themselves, and pray. Further, each native was to be tested periodically to ensure that he or she knew the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, and the Catholic articles of faith. Any encomendero, or master, who failed to enforce these rules could be fined.

Although from a modern perspective the imposition of Spanish laws on the indigenous peoples of the Americas was indefensible, at the time the laws were relatively humane—or at least were intended to be. For example, children under the age of fourteen and women who were more than four months pregnant were not required to work, and Amerindians were allowed to continue to perform their sacred dances. Further, in the laws the Amerindians were given the promise of independence upon conversion to Christianity:

We declare and command and say that it is our will that those Indians who thus become competent to live by themselves, under the direction and control of our said judges of the said Island, present or future, shall be allowed to live by themselves and shall be obliged to serve [only] in those things in which our vassals in Spain are accustomed to serve, so that they may serve and pay the tribute which they [our vassals] are accustomed to pay to their princes. (Laws of Burgos)

Overall, the Laws of Burgos had little effect. In the minds of many settlers, they simply sanctioned the system of encomiendas, and abuses continued. The matter would not be addressed again until 1542 and the Leyes Nuevas, or the New Laws of the Indies for the Good Treatment and Preservation of the Indians. These laws strictly limited the power of Spanish landowners. Meanwhile, though, it was decided that something more was needed than the Laws of Burgos. Spanish missionaries argued that the settlers could not simply descend on the Amerindians and conquer them. Rather, they needed some sort of legal and spiritual justification. Thus, the Requerimiento was composed to be read to the native populations and on Christian grounds legitimize their destruction.