Nothing 'spiritual' about imperialism

By Ralph R. Reiland
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Monday, May 28, 2007

It's easy to get into trouble when you're talking about imperialism, as Pope Benedict XVI recently discovered.

First, a straightforward definition of imperialism: "The practice of one country extending its control over the territory, political system or economic life of another country." That's from Marc Becker, an associate professor of history, specializing in Latin America, at Truman State University in Missouri.

The pope, skipping over the bad parts of the invasion of the Americas by the Europeans in the 15th century, said in a recent speech in Brazil to Latin American and Caribbean bishops that the indigenous population of the New World was "silently longing" for Christianity "without realizing it."

The colonial-era invasion and the subsequent millions of deaths, enslavement and destruction of native cultures was described by the pope as an "encounter" between "faith and the indigenous people."

Genocide, in short, wasn't all that bad, since those without "faith" got a chance to "encounter" the European version of theology. The natives, or at least those who weren't slaughtered, welcomed the Holy Spirit, "who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them," the pope said.

Actually, the supposed Holy Spirit was just along for the ride, a sideshow in a brutal and worldwide quest for power that had more to do with gold and slaves than purification and fruitfulness.

"The proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel," declared the pope, "did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture." In fact, the whole thing was foreign, including the European gunpowder.

Indian organizations expressed outrage at Benedict's statements. "Surely, the pope doesn't realize that the representatives of the Catholic Church of that era, with honorable exceptions, were complicit, accessories and beneficiaries of one of the more horrible genocides that humanity has seen," declared an association of Quechua Indians in Ecuador, one of South America's largest indigenous groups.

"The so-called evangelization was violent," wrote a Peru-based alliance of Andean Indians in an open letter to the pope. "Any cult that wasn't Catholic was persecuted and cruelly repressed."

A leader of the Makuxi tribe, Dionito Jose de Souza, stated, "The state used the church to do the dirty work in colonizing the Indians." Said Jecinaldo Satere Mawe, chief coordinator of the Amazon Indian group Coiab, "It is arrogant and disrespectful to consider our cultural heritage secondary to theirs."

Stated Sandro Tuxa, leader of a coalition of Indian tribes in Brazil, "To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a 'purification' is offensive and frankly frightening."

The Catholic Church's own Indian advocacy group in Brazil, CIMI, was similarly critical. "The pope doesn't understand the reality of the Indians here," said CIMI adviser Father Paulo Suess. "His statement was wrong and indefensible."

Prior to his next foray into the topic of conquest and imperialism, the pope would be well advised to brush up on the writings of Bartolome de las Casas, a young priest who witnessed firsthand what happened in the Caribbean after the arrival of Columbus.

"Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder then if they tried to kill one of us now and then," wrote Las Casas. The Spaniards "grew more conceited every day." They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" and "had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings."

The goal was gold. "Mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times" through the forced labor of Indian men, wrote Las Casas, while women were enslaved on plantations. "Husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met, they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides they ceased to procreate."

Las Casas tells of how the Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by the tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades," and how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."

Explained Las Casas: "My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write. Who in future generations will believe this?"

Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. E-mail him at: rrreiland@aol.com