Born in Blood and Fire: A Concise History of Latin America

Chasteen outlines three basic types of Indigenous societies that the Spanish and Portuguese encountered in the Americas: non-sedentary, semi-sedentary, and fully sedentary. The fully sedentary societies in what would become Latin America are the most well-known because they are the ones who remained in an area and constructed large cities and developed advanced civilizations. The most notable of the fully sedentary societies are the Aztec, the Inca, and the Maya. The Aztec were a conglomeration of many different peoples: the Culhuaque, Cuitlahuaque, Mixquica, Xochimilca, Chalca, Tepaneca, Acolhuaque, and Mexica. The peoples of the Aztec dwelt in what is today Central Mexico. The Inca inhabited large portions of the Andes from Peru all the way down to Chile. The Mayan are not referred to as an empire, rather a civilization that encompassed southern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and much of Honduras and El Salvador. The Mayan are most known for their highly developed logosyllabic (hieroglyphs) writing, their temples (Chic hen Itza), and their art and science (Mayan calendar).

Semi-sedentary people were those who constructed dwellings, and what could be referred to as towns, but because the area wherein they dwelt was inadequate for permanent settlements, they would remove to another area and repeat the cycle. Because of their mobile lifestyle and subsequent conquest at the hands of the Spanish and Portuguese, it is much harder to ascertain who all these peoples were in comparison to the fully sedentary societies above. A good example is found in Patagonia/Pampas (in Argentina and Chile). Another example of a semi-sedentary society is the Tupi and Guaraní. The Tupi lived predominantly in the Brazilian rainforest. They were adept at agriculture there and produced casava, sweet potatoes, beans, etc. Some of the tribes ritualized cannibalism. The Guaraní shared much in common with the Tupi, but were mostly more southerly located in Paraguay, parts of Argentina and Brazil, and Bolivia. In fact, the Guaraní mostly distinguish themselves from the Tupi with their language, which is also called Guaraní. The language is still spoken in Paraguay where it is an official language with Spanish.

The non-sedentary people were those who never stayed anywhere for long and never developed any permanent settlements. These were the Plains tribes so well known to United States history, such as the Sioux, the Comanche, or the Apache. Many of the Yaqui peoples of northern Mexico were non-sedentary, as were the Coahuiltecans, who were mostly located in the Mexican state of Nuevo León. The Coahuiltecan were strictly hunter-gatherers. One staple of their diet were prickly pears. The term Coahuiltecan, like many regarding Indigenous peoples of the Americas, consisted of hundreds of “bands” of people with their own names to refer to themselves.

Chasteen does not take the side of history that explains the conquistadors as a force of evil, rather he explains their behavior with historic background: There was one highly formative historical event that linked the Portuguese and Spanish. That experience came to be known as the Reconquest (Reconquista in both Spanish and Portuguese). The fact that the invading forces were Muslim is the greatest single reason for the strict demarcation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. The Muslim (Moors) forces eventually conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula and began moving into southern France where they were halted by several armies over the years, most notably forces from Charlemagne. After several centuries of treaties and war, the Moors were unable to push past the Pyrenees and a crusading mentality spread throughout Europe. Christian kingdoms began to view the situation in Iberia as one in need of liberation. Spanish, Portuguese, and other European kingdoms fought back and forth over the centuries with the Moors, though neither side ever gained the upper hand. However, the Christian kingdoms began to slowly expel the Moors during the Renaissance, and by the time the Kingdom of Castile united with the Kingdom of Aragon (Isabel and Ferdinand), the Moors were isolated in their stronghold of Granada. The fortress of Granada fell to jubilant Spanish forces in 1492, effectively unifying Spain under the crowns of Isabel and Ferdinand, which itself ushered in the rise of the Spanish Empire.

Most significant about the Reconquista with regard to the conquest and colonization of the Americas by Portugal and Spain is the ethnocentric and warring societies that developed as a direct result of centuries of religious warfare. A full historical and psychological analysis of the effects of these wars on Spanish and Portuguese society is beyond the breadth of this study guide. Suffice it to say that to understand the results of colonization it is important to understand the why of Spanish and Portuguese actions. This attempt at understanding neither condones nor condemns them. It simply attempts to comprehend why things happened as they did. For example, it explains the fervor of Catholicism in Spain and Portugal. It explains the encomiendas the Spanish established very quickly after conquering new territory, for it was a practice well known to them: They had done exactly the same thing after reconquering territory from the Moors. It was a way for them to assimilate a population that had been living under Islamic law into Christianity, and it was a means for rewarding military leaders.

For a more in-depth reading of the Spanish conquest see the Further Reading section of this guide: Conquistadores: A New of Spanish Discovery and Conquest by Fernando Cervantes.

Even though the Spanish and Portuguese shared the experience of the Reconquista, the manner in which they colonized the Americas was quite different. Portugal had begun to explore and establish new trade routes earlier than the Spanish. Before the discovery of the Americas, the main goal of European trade was to the east in the Middle East and particularly Asia. The dream was to find a quick sea route to the spices of the Orient. This was Christopher Columbus’s goal when he set sail from Spain. Because Columbus sailed for the Spanish crown, and because the Portuguese were already busy in the East Indies, the Spanish soon discovered that the Americas were at least as great a place for trade and conquest as the Orient. Thus, they quickly began penetrating farther and farther westward. An example of the difference in priorities between the Spanish and Portuguese can be seen in the fact that in 1543 three Portuguese ships discovered Japan while the Spanish were strengthening their hold on New Spain and moving southwards against the Mayans. In 1498 Portugal had established a trade center in India, but in the same year Columbus made his third journey to the Americas. It was not until 1500 that the Portuguese even arrived in Brazil. Furthermore, the Portuguese only slowly began constructing sugar plantations (but which would become very lucrative later on), whereas the Spanish in America built large mining facilities, with towns to house the workers/enslaved people and a supply network in the surrounding area to support mining operations, fairly quickly after discovery. Perhaps the most notable example of the Spanish focus on mining is the city of Potosí in modern-day Bolivia. From the “Rich Hill” (Cerro Rico), the Spanish extracted vast quantities of silver.

The mines and sugar plantations in the Americas required great feats of labor for which the Indigenous populations were ill-suited. There were many reasons why the natives did not do well as laborers for the Spanish and Portuguese, but the most important reasons were the high deathrate among them due to their susceptibility to European diseases and their ability to escape (it was their country after all). Furthermore, many Indigenous peoples were not well versed with sedentary agriculture, which obviously meant they were little use in growing and harvesting sugarcane. None of these were factors for Africans; thus the slave trade began in earnest in the Americas, as Portugal desperately needed workers for the sugar plantations and the Spanish for their mines. Furthermore, the culture behind slavery in Africa and the Americas was very different. Slavery in Africa was already an established practice: Africans captured other Africans for trade with Europeans, for example. In the Americas, on the other hand, slavery was not so firmly established. Most enslaved people were war captives or debtors; sometimes slavery also had a cannibalistic element attached to it as well. Thus, from the European perspective at the time, it only made sense to transport African enslaved people to the Americas to replace the more troublesome and unreliable natives.

It is undeniable that the encounter between Europeans and the peoples of the Americas was a turning point unequaled in world history, and one may ask how small contingents of Europeans could conquer and colonize so many millions. The answer is not easy, but as Chasteen points out the decimation of the Indigenous population from European diseases, for which none had any immunity, should not be underestimated. The plagues of diseases that spread over the Americas had far more detrimental effects on the population than the Black Death had on Europeans. Entire ethnicities and cultures vanished. Furthermore, the Europeans were well skilled in the arts of warfare and conquest—the Spanish and Portuguese specifically due to the wars of Reconquest. Europe developed an intricate socio-economic governing system designed for tight control of the population under its jurisdiction—feudalism, absolute monarchies, etc. These systems were more advanced than almost all governing systems in the Americas. There was also the near universal religious fervor in Europe, especially in Iberia, which motivated European conquerors to convert and control the non-Christian population. For example, after expelling the Moors from Spain, Isabel and Ferdinand received two important papal bulls from Pope Alexander VI known collectively as the Donation (Inter caetera & Dudum siquidem). In essence, these two papal bulls granted Spain rights of dominion and settlement in what became Spanish America. These papal bulls, furthermore, fueled the Spaniards’ motivation since they were granted the right to conquer by God, legitimizing their actions.