Spanish Conquest: A Battle of Images

While it is true that the conquest of the Americas was achieved through the Spaniard's superior fire-power, there were other things to consider.  The diseases that they brought to the New World, like smallpox, to which the indigenous had no immunity, resulted in huge epidemics that reduced their population.  Plus,  there was another piece of "heavy artillery" that, as you will see,  in the long run was probably the most potent.  I am referring to the religious images of the Spanish.

The Spanish were threatened by the images of the indigenous, such as these below photographed at the Museo de Antropologia in Mexico City.   Throughout the Conquest, it was routine for the Spanish to destroy such "idols" of those they subjugated. 

Why were images so important? Weren't they just inanimate objects?  The answer, as well shall see, is no.

The Spanish were very attached to their own images, to the point of carrying them into battle in the form of battle standards.  It was routine for the Spanish to carry a banner with the Virgin Mary in the form of Guadalupe of Extremadura who differs from the later and more widely known Guadalupe.  (This diversity of representations of Mary can get confusing and I will delve into them in a future post.) The Spanish also replaced indigenous images with their own, as was the case when Cortes put a statue of the Virgin in one of Montezuma's temples, thereby claiming it for his own.

                                     The "heavy artillery": Guadalupe of Extremadura

So what are images and why are they so important?  To make a very long story short images are not just for looking. They acquire a life and power of their own and the god or goddess in the image is charged with "presence."  Humans often respond to religious images interactively, as if they were living beings. This was the case with the subjugated indigenous as well as the Spanish and so, in addition to the outright war-fare, a sort of proxy war was fought with religious images.  

The film "La Otra Conquista" ("The Other Conquest") is a magnificent demonstration of the
deep attachment that people have to their images and I highly recommend watching this movie to understand the role that images played in the Spanish Conquest.  I also recommend David Freedberg's book, "The Power of Images", for its general theory of images. 

  

The Friars: Peace Corps 16th century style

Parade during Festival of St. Michael the Archangel (San Miguel d'Allende, 2010)

Friars from the religious orders followed the Conquistadors wherever they went,  beginning

in 1500 with the island of Santo Domingo (Hispaniola).  In 1524 twelve Franciscan friars

called the "twelve apostles of New Spain" (to mirror Jesus' twelve apostles) arrived in Mexico to serve as the spiritual arm of the Conquest.  The message in the photo above is clear: the friar is showing disapproval of the indigenous ritual of sacrifice.  This ritual, odious to us and to the Europeans who observed it five centuries ago, was actually a deep part of the cosmic and religious systems of many of the meso-american peoples.  Within their beliefs it was necessary for the continuation of life and was highly ritualized and regulated and not a  wanton blood-thirst and slaughter. 

These first Franciscans were idealists, utopians.  In the indigenous they saw fresh soil for a Christianity that was pure and unstained by worldly concerns the way it had become in Europe.  Trying to understand these new discovered peoples within a biblical context  (as you recall this was the only context available in the 16th century), some conjectured the  indigenous were a tribe of lost Jews.  In the idealistic hopes of these early Franciscans, they strove to create a new Jerusalem, an Indian Jerusalem.   They faced enormous hardships in this new unsettled land and came at enormous cost to personal comfort and safety and, in general, they were good men who truly believed in what they were doing.   Some, such as Bernardino de Sahagun and Bartolome de las Casas, became champions of the indigenous and their protectors against the abuses of the Spanish settlers, whose aims were often less than spiritual.

Friars' "Job Description"

The photo taken in a church in Campeche, Yucatan,  shows salvation from eternal damnation, the central religious concern of the time. ( Note that a bishop is included among those in the flames, indicating that Hell is inclusive.)  Mary, the Queen of Heaven is lifting souls from the flames.  The job of the friars was to save their indigenous charges from damnation by teaching them the Gospel and leading them to Jesus. This was a job, as we shall see, that turned out to be more difficult than they had imagined.

Within the values  of their times, which I have described more fully in my previous post, "The Mind-set of the Spanish Conquest", the friars believed they were doing the absolutely best thing one could do for another human being, despite how we may perceive their actions within a contemporary framework.   In their day and age, there was no abstract concept of "human rights", everything was bound up with religion.  Within this context, a human's most important and most basic right was the salvation of his/her soul and, given this,  the most altruistic thing the friars knew to do for the indigenous was to offer them this right through the word of Jesus.   In the new and untamed lands, the friars did this at considerable personal risk and sacrifice.   All this has led Prof. Samuel Y. Edgerton to compare them to the Peace Corps volunteers, and this really is a good way to understand their essential mission.  Like the Peace Corps, they wanted to better mankind and save the world and they attempted to do this, as they understood it, with the spiritual tools at their disposal.