american-holocaust

PESTILENCE AND GENOCIDE 73With the Caribbean's millions of native people thereby effectively liquidatedin barely a quarter of a century, forced through the murderous vortexof Spanish savagery and greed, the slavers turned next to the smallerislands off the mainland coast. The first raid took place in 1515 whennatives from Guanaja in the Bay Islands off Honduras were captured andtaken to forced labor camps in depopulated Cuba. Other slave expeditionsfollowed, and by 1525, when Cortes arrived in the region, all the BayIslands themselves had been entirely shorn of their inhabitants. 55In order to exploit most fully the land and its populace, and to satisfythe increasingly dangerous and rebellion-organizing ambitions of his wellarmedSpanish troops, Columbus instituted a program called the repartimientoor "Indian grants"-later referred to, in a revised version, as thesystem of encomiendas. This was a dividing-up, not of the land, but ofentire peoples and communities, and the bestowal of them upon a wouldbeSpanish master. The master was free to do what he wished with "hispeople"-have them plant, have them work in the mines, have them doanything, as Carl Sauer puts it, "without limit or benefit of tenure." 5 6The result was an even greater increase in cruelty and a magnificationof the firestorm of human devastation. Caring only for short-term materialwealth that could be wrenched up from the earth, the Spanish overlordson Hispaniola removed their slaves to unfamiliar locales-"the roads tothe mines were like anthills," Las Casas recalled-deprived them of food,and forced them to work until they dropped. At the mines and fields inwhich they labored, the Indians were herded together under the supervisionof Spanish overseers, known as mineros in the mines and estancieroson the plantations, who "treated the Indians with such rigor and inhumanitythat they seemed the very ministers of Hell, driving them day and nightwith beatings, kicks, lashes and blows and calling them no sweeter namesthan dogs." Needless to say, some Indians attempted to escape from this.They were hunted down with mastiffs. When found, if not torn apart onthe spot, they were returned and a show-trial was held for them, and forthe edification of other Indians who were made to stand and watch. Theescapees werebrought before the visitador [Spanish inspector-magistrate] and the accuser,that is, the supposedly pious master, who accused them of being rebelliousdogs and good-for-nothings and demanded stiff punishment. The visitadorthen had them tied to a post and he himself, with his o~n hands, as themost honorable man in town, took a sailor's tarred whip as tough as iron,the kind they use in galleys, and flogged them until blood ran from theirnaked bodies, mere skin and bones from starvation. Then, leaving them fordead, he stopped and threatened the same punishment if they tried it again.HOccasionally, when slaves were so broken by illness, malnutrition, orexhaustion unto death that they became incapable of further labor output,