american-holocaust

82 AMERICAN HOLOCAUST95 percent. It took a little longer for the various Yaqui peoples to reachthis level of devastation, but they too saw nearly 90 percent of their numbersperish, while for the varied Mayo peoples the collapse was 94 percent.Scores of other examples from this enormous area followed the same deadlypattern. 85To the south the story was the same-and worse. By 1542 Nicaraguaalone had seen the export of as many as half a million of its people forslave labor (in effect, a death sentence) in distant areas whose populationshad been destroyed. In Honduras about 150,000 were enslaved. In Panama,it was said, between the years of 1514 and 1530 up to 2,000,000Indians were killed. But again, since numbers such as these are so overwhelming,sometimes it is the smaller incident that best tells what it waslike-such as the expedition to Nicaragua in 1527 of Lopez de Salcedo,the colonial governor of Honduras. At the start of his trip Salcedo tookwith him more than 300 Indian slaves to carry his personal effects. Alongthe way he killed two-thirds of them, but he also captured 2000 morefrom villages that were in his path. By the time he reached his destinationin Leon only 100 of the more than 2300 Indian slaves he had begun withor acquired during his journey were still alive. 86 All this was necessary to"pacify" the natives.As Bishop Diego de Landa (who was a brutal overlord himself) describedthe process in his region of the Yucatan: "the Spaniards pacified[the Indians of Cochua and Chetumal] in such a way, that these provinceswhich were formerly the thickest settled and most populous, remained themost desolate of all the country." In these besieged provinces, added FrayLorenzo de Bienvenida, "the Indians fled from all this and did not sowtheir crops, and all died of hunger. I say all, because there were pueblosof five hundred and one thousand houses, and now one which has onehundred is large." 87 The Spanish had a saying, recalled Alonso de Zorita,that it was easy to find one's way from province to province, because thepaths were marked with the bones of the dead. There are "certain birds,"he added, "that, when an Indian falls, pick out his eyes and kill and eathim; it is well known that these birds appear whenever the Spaniards makean incursion or discover a mine." 88 Indeed, to this day there exist in Yucatantowns and villages Spanish buildings and monuments that celebratethe sixteenth-century slaughter. One example is Montejo house in Merida-onthe coast, near the sites of the ancient Maya cities of Uxmal andChichen Itza-whose fa