american-holocaust

SEX, RACE AND HOLY WAR 213tive racial stereotypes that had made the institution permissible in the firstplace-which, in turn, further sanctified the institution itself.In late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Spain and Spanish America,the primary economic context within which anti-Indian racial ideologieswere cultivated and institutionalized was the feverish hunt for gold.Then later, as the sixteenth century wore on, the context changed to themining of silver, which was available in much greater volume. Spain atthis time, as noted earlier, was a nation with effectively no manufactureditems to export. It was an exporter of raw materials and an importer offinished goods. Even within its own borders Spain was plagued by a stagnatingeconomy, with most local production intended for local consumption.With its broad and mountainous terrain, whatever goods were movedaround were carried by pack mules. And despite the presence of perhaps400,000 such primitive beasts of burden, as an exchange economy thenation was dormant. 49 One consequence of this was both very small productivevolume and a great deal of duplication, along with a steady outflowof capital to those other European countries on which Spain waseconomically dependent.In contrast with its state of commercial impoverishment, however,fifteenth-century advances in ship design, primarily of Portuguese inspiration,along with developments in pilotage, navigation, and cartographyandthe persistence of Christopher Columbus--allowed Spain, with its idealgeographic location, to lead the way in exploration of the Indies. Thus, itcame about that one of the European nations that could least afford tofinance colonization abroad-and that had a sudden over-abundance ofexperienced military men within its midst, due to the recent defeat of theMoors in Granada-was given first entry into the New World.The stories of indescribable wealth available in the Indies to those whocould seize it-of riverbeds filled with nuggets and of boulders that shatteredand poured forth gold when struck with a dub-fired the imaginationsof individual adventurers, of course, but it did the same for religiousand financial collectivities as well. The Church now envisioned the wealthof the Indies, both in gold and in souls to harvest, as the means for launchingthe final Crusades, while wealthy nobles and merchants knew that theCrown was in no position to direct the conquest and exploitation of theislands without deriving virtually all its financial backing from privatesources.For about a dozen years, from the launching of Columbus's secondvoyage in 1493 to the eve of the conquests of Cuba, Jamaica, and PuertoRico after 1506, the capital behind the provisioning of ships and storesand mercenary soldiers was raised by merchant and noble partnershipswithin Spain. From 1506 forward, however, the conquest of the rest ofthe Caribbean was financed by the gold that was taken from Hispaniola.(In 1499-after the great majority of the island's millions of people had