american-holocaust

258 AMERICAN HOLOCAUSTdamage" that the European invaders choose to inflict upon you. It wascalled the requerimiento. The deadly predicament that now confronts nativepeoples is simply a modern requerimiento: surrender all hope of continuedcultural integrity and effectively cease to exist as autonomous peoples,or endure as independent peoples the torment and deprivation weselect as your fate.In Guatemala, where Indians constitute about 60 percent of the population-aselsewhere in Central and South America-the modern requerimientocalls upon native peoples either to accept governmental expropriationof their lands and the consignment of their f:lmilies to forced laborunder crio/lo and ladino overlords, or be subjected to the violence of militarydeath squads. 33 In South Dakota, where Indians constitute about 6percent of the population-as elsewhere in North America-the effort todestroy what remains of indigenous cultural life involves a greater degreeof what Alexis de Tocqueville described as America's "chaste affection forlegal formalities." Here, the modern requerimiento pressures Indians eitherto leave the· ·reservation and enter an American society where they will bebereft and cultureless people in a land where poor people of color suffersystematic oppression and an ever-worsening condition of merciless inequality,or remain on the reservation and attempt to preserve their cultureamidst the wreckage of governmentally imposed poverty, hunger, ill health,despondency, and the endless attempts of the federal and state governmentsat land and resource usurpation. 34The Columbian Quincentennial celebrations have encouraged scholarsworldwide to pore over the Admiral's life and work, to investigate everyrumor about his ancestry and to analyze every jotting in the margins ofhis books. Perhaps the most revealing insight into the man, as into theenduring Western civilization that he represented, however, is a bland andsimple sentence that rarely is noticed in his letter to the Spanish sovereigns,written on the way home from his initial voyage to the Indies. After searchingthe coasts of all the islands he had encountered for signs of wealth andprinces and great cities, Columbus says he decided to send "two men upcountry"to see what they could see. "They traveled for three days," hewrote, "and found an infinite number of small villages and people withoutnumber, but nothing of importance." 35People without number-but nothing of importance. It would becomea motto for the ages.