Columbus, Cortez: Patterns of Knowledge and Conquest

             Already in Columbus one can see a strange relation between scientific curiosity and Christian horror of nature as a realm that must be conquered, tamed and cruelly exploited. Todorov writes how Columbus' desire for land and gold is inextricably related both to his scientific curiosity and his religion: Columbus discovers the land for god and gold, to exploit it and turns its inhabitants into Christians. He collects Natives to bring back to Spain like a butterfly collector  collects scientific specimens; pinning beetles and larvae in a box. Columbus says that he "would abandon everything to discover more lands and probe their secrets", and when he finds a little gold "he entered his chapel and said, 'let us thank our God who made us worthy of discovering so much wealth' ".[1] Scientific curiosity, religion and conquest are seamless in Columbus' mind.             Columbus believed the 'New Jerusalem'  he sought in the 'New World' was not only a place of total knowledge and spiritual realization where all the mysteries would become manifest, but a literal, resplendent city of sapphire, ruby and gold, providing infinite wealth for good Christians. The seizure of the New World  justified the enslavement and forced conversion of its inhabitants. Columbus thought he was justified by divinity, by superior science and curiosity and therefore his exploration had the right to commit holy murders. His sacred exploration would bring Eldorado, the city of gold, the fountain of youth and immortality, and the fabled cities of Cathay, all at once. Since he did not find these cities of gold, he forced the Natives to dig for the gold, and those who failed to find gold were  punished or killed.  On Hispanola, now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Columbus mandated that every Taino Indian over 14 had to supply "the rulers with a hawks bill of gold every three months" and those who did not "had their hands cut off...and were left to bleed to death".[2] Las Casas (1474-1566) speaks of having seen the Spaniards hanging Tainos in mass executions, or burning many of them at once in large fires and of using them to test their knives and swords. Spanish dogs were fed Indian children, and a number of writers at the time were eyewitnesses to macabre shops that sold human body parts to Spaniards as food for their dogs. [3]The massacres went on year after year, Indians were killed for fun, sport and in brutal extraction of their labor.

          Columbus writes the King of Spain that just as the King has "driven all the Jews out of your realms and dominions...and commanded me to set out with an armada" so too, in the New World should the same racist policies be enacted.  Columbus, thinking himself a representative of the King, writes that he should either convert, enslave or destroy the  Native populations "just as your Highness has destroyed those unwilling to confess the Father, Son and Holy Ghost"[4]. For Columbus, as for Augustine, Christ and the king required murder to be justified.  Again we see the pattern of transcendent ambition and brutal murder: ultimate truth and glory leading to ultimate atrocities.

            David Stannard writes that the population of Hispanola was 8 million on Columbus' arrival in 1492 and 100,000 in 1508 and by 1535 "for all practical purposes, the native population was extinct".. [5] In 16 years Columbus and his men murdered or exposed to disease nearly 8 million people.  Disease was certainly a factor, but not the central factor. The Tainos, like the many in Nazi camps who died of disease, died from conditions, imposed by Columbus, that increased their likelihood of illness: under nourishment, overwork, displacement, disruption of native crops and other causes.

             Much the same story occurred with Cortez in Mexico. Cortez and his men reportedly killed 40,000 Natives in a single day, after the siege of Tenochtitlan. Cortez remarks that there were so many dead, "the people of the city had to walk upon their dead". He claims " 50,000...drowned amid the multitude of corpses", in the lake that surrounded the city. Cortez is reported to have made 10 million dollars in 1990 currency, to have acquired 3,000 human slaves for personal use and 23,000 "vassals". Stannard notes that Cortez "set them to work in placer mines, he drove them until they dropped...no matter how quickly he moved to replenish his human capital, Cortes killed faster than he could purchase or commandeer".  By the time of his death in 1547 he owned "one-tenth [of the "human capital"] that he started with.[6]

            Columbus,  like Marco Polo before him and Darwin after him, dreams of going 'where no man has gone before' and seized with ambition his voyage is a rush to  fame and transcendental knowledge. Darwin believed that his discoveries justified British imperialism. In an English version of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny he was sure English science would bring the 'truth' of  natural selection  and the superiority of 'higher' civilization of the West to the entire globe. Columbus also was voyaging to proclaim a "truth". He claims that his first name Christopher means "Christ bearer" because he brings Christ to the new world, and that his surname, Columbus, means Colon, the Repopulator- the one who, in his own words, "will found colonies" and who "thanks to the Gospel, [has] proceeded and everyday will proceed to repopulate the glorious city of heaven". Columbus, a divine lover in his own eyes, carries the divine seed of the word of god, with which he will impregnate the new world, to raise up souls for the apocalypse. Not only this, but Columbus actually thought that by conquering the New Jerusalem he would get enough gold to finance the taking of the old Jerusalem for the glory of the god and the king and himself. [7] Himmler likewise saw himself as a 'repopulator' and initiated sterilization campaigns, run by Nazi doctors, at the concentration camps. These included experiments, often with fatal results, on twins, women, and children. Mengele in particular seems to have been interested in genetically altering non-Germans in an effort to make them German. He injected blue dyes into brown eyes in a effort to change eye color, often killing or blinding the children who were his subjects. Columbus would repopulate the 'New World' with Europeans and their ideologies, Himmler would replopulate Germany with Ayrans. Mengele and Himmler were continuing the work of Columbus and Cortez

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