APOLOGY FOR NATIVE AMERICAN GENOCIDE FALLS SHORT

By Juan Montoya
Nowadays it seems that the Catholic Church under Pope Francis just can't apologize enough.
He's apologized for those boys who were the victims of priests' pedophilia, for the church's treatment of women, and now, to homosexuals, or gays.
This latest apology came on the heels of the mass killing in a gay bar in Orlando where 49 people perished and another 53 were wounded, some seriously.
Last July, while he was in Bolivia, he apologized to the Indigenous Native Peoples for the outrages perpetuated by the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores who were sent by Catholic sovereigns to plunder the New World of precious metals, conquer the people there, and enslave them.
But some tribal leaders in California said that wasn't enough and point to the seemingly contradictory signals sent by his canonization of Junipero Serra, a Catholic missionary who they say destroyed native culture and traditions.
“I say this to you with regret: Many grave sins were committed against the Native people of America in the name of God.”
He didn’t stop there.
“I humbly ask forgiveness, not only for the offense of the church herself, but also for crimes committed against the native peoples during the so-called conquest of America,” The New York Times reported.
While an apology from the pope for the past sins of colonization is appreciated, it does not erase the fact that the colonial powers – especially Spain and Portugal – were acting with the blessings of the Catholic Church and the popes at the time. Cloaked in a mantle of religious righteousness and missionary fervor, the church turned a blind eye to the devastation and genocide perpetrated against the natives.
Pope Alexander issued Papal Bull Inter Caetera in 1483, a papal bull with repeated allusions to an ongoing war between the natives and the encroaching Spaniards.
The Papal Bull Inter Caetera gave Christians dominion over Indigenous lands and called for the subjugation of Native Indigenous peoples for the purpose of propagating Christian doctrine. In fact, Christians were charged with the duty of overthrowing Indigenous Nations in order to convert them to Christ, and Christian heirs were granted “full and free power, authority, and jurisdiction of every kind.”
Those who attempted to controvert this Papal document were threatened with incurring “the wrath of Almighty God and of the blessed apostles Peter and Paul.”
What this Papal Bull granted was right of conquest. Colonization began with Spain and Portugal, and every other Christian European power followed their lead. Spanish Queen Isabella (the Catholic Queen) had, in 1503, issued the astonishing and momentous order to permit the enslavement of natives in the New World "discovered" by Columbus only 11 years earlier (1492). This edict, interestingly, followed the one she issued in 1492 after Spanish armies ended the 700 year Moorish occupation and expelled Jews from Spain unless they converted to the Catholic faith.
While ostensibly Isabella's edict protected natives from capture or injury, it made an exception of "a certain people called Caribs who had been asked to mend their ways and become Christians but who had hardened their hearts and "continued to eat Indians and kill Christians."
This was all propaganda being brought back to the Catholic queen by her conquistadors who were decimating the native population by demanding a daily gold tribute as they tried to enrich themselves but found that the natives were dying faster than they could amass their wealth.
For this reason the Queen said: "For the present I give license and power to all and sundry persons who may go by my orders on the Islands and Terra Firme of the Ocean Sea discovered to the present, as well as to those who may go to discover other islands and Terra Firme, that is said cannibals continue to resist and do not wish to admit and receive to their native lands that Captains and men who may be on such voyages by my orders not to hear them in order to be taught our Sacred Catholic Faith and to be in my service and obedience, they may be captured and taken to these my kingdoms and domains and to other parts and places and sold."
Conquistadores soon pronounced all natives Caribs and raided the islands in search of labor to harvest gold from streams and mines. The tribute system they imposed on the natives soon decimated the population.
As Alfred W. Crosby Jr. states in his "The Columbian Exchange,": "One who watched the Caribbean islands from outer space during the years from 1492 to 1550 or so might have surmised that the object of the game was to replace the people with pigs, dogs and cattle. Disease and ruthless exploitation had, for all practical purposes, destroyed the aborigines of Española by the 1520s. Their Arawak brothers in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica followed them into oblivion shortly after. The Bahamas and Lesser Antilles were not occupied by the Spanish, but as the Indians of the larger islands disappeared, slavers sailed out to the smaller islands, spread disease and seized multitudes of Arawaks and Caribs to feed into the death camps that Española, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica had become. Thus, within a few score years of Columbus's first American landfall, the Antillean aborigines had been almost completely eliminated."
That same pattern was extended to Terra Firme as the Spaniards in their lust for gold and slaves solidified their grip on the new continent. Insatiable, they – with the blessing of their sovereigns and spiritual leaders, the popes – blessed their slaughter with a benediction and approval.
And a simple apology from Francis will do to assuage the terrible sins committed against a defenseless people? Nice try.