It's Just History

A Simplified Timeline of American Record

The 1513 Requerimiento

The Requerimiento (“the Requirement”) is read to the natives of “barbarous nations” to let them know it’s time to submit to Spanish rule, and to Catholicism. It is assumed that those who choose not to submit do so out of ignorance or malice.

If they do not submit, whatever happens next is their own fault.

Reading this to the native people they encounter is the first thing Spanish explorers do when they arrive in the Americas and want to take something.

They read this to them in Spanish. In case anyone asks, the backup on this is that the message is divine and will therefore transmit.

It transmits in disease and enslavement, mostly. Spain proceeds to conquer and colonize a hefty portion of the western hemisphere. This make England nervous.

(and no, the Spaniards weren’t known for smelling too great. Apparently the Aztecs followed them around with incense burners.)

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