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| Conquistadors praying before a battle |
Sadly, so-called "Christians" have also been guilty of such acts of terror in the name of God, as documented in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel (1977, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 69-77, and found in Ron Rude's 2010 book, Abel Emerging, Beavers Pond Press., 193-200).
The following is from a report of the sixteenth century Spanish conquest of the Inca people in the Andes Mountains, led by a Governor Pizzaro:
"The prudence, fortitude, military discipline, labors, perilous navigations, and battles of the Spaniards--vassals of the most invincible Emperor of the Roman Catholic Empire, our natural King and Lord--will cause joy to the faithful and terror to the infidels."
The report then includes details of their "terror to the infidels" in city of Cajamarca. The Spanish force, only 200-300 in number but armed with superior weapons, faced an Incan crowd of tens of thousands who had assembled the city square with their leader Atahuallpa with the promise that "no harm or insult" would befall them.
Then at a given signal, mounted Spanish infantry and ground troops, guns blazing, charged into the assembled crowd of mostly unarmed people and slaughtered them by the hundreds.
"The Indians were so filled with fear that they climbed on top of one another, formed mounds, and suffocated each other... The cavalry rode them down, killing and wounding and following in pursuit. The infantry made so good an assault on those that remained that in a short time most of them were put to the sword."
To the conquered Atahuallpa, the Governor afterwards explained,
"... We come to conquer this land by his command (the King of Spain), that all may come to the knowledge of God and of His Holy Catholic Faith: and by reason of God's good mission, God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth and of all things in them, permits this, in order that you may know Him and come out from the bestial and diabolical life that you lead... When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good we have done..."
Author Ron Rude concludes, "It is hard to hard to imagine that such thought processes and behavior could even remotely have been associated with the life, teachings, actions, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and Jesus the Christ."
Harvey, I don't deny the horror the Spanish inflicted on the Incas at Cajamarca. The movie "Royal Hunt of the Sun" depicts that scene and others very well. However, our own Christian Right approved torture, terror, death squads and the murder of thousands of innocent Central Americans during the '70s and '80s under the guise of fighting against the infidel Communists. Pat Robertson, giant of the Christian Right, sent financial aid, money raised through his "Christian" ministries, to Rios Montt, convicted in the Genocide of thousands of innocent Guatemalans, when the "civilized" world pressured the Reagan administration to cut off military aid.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Don, and I'd be glad to post a follow up guest piece if you would have time to write this up. Sobering and truly unthinkable U.S. behavior that too few people are aware of.
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