Through the Eyes of the Ancestors

            We have had many discussions on the potential of religion to be a driving force in the expansion of Pre-Columbian Latin America, and in Spain. The difficulty seems to arise for many of us in seeing religion as an all pervasive institution of these societies. It is more convenient, I think, for some of us to point to religion as a justification for self-interested actions. In this regard I believe it is worth noting that our society (the United States and European nations of similar culture) has become one in which this might be true for many people. After the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on the power of rational thought and human potential, many societies began to distance themselves from religious institutions and ideas, creating a separation of church and state. This separation became so important that the United States even wrote it into its Constitution.

            Keeping that in mind, we should try to separate our inclination of viewing a stratified society with defined lines like those from how we view these past societies. Conrad and Demarest point out that religion was intrinsic to all socio-political aspects of these societies. Even Restall makes note of it when he compares the style of Aztec warfare to that of the Spanish. The Aztecs entered war to capture sacrifices and tribute, not to “conquer” in the sense which is usually associated with the word. It was ceremonial in purpose, highly ritualized, a form of worship for their deities (Huitzilopochtli in particular).

            Even when viewing the Spanish we should remove our modern perspective from how we analyze their actions. In the era of Conquest, Spain was actually a group of kingdoms with various languages and rulers, most of whom had competing agendas. The unifying factor for most of them was the same as it was for most of Europe during the “Dark Ages”: religion. While the rest of Europe was in the middle of the Crusades, the kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula were in the midst of the Reconquista, a holy war against the Moors who had occupied most of the peninsula between CE 711 and CE 1492. We have read the Requirimiento, and while we and many historians have agreed that the actual application of the document was effectively a joke (read in Latin from on board ship or over the horizon), but the document itself is reflective of the fact that Ferdinand and Isabel were Catholic rulers. They were not conquering as such, but simply taking possession of those lands granted to them by the Pope and taking responsibility for the new subjects within those lands granted. It was not an act of war, but of conversion and failure to convert was heresy. They were merely punishing unruly subjects.

            That is not to say that there were no selfish motivations among individuals, but simply to point out that for us to whole heartedly dismiss religion (as some have done in our discussions) is to not take into account the context of the time and people who we are studying. We cannot force our preconceptions from the twenty-first century on a society which flourished in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.