Soulless Justification.

“…we told them that we were Christians and worshipped one true and only God, named Jesus Christ… and that the death and passion which He suffered was for the salvation of the whole human race…”

-Victors and Vanquished by Schwartz and Stuart, page 138

It is interesting to notice that said that they believed that salvation was for the whole human race, yet used this as only an excuse to justify their acts to conquer.  Every conqueror tries to justify his conquest to hide or reduce the exploitation and excesses that they exercise over the conquered people.  The most convenient justification of treating a people so badly is that they are considered inferior to the people that are overthrowing them.  This thinking process reminds me of Aristotle who in his well-known book called Politics talks about barbaric people, people that were slaves by nature, whose destiny was nothing more than to be defeated and enslaved to work and serve the Greeks.  This thesis was spread about and served for the expansion of Rome.

This way of thinking was brought over to the Americas by the Spanish where it was taken to an extreme when they not only said that the Indians were made to be enslaved, but further, had no soul, and did not belong to the human race.  The Pope had to intervene and say that they did have souls, and therefore also were men.

This declaration from the Pope was urgent and essential to justify the Christianization of the Indians in order to continue on with their conquest. It was obvious that if the Indians did not have souls, the evangelization (or saving of their souls) of its people made no sense. If it was true that there was no life after death for inhuman creatures, then why was the effort put forth to Christianize them?  I do not believe that the abuse and treatment that the Indians had to endure can be justified in any way, not even to say that it was to Christianize them.

This song is about the experience of the Chilean Indians during the Spanish conquest to our day.