Part II: The New World: 1492 to Present Day
(1492–1542)
… it was as if Spain wished somehow to atone for her former tolerance, which she now regarded as unchristian.—Karen Armstrong1
With the fall of Granada and the conclusion of the Reconquista in 1492, Iberian Christianity seemed to enter another sinister phase of heightened, unprecedented religious intolerance. Muslims were given a short reprieve, which would last less than a decade. Unconverted Jews were expelled outright. The Spanish Inquisition had become nearly all-powerful. Most disturbing of all, however, were Spanish foreign ambitions. Spain had become a permanently militarized society, now secure on the home front, but with an idle war machine in need of employment. Just as the Ottoman Turks of the East had attempted to spread their faith abroad by force of arms, Spain and Portugal would now do the same, but with far more effectiveness. Tellingly in 1492, no sooner had Granada fallen than King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella revived the so-called Diploma of Ramiro, allowing the government to collect taxes from all of its realm for the sake of maintaining its pilgrimage shrine at Santiago de Compostela, even though its originator, King Alfonso VII, had been dead since the year 1157 (see Chapter 6).2 The Santiago cult should have died a peaceful death from the moment that Granada fell, but instead Matamoros seemed only to gain new life and renewed purpose, seeking new targets or victims to satisfy its ambitions. Meanwhile, pilgrimage traffic along the Caminos flourished. In faraway Paris, the imposing Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie was constructed between 1502 and 1525, serving as a convenient rallying point for Parisian pilgrims preparing to head out for Spain along the Camino Frances.3
Over the last five centuries, whether mythologized or denigrated, the inescapable legacy of Christopher Columbus has been consistently distorted and misinterpreted. At the end of the day, he was a religious fanatic sponsored by another religious fanatic, Isabella of Castile. As observed by Karen Armstrong, Columbus had a Crusader mentality, was possibly of distant Jewish ancestry, and had recurring thoughts of Jerusalem, even as he sailed west dreaming of new Asian trade routes and, more fantastically, conversion of Asian peoples to Catholicism.4 As a religiously conservative Genoese, he despised the more progressive Venetians for their treaties and compromises with Islamic states for the sake of Eurasian trade, even though recent Ottoman aggression in Eastern Europe had cut severely into Venetian profit margins. The opportunity had now arrived to completely reinvent these trade patterns, and the Spanish, along with their Iberian rivals the Portuguese, were at the forefront of this movement. One can argue endlessly whether the prime motivator was piety or greed, or whether one inevitably led to another. The indisputable facts are as follows: on August 3, 1492, Columbus sailed west from Palos de la Frontera in search of the Asian continent; on October 12, he reached San Salvador in the West Indies, then explored the neighboring islands, including Cuba and Hispaniola; finally, commanding the Niña after the shipwreck of his flagship Santa María (and mutiny of the Pinta), Columbus returned to a hero’s welcome at Palos de la Frontera (via Portugal) on the Ides of March (March 15), 1493. World history would now begin to witness the greatest series of demographic and technological changes since humanity first began recording history.5
October 12, the date of the Columbian landfall in the New World, is today celebrated as Spanish Columbus Day, the national holiday of that country.6 October 12, as the fates would have it, is also the Feast Day for the Virgin of the Pillar, an ancient tradition holding that Saint James the Greater was divinely granted the first Marian vision in Zaragoza, Spain, on that date circa 40 CE (see Chapter 2).7 Therefore, through this circuitous, backdoor connection, one might well say that Christian Europe reached the New World to stay on the very same calendar day that Santiago had received reassurance from the Madonna that his early missionary journey to Spain would not be in vain. Columbus was surely aware of the association, and no doubt found it significant. His maiden trans-Atlantic voyage had a number of Santiago overtones, beginning with the Santa María itself, originally built in Galicia, christened La Gallega (“The Galician”) and likely displaying on its sails, along with the other two ships, the red Spanish cross closely associated with the Santiago tradition. Anyone doubting the ongoing popularity of Columbus Day in Spain need only attend the annual parade in Madrid, as did this author in 2016. In a country still deeply divided by the shadow of civil war from a previous generation (see Chapter 18), Columbus Day serves as a convenient rallying point of national pride for most Spaniards.8 For better and for worse, the anniversary of the cataclysmic “Encounter” between Europeans and Native Americans—as often euphemistically dubbed by modern historians—appears to remain well remembered throughout Spain and Spanish-speaking Latin America, notwithstanding a modern age that has difficulty remembering much of anything.
No sooner had Columbus returned to Spain than Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull in 1493 methodically dividing all newly discovered and conquered lands between Catholic Spain and Catholic Portugal, with details later worked out in the subsequent 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas.9 Rome’s assertiveness at this moment may have prevented immediate war between the two budding superpowers. Meanwhile between 1493 and 1504, Columbus made his second, third, and fourth voyages to the New World, claiming most of Caribbean “West Indies” region for Spain. In 1495, the city of Santiago de los Treinte Caballeros was founded, today the second largest municipality in the Dominican Republic and nicknamed “the first Santiago of the Americas”—a startling development considering that three years prior to this many people still believed the world was flat. In 1504, Queen Isabella died, for many years weighed down by personal tragedies and justified anxiety over ominous trends of Spanish colonialism.10 A good case can be made than no individual ever did so much to change the world in such a short space of time. As for Columbus, he did not long outlive his great patroness, dying in 1506, possibly still believing that he had reached the East Indies.
The chagrined Portuguese, approached originally by Columbus but rebuffing him, were right behind the Spanish almost from the very beginning, pushing out in every direction with their scrappy, well equipped navy.11 In 1497, Vasco de Gama rounded the African Cape of Good Hope, thus proving that India and China could be reached by Europe sailing east, as well as west. His achievement only helped to further spur Spanish exploration efforts westward. England, France, and the rest of Europe stood by and watched in amazement, trying to process the fact that half of the world was previously not known to have existed. In 1500, Pedro Álvarez Cabral claimed Brazil in the name of Portugal, forever establishing a Portuguese cultural legacy in the Americas. The very term “America,” however, did not come into common usage until after 1504–1505, when the letters of the Florentine explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci were published as Mundus Novus.12 Unlike Columbus, Vespucci unambiguously believed that new continents had been discovered, as opposed to outlying islands of Asia. The obvious quickly gained widespread currency and popular use of Vespucci’s Latinized first name (America) became the standard reference to the New World, especially following the 1507 German publication of Cosmographiae Introductio, which included Latin translations of Vespucci’s letters. Thus, Gutenburg’s press, at this point slightly more than half a century in existence, played a key role in the development of nomenclature during the Age of Discovery, since humankind was trying to label and describe things not previously known or barely even imagined until that era.
Back in Spain and Portugal, what little was left of religious freedom (there had not been much to begin with) was now being completely abolished. By mid–1492, all that was left of Sephardic Jewry in Spain were either conversos or those pretending to be; either way, the Spanish Inquisition persecuted both with zeal, especially if there was potential for significant property confiscation. Then, in response to illegal forced conversions of Muslims, rebellions to Spanish rule around Granada at the turn of the 16th century resulted first in violent suppression, then finally an official government policy of intolerance, reversing the peace treaty of 1492. By 1502, Muslims were given the same harsh options as Jews from a decade previous: convert, leave, or die. Like Spanish Jews who could not or would not leave and tried to convert, Moriscos (“Moorish Christians”) were subjected to same type of persecutions by the Inquisition, with the innocent majority being forced to suffer alongside a guilty minority of pretenders, or simply because they were guilty of being Muslim when Granada fell. These affairs represented a stark contrast to long-time Muslim rule of Iberia in which the Catholic Church was not only allowed to exist (within boundaries), but in some instances to even prosper and grow. As a result, the final years of Queen Isabella’s momentous life and reign were tarnished at home by religious persecution and political oppression.
In the Americas, however, things were just getting started. In 1513, the Spanish adventurer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama, becoming the first European to sight the Pacific Ocean before it was known by that name. That same year, Juan Ponce de León, a veteran of Columbus’ second voyage and playing an important role in the settlement of Puerto Rico, sailed out searching for the legendary Fountain of Youth and instead discovered Florida, becoming the first conquistador to reach the present day United States. The name of his flagship for this historic voyage was the Santiago. Not long thereafter, on July 25, 1515, the Feast Day of Saint James, the city of Santiago de Cuba founded by Spanish conquistador Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar. Today Cuba’s second largest city, Santiago quickly became a launching point for subsequent Spanish conquests, including that of Mexico. Amidst this triumphalism, King Ferdinand died in 1516, formally succeeded by his mentally unstable daughter Joanna of Castile (1479–1555) la Loca (“The Mad”), but in reality the scepter of power passed to her 16-year-old son Charles V (1500–1558), destined to become Holy Roman Emperor (see Chapter 12) and the first world leader in a true global sense.13 Then in 1517, just as the scene appeared set for worldwide domination by Castile and Aragón, a German Augustinian monk from Wittenberg by the name of Martin Luther published a list of 95 theses, or objections, to the aggressive papal marketing of religious indulgences, thereby initiating the Protestant Reformation, although this watershed moment was not realized until much later. In hindsight, the consequences of the event appear almost like a divine retribution against the Roman Catholic Church for Spanish and Portuguese oppression then unfolding across Iberia and throughout the New World.
Not long after American cities began being named after Santiago, the saint also began to personally appear there in battle. The conquest of Mexico and the Aztec Empire by the Spaniards under Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) in 1519–1521 must rank as one of history’s more notable military expeditions in terms of small numbers overcoming a great civilization through superior technology and tactics, plus a healthy dose of luck. Cortés himself must also rank as one of the more disturbing figures in western history—not merely a hired killer like most Spanish conquistadors, but appearing to have been a man of some education and culture before going over to the dark side for the sake of wealth and power. Ironically, by the end of his life he felt disappointed in both, although no one, not even his critics, have ever downplayed the magnitude of his exploits. In the aftermath of Cortés subduing Mexico, unprecedented quantities of precious metal wealth began flowing into Spain. Moving forward, Spain would be a world power with only the Protestant Reformation and its own conscience standing in the way. As for Cortés, by the time he arrived in Santiago de Cuba as an impressionable, ambitious teenager to become first the protégé, then the son-in-law, and finally the dedicated enemy of the Spanish governor there, he no doubt quickly came to appreciate the high stakes involved for everyone in the New World. Accordingly, he sought his own place within that world, exhibiting the kind of single-minded zeal once displayed by Queen Isabella, who died the same year (1504) that the 16-year-old Cortés first set out for the Americas.
The key engagement in Cortés’ epic campaign against the Aztecs took place on July 7, 1520, at Otumba, located northeast of Tenochtitlán and modern day Mexico City. Here the Spanish, after being harassed out of the capital with mounting casualties, and now outnumbered (by some estimates) twenty-to-one, turned on their pursuers and delivered them a bloody defeat, thereby sealing the fate of Aztec civilization. Much has been written regarding the key advantages of gunpowder and steel enjoyed by Cortés’ tiny force, but less about his tremendous advantage in light cavalry. Native Americans had never encountered horses in combat, let alone the kind à la jinete style of horsemanship employed by the Spanish with murderous efficiency, its distant origins in the conflicts of ancient North Africa and medieval Iberia (see Chapter 6). An eyewitness later writing a widely-read account of the battle, Bernal Díaz de Castillo, emphasized the role of this cavalry in the stunning Spanish victory, as well as a vision of their patron Santiago, to whom Cortés was in the habit of loudly appealing to during moments of crisis.14 After the Battle of Otumba, Santiago Matamoros (“Moor-slayer”) was thus unapologetically transformed into Santiago Mataindios (“Indian-slayer”).15
Roughly concurrent with Cortés’ astounding conquest, but no less astonishing, was the first naval circumnavigation of the globe by an intrepid Spanish expedition under the command of Portuguese-born Ferdinand Magellan (1480?–1521). Setting out west from Spain in 1519, Magellan’s fleet initially consisted of five ships, one named Santiago, which unfortunately was the first of the group to be scuttled off the east coast of South America in 1520. It proved to be a harbinger of other misfortunes. After swinging around the southern tip of the continent (today known as the Straits of Magellan), and dubbing by name the Pacific Ocean first seen by Balboa, Magellan personally made it as far west as the Philippine Islands, where he was killed in 1521 during an unnecessary skirmish with natives. The survivors, along with their sole remaining ship Victoria, then somehow made it back safely to Spanish port in 1522 to tell of their amazing adventures. The debate was now officially closed: the world was in fact round. More importantly, about half of that world seemed ripe for European domination, particularly by the Spanish. Moreover, all previous Asian and non–Christian economic competitors were about to be left far behind in colonial activities. The name and cult of Santiago, however, would soon make it back to the Pacific and the Philippines during the next wave of Spanish exploration (see Chapter 12).
With Mexico and the Caribbean subdued, Spanish conquest now expanded with a fast and furious pace. In 1530–1533, Cortés’ second cousin Francisco Pizarro conquered the Inca Empire in Peru with a level of ruthlessness that would incite both foreign approbation and envy. In 1539–1542, Hernando de Soto secured Florida and explored most of the modern southeastern United States, becoming the first known European to encounter the Mississippi River. In 1540–1542, Vázquez de Coronado explored much of the southwestern United States in search of the legendary Seven Cities of Gold (El Dorado), while his lieutenant García López de Cárdenas became first European to view the Grand Canyon circa 1540. Pizarro, de Soto, and Coronado were all known to invoke the name and help of Santiago in their conquests.16 In 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo explored the California coastline, pushing as far north as the Russian River in Sonoma County. Military victory usually imposed Roman Catholicism on the vanquished, and far more stridently than Iberian Moors had done with Islam during the early eighth century (see Chapter 3).17 Also in 1542 came the landmark Spanish New Laws proclaimed by Emperor Charles V in response to these rapid American conquests, outlawing all slavery of Native Americans, and the very first emancipation legislation of its kind in history. Charles may have been thinking of his grandmother, Queen Isabella, whose last will and testament expressed a desire to see Native Americans treated with humane justice rather than simply to be exploited for profit.
More cities appeared as well. In 1536, Santiago de Cali was founded in modern day Colombia; in 1538, Santiago de Guayaquil in present day Ecuador; in 1541, Santiago, the capital of Chile. And yet before all these, Santiago’s old religious rival had firmly established herself in the New World as well. In 1531, a mere 10 years after Cortés vanquished the Aztecs, the apparition later known as Our Lady of Guadalupe first appeared in suburban Mexico City to a Native American Christian convert rechristened Juan Diego by Franciscan missionaries only seven years earlier in 1524.18 The incident, or rather series of incidents, occurred around a former Aztec sacred site formerly dedicated to their mother earth goddess, and despite initial reservations by the institutional church, immediately became a popular pilgrim destination and has remained so ever since.19 Today Our Lady of Guadalupe is said to be the most visited religious shrine in North America, and worldwide for Christians it rivals those of Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela. At this point in our chronicle it is useful as well to remember than Santa María (“Saint Mary”) is also one of the most common place names in the New World, beginning with the first permanent European settlement on the mainland (in modern day Colombia), Santa María la Antigua del Darién, founded by Balboa in 1510, only four years after the death of Columbus and before any American city had been named Santiago. This Christian religious precedence of the Virgin over Santiago was of course nothing new. After all, Columbus’ own flagship La Gallega, built not far from the shrine of Santiago de Compostela and given a name associated with that locale, had been rechristened Santa María before its famous last voyage.
The launch of the Spanish-Portuguese American conquest coincided with creation of some of the greatest works of western religious art during the High Renaissance, particularly in Italy. Between 1495 and 1498, Leonardo da Vinci painted his iconic The Last Supper in Milan; between 1516 and 1520, Raphael painted The Transfiguration in Rome.20 These are but two selected examples. Both include well-known images of Saint James the Greater, although many (if not most) viewers of these famous works do not even realize they are looking at Saint James among the depicted apostles. In Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, James (Giacomo il maggiore) is seated at table to the immediate left of Jesus and reacts with gesticulating horror when informed that one of the disciples is a betrayer. In Raphael’s Transfiguration, somewhat humorously, all that is seen of James is the apostle’s posterior as he crouches in terror, along with John and Peter, while a divinely glorified Jesus is attended by the raised prophets Moses and Elijah. At the stylized base of the mountain, representing the rest of humanity, the other apostles and onlookers stand baffled by their inability (through lack of faith) to cure an epileptic. One interesting aspect of large canvasses such as these is that the artistic focus on Jesus is so strongly emphasized that the individual identities of the apostles—indeed of all humankind—become rather submerged by comparison. As such the cults of the individual saints, with possible exception of the Virgin Mary, were being subtly challenged by the new intellectual possibilities recently offered by the European Renaissance and discovery of the New World. It is worth remembering, for example, that Raphael’s intensely divine depiction of Jesus’ transformation (in stark comparison to the rest of mankind) was created about the same time that Martin Luther was presenting his 95 objections to a stunned Roman Catholic establishment.21
In Germany itself, the newfangled technology of movable print helped to spread an even greater revolution of thought throughout Europe, America, and beyond. Suddenly, mass-produced information, as well as engraved illustrations, were at everyone’s fingertips, at least for those who could afford it and who could read. And even those who could not read could still look at the pictures. This demand created tremendous opportunities for talented artists such as the Alsatian-born Martin Schongauer (1440?–1491), who began his professional life as a painter but then quickly came under the spell of Gutenberg’s press. Schongauer eventually became one of the most influential engravers in all of Europe, admired by the likes of Michelangelo, and whose works, thanks to the printing press, spread throughout the world, including Spain. As conquistadores rampaged their way through the Americas shouting the name of Santiago as a war cry, artistic images of Santiago Matamoros, or rather a subtly disguised Santiago Mataindios, became to reappear and proliferate, and would continue to do so right through the colonial period (see Chapter 17). These artistic expressions of violence would too often be over-sentimentalized or romanticized. To the great credit of Schongauer, his portrayal of Saint James the Greater in the posthumous role of supernatural religious warrior has been handed down with none of these soft trimmings. In the case of the German printmaker, the harsh brutality is both real and anticipatory, especially given that the artist died immediately before the New World had been discovered or the German Protestant Reformation officially begun.
Produced either by Schongauer or one of his associates during the latter part of the 15th century, the paper engraving titled The Battle of St. James the Greater at Clavijo, today the property of the Art Institute of Chicago, depicts Santiago as most of us have never seen him before.22 Matamoros is presented leading a Reconquista army on horseback à la jinete, lightly clad with no armor and waving a sword, otherwise identified only by the scallop shell badge on his pilgrim’s hat.23 Surrounding him on all sides is mayhem and carnage. Men and horses are trampled underfoot. Decapitated bodies and severed limbs are strewn about. The wounded, the dying, the stragglers, and the fleeing are as numerous as those fighting. The barren landscape of the field at Clavijo is devoid of life, except for soldiery. The image would not make a very good recruiting poster; it merely depicts medieval warfare for what it really involved, nothing more or less.24 Clavijo was a battle that never occurred (see Chapter 3), and yet Schongauer’s realistic view of Iberian warfare might well represent every battle that ever took place, including those yet to take place on undiscovered continents. The image also accurately reflects the European mentality towards Islam in general after the fall of Constantinople and final assault on Granada (see Chapter 10). Within a generation, this same mentality would be transported to the Americas and unleashed upon a populous, though technologically less advanced society.
By the year 1542, conventional wisdom seemed to hold that the entire globe was within the grasp of Spain, Portugal, and the Roman Catholic faith. Spanish viceroys had been established for New Spain (in North and Central America) and Peru (South America) thereby beginning the administrative consolidation of power within those realms. The lion’s share of trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific trade routes not controlled by the Spanish were held by the Portuguese, and there were as of yet few significant challengers.25 Santiago Matamoros now seemed to be everywhere at once. The European military machine unleashed upon the New World victims of The Encounter, in tandem with the propagandistic power of the printed word, appeared to be unstoppable. Nevertheless, they would be stopped eventually, or at least the Spanish-Portuguese Roman Catholic version of this sweeping tide. In truth, things were happening and changing so rapidly that perceptive people, including their leaders, were given repeated pause. Problems and questions were being raised, most of which had not even occurred to the best European thinkers only a century before. Worse, these same problems and questions appeared to be multiplying faster than solutions and answers, let alone any effective implementation and communication. It seemed incredible that only 61 years before this (in 1481), the Ottoman Turks appeared on the verge of overrunning all Christian Europe. Now, a generation later, the tables had completely turned. Half a globe had been discovered, and Catholic Spain seemed to hold all the cards. The idea of universal Christian empire headquartered in Rome, an idea dead or not taken seriously beyond Europe since the Dark Ages, was now been seriously revived. The downfall of this presumptuous dream, however, would be even more rapid than its recent ascendance.