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What is the conspiracy against Spain in Gregory Cerio's article "Were the Spaniards That Cruel?"
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Gregory Cerio's article argues that the notion of a "conspiracy" against Spain is misleading. During Spain's dominance in the early age of exploration, rival nations like France, England, and the Netherlands openly propagated Spanish atrocities in the New World to discredit Spain, rather than forming a secret conspiracy. Cerio acknowledges the truth in Bartolome de Las Casas's accounts but highlights a broader Spanish self-critique. He contends that Spain's actions were no worse than those of other European colonizers.
Cerio's thesis in this article is largely that because Spain was the most powerful country in Europe during the early age of exploration (1492 to about 1588 or later), other countries sought through propaganda to discredit Spain and to condemn it for its mistreatment of the indigenous Americans.
This, even in Cerio's telling, does not actually constitute a "conspiracy." A conspiracy is a secret effort among a relatively small group of people to spread false information or carry out subversive acts. Given that France, England, and the Netherlands were open rivals and enemies of Spain, their attempt to disseminate news about Spanish atrocities in the New World was done out in the open, publicly. The enemies of Spain seized upon, reprinted, and publicized information given by the Spanish themselves. Cerio does not really attempt to refute the famous indictment by Bartolome de Las Casas of Spanish actions in the New...
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World, apart from saying that it is written in "sometimes exaggerated detail." Therefore the basis of Las Casas's account, even according to Cerio, is true. But Cerio sees the efforts of Las Casas as part of a wider, self-critical effort by the Spanish authorities to question and to reform the methods of their colonization of the New World. They constantly were asking, "Am I right? Am I wrong?" debating amongst themselves as to the proper way to deal with the American Indians.
The Spanish conquered the New World, as they acknowledged themselves, for both profit and for religion. No one can realistically deny that many among the Spanish genuinely believed they were saving the Indians' souls by subjugating them and converting them to Christianity. Those countries that condemned Spain for its behavior in the New World, Cerio asserts, were no better than the Spanish and in significant ways were worse when they began their own colonization efforts. The Spanish, though conquering, also mixed with the indigenous peoples. As a result, today a majority of the Latin American population are mestizos, people of both European and Amerindian descent. By contrast, in North America the intention from the start by the English (and to a lesser degree the French) was to remain separate from the American Indians and to drive them into the interior of the continent, exterminate them, or eventually to segregate their small remaining numbers on reservations in the U.S., or reserves, as they are known in Canada.
Cerio mentions, correctly, that more indigenous Americans were killed by their lack of resistance to the diseases (such as smallpox) which had long been prevalent in Europe and which the Europeans were carriers of. To claim that genocide was the intention of the Spanish, Cerio contends, is false, especially if genocide is defined as the intention to exterminate an entire "race." And yet, his argument is still less a whitewashing of the Spanish than an accusation of hypocrisy and exaggeration against Spain's critics. The Spanish conquista was no more nor less cruel than the New World colonization by all the European countries.