The infamous Requerimiento

Moche gold rattle, Peru (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

When the 16th-century conquistadors came ashore to conquer and colonize a new territory in the New World, their leader was required to read aloud to the uncomprehending natives (whether any were present or not) a document or proclamation called the Requerimiento. Here is a translation of the one that Pánfilo de Narváez recited on April 11, 1528, after landing his force near Tampa Bay, Florida. https://www.loc.gov/item/11006933/ The message boiled down to: This is who we are, what we believe, and why we’re awesome. We’re taking over this land, and we’ll tell you what to think and do. You will obey us, or we’ll destroy you, and it’ll be your fault!

Just pretend there was no language barrier and try to imagine yourself a native listening to these words from armored, bearded men with formidable weapons, and mounted on huge animals. How likely is it that you would respond, “Sounds reasonable to me. Let’s get started!” In fact, all that exposition about who, what, and why is meaningless to you. But the threatening language at the end of the speech is alarming, so you resist them as best you can.

But you soon learn that what these guys are really after is a shiny yellow metal, like the small piece of it your people once found in a Spanish shipwreck. You’re nobody’s fool, and you realize that one way to get rid of these arrogant invaders is to tell them there is plenty of that gold stuff in the province of Apalache, far away from here. It works, and they leave! You’ve heard the Apalache warriors are pretty fierce, so maybe you’ll never see these Spaniards again. And you don’t for 11 more years until the even bigger Hernando de Soto army shows up. And some of them keep hanging around Tampa Bay much longer. It looks like your ancestral way of life will never be the same.

So, how did this bizarre ritual of the Requerimiento come about, and what was the point of it? The history behind it is fascinating, but it’s too involved to summarize in this space. Here’s a good reference:

https://shc.stanford.edu/arcade/publications/rofl/issues/volume-5-issue-3/islands-ocean-sea-requerimiento-and-european

The important insight for me is that some equivalent of the Requerimiento is still used by governments in modern times to justify their conquest of other peoples.