Colonisation
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Colonisation
After Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies in 1492, Spain and Portugal started disputing areas of influence on the South American continent. The dispute was eventually settled by the Pope (Alexander VI), who in 1493, drew up defined areas of influence for the two nations with the idea of spreading Christianity to the natives in those territories. In time the Portuguese territory became known as Brazil, hence the working language of that country to this day is Portuguese, while most of the rest of the continent speaks Spanish.
On 1 August 1498, during his third voyage, Columbus finally sighted the South American mainland for the first time. The next white explorer to reach the continent was the Portuguese navigator Pedro Cabral, who anchored off the coast of present day Brazil in April 1500 – a territory which he then claimed for Portugal. However, the claim was ignored for more than 30 years by Portugal itself, whose sailors had in the interim sailed round Africa to India.
During this time of Portuguese indifference, the Spanish seized the initiative in Central America and the West Indies. In 1519, the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, then employed by the Spaniards, first sailed up the Rio de la Plata River. He then proceeded south and in November 1520, first sailed round the southernmost part of South America and sighted the Pacific Ocean.
Spain
In 1519, Cortes with about 600 men set sail for South America with a few cannon and horses. A last minute dispute with the Spanish governor saw Cortes expedition being officially cancelled, but Cortes continued, later bringing back gold and other riches to the Spanish crown as justification for his expedition. The army sailed west along the Gulf Coast, engaging in a major battle against a local tribe.
It was at this first battle that Cortes realized the technological advantage the Europeans possessed: steel armour, guns, cannons and even horses were completely unknown to the people of Central America, and many tribesmen fled at the very sight of a powerful charge horse. These advantages were pressed home remorselessly, and all the native tribes in Central and South America were to pay dearly for being technologically so far behind the Europeans.
At the time of the Spanish conquest of Central America, the Aztecs had created an empire which stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico and to the south to the present day country of Guatemala. The Aztecs were by all accounts cruel masters over other local tribes, with the result that some of the subjected peoples actually welcomed the arrival of the Spanish. A few of these tribes would physically help the Spanish invaders against the Aztecs.
The Aztec religion was one of the reasons why there was so much resentment amongst the Amerind tribes: it demanded daily human sacrifice and most of the victims for this sacrifice were seized from surrounding Amerind tribes by the Aztecs.
The Aztec religion also played a major role in destabilizing Aztec resistance to the white invaders: one of their gods was a plumed serpent named Quetzalcoatl, the god of wind and learning. According to Aztec legend, Quetzalcoatl had been tricked and disgraced by another god, Tezcatlipoca, and then travelled to the east. He vowed to return and destroy those who worshipped his enemies, accompanied by all powerful white-skinned gods.
By the time of the Spanish assault in 1519, word of the arrival of the whites, with their plumed helmets, in the Caribbean Sea had travelled to the Aztecs, triggering the widely held superstition that an angry Quetzalcoatl and his white-skinned gods had indeed returned to exact revenge.
This fear created confusion in the Aztec camp: should they attack the newcomers, who might be the avenging god, or should they try and appease them? This hesitancy to act was exploited by the Spanish invaders.
In May 1521, the city of Tenochtitlan Ð- capital of the Aztecs, which was situated on an island – was cut off from the outside. Spanish artillery mounted on ships specially constructed for the shallow waters of the surrounding rivers and lake, bombarded the city. Every day the white soldiers launched fresh assaults on the city defences, whose supplies of food and fresh water had been cut. Famine, dysentery, and smallpox ravaged the Aztec defenders. On 13 August 1521, after a desperate siege of three months, the new Aztec emperor was captured and Tenochtitlan fell.
According to Spanish accounts, when they finally entered the city, more than 40,000 decomposed bodies – most of whom had died of disease – littered the city streets and canals. The legend of the revenge of the white-skinned gods had indeed come true after all.
The Spaniards then proceeded to raze the city to the ground and build a new city in its place to serve as capital of the newly declared Spanish possession of Central America, called New Spain. The city itself eventually came to be called Mexico City. Spanish colonists soon poured in, and the new city quickly became the largest white city in Central America.
The contact with the native tribes in the coastal areas of Southern America had been enough to make the Spanish realize that the Inca civilization was advanced and possibly wealthy – the Aztec example in Central America served as an indication that greater riches lay deeper in the interior, just waiting to be discovered. The Spanish were then the first to push deep into the interior of South America, in search of the wealth of which they believed they had only seen glimpses on the coast amongst the native people they encountered there.
The staggering feat of the first white invasion of South America by a tiny force of 180 men is one of the most remarkable episodes in South American history – and also one of the least widely known. In 1531, a conquistador named Francisco Pizarro invaded South America with 180 white men and 62 horses, taking on the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of Incas living in the gold rich Inca empire which covered the areas today compromising the countries of Peru, Chile and Bolivia.
Advancing quickly, Pizarro reached the Inca heartland: despite the tiny white force being numerically dwarfed by the warlike Incas, the latter, like the Aztecs, had no answer against the overwhelming whites technological superiority.
Pizarro captured the Inca emperor, one Atahualpa, who attempted to buy his freedom by offering a staggering amount of gold and silver. Despite this offer, the conquistadors decided to burn the emperor at the stake to break Inca resistance.