In the last article, I recounted
how Christopher Columbus, the High Admiral and
Governor of the West Indies, had freed the Taino
slaves; overseen the building of multiple
settlements in harmonious coexistence with their
tribal neighbors; and defeated the Carib
marauders, bringing peace and slowly restoring
prosperity to the land. He brought to the West
Indies what I call the Pax Columbiana, as his
very name suggests: "Columbo," Italian for
"dove," the symbol of peace.
This week's article tells the shattering of
that fragile peace by the true villain of the
West Indies whose deeds have, of late, been
falsely attributed by revisionist "historians"
to the good Admiral Columbus. The true terror of
the West Indies -- the man known to the Jihadist
invaders of Europe as their bane and conqueror;
to the Spaniards as their war hero of the Reconquista,
but to the innocent Tainos of the West Indies as
the racist, rapist, maimer, murderer and
genocidal maniac -- was none other
than Francisco de Bobadilla. To Christopher
Columbus, Bobadilla was the mariner-governor's
arch-nemesis.
Even as Governor Columbus had finally
brokered peace in the West Indies, a letter he
had written to the Crown while still in the
throes of the insurgencies of the hidalgos (the
low, landed Spanish nobles) finally reached
Spain. In it, he had requested the Crown send
someone to aid him whom the hidalgos would
respect. The hidalgos constantly rebelled
against Governor Columbus for a multitude of
reasons, mostly, however, that he was not of
noble birth and was a Genoese, a ”foreigner.” In
their words, Columbus ”had no experience of
controlling people of quality" -- in other
words, high-born noblemen such as
themselves (Hernando Colón, Life of the Admiral,
Chapter 85). The self-characterization was
ironic; many of them were, in fact, low-born
criminals pardoned by the Crown in exchange for
their agreement to accept a noble title and
settle the tropical frontier of the West
Indies.
Mainly, however, the tension arose because
Governor Columbus refused to allow the
entitled hidalgos to enslave the tribal
islanders of the West Indies, and forced those
same hidalgos to build their own
settlements. Betrayed by his own mayor and
beleaguered by the hostilities of the
conquistadors, Columbus complained to the
Crown: "I wanted to escape from governing these
dissolute people...full of vice and malice" and
"begged Their Highnesses...to send someone at my
expense to administer justice.” (Letter of
Christopher Columbus to Doña Juana de Torres,
dated October 1500).
The Crown answered Columbus's request,
unaware that, since receiving the letter, he had
actually single-handedly succeeded in
suppressing the hidalgo rebellions with sheer
diplomacy and without arms. As historian
Bartolomé de las Casas, who lived through and
personally witnessed these events, wrote in
his “Historia de las Indias” (History of the
Indies), by now things were calm, the land was
rich and everyone lived in peace (Book I,
Chapter 181), Columbus's hard-earned Pax
Columbiana. It was a dark day in history when on
May 21, 1499, the monarchs appointed Comendador
Francisco de Bobadilla, reconquistador, knight
of the Order of Calatrava.
The King and Queen informed Bobadilla of the
mutual letters of complaint written by
the hidalgos and Governor Columbus. The monarchs
instructed Bobadilla to conduct an independent
investigation of the competing claims; make
findings of fact; and, if he found that the
wrongdoing really did lie with Columbus, to
unseat him and take over as Viceroy, a
hereditary title that would be passed down
through generations. This was all the ambitious reconquistador needed
to hear.
The fate of the West Indies made a turn for
the worst in late August, 1499, when Comendador
Bobadilla set foot on the shore of Hispaniola.
He conducted no investigation. He made no
findings of fact. All of the primary historical
sources agree that his first deed upon landfall
was to arrest all three Columbus brothers on
sight, shackle them and keep them in the bowels
of a prison ship for exile to Spain. Then, he
commandeered Governor Columbus's house, personal
effects and papers, having "kept most hidden"
any documents "which would have cleared" the
lies that were to follow (Id., Book I, Chapter
181). Bobadilla "began to draw up a case
against" the Columbus brothers, "citing as
witnesses the Admiral's enemies" among the
recalcitrant and rebellious hidalgos, "publicly
favoring and encouraging anyone who came forward
to abuse the prisoners" (Colón, Life of the
Admiral, Chapter 85).
What followed may seem eerily familiar to the
modern reader. "These witnesses were so
malevolent and abusive in their declarations
that a man would have to be more than blind not
to recognize that what they said was prompted by
passion, not by truth" (Id.).
Bobadilla took complete control of the
settlements. "The day after he arrived he
constituted himself governor, appointed
officials, performed executive acts and
announced gold franchises and the remission of
titles...for a period of twenty years, which is
a man’s lifetime" (Id.). He did so to ingratiate
himself with the hidalgos. He raised "adherents"
by "allying himself with the richest and most
powerful" of them. "He gave them Indians to work
for them" and required, in return, that
the hidalgos pay tribute to him, rather than to
the Crown. He sold all the known lands and
possessions of the Crown in the West Indies by
public auction to the hidalgos. Of his
"companions,” he only required payment of
one-third of the price.
Bobadilla had "no other aim but to enrich
himself and gain the affection of the people"
while he could. To that end, he "allowed
the ill-disposed mob to speak all kinds of
libels against [Columbus and his brothers] in
public places." They went about "posting abusive
notices at the street corners." Bobadilla
"showed great delight" at the calumnious
exhibitions and "each man did the utmost to
rival his neighbor in such displays of
effrontery" (Id.).
History, it seems, has repeated itself. As
modern, entitled, recalcitrant,
revisionist-history mobs in the United States --
and indeed, so-called "educators" of revisionist
history in American universities, high schools
and grade schools -- have modeled themselves
after their lying, 15th
Century hidalgo counterparts, they have again
wrongly placed Christopher Columbus at the
center of their cyclone of slander.
To add insult to injury, even as Christopher
Columbus lay shackled and imprisoned in the
bowels of the prison ship Bobadilla had
commissioned to take him and his brothers back
to Spain, Bobadilla gave the ship's master, one
Andres Martín, strict instructions to leave the
prisoner in chains. Nevertheless, as the ship
sailed, Martín offered to free Christopher
Columbus of the manacles, a great testament to
how affable a person was Columbus.
Christopher Columbus refused. He defiantly
declared that "only the monarchs could do this,"
and insisted on principle on remaining shackled
until he reached the royal Court (Bartolomé de
las Casas, Book I, Chapter 181).
With his hands in chains, Columbus began
penning a letter to the Spanish Crown, addressed
to his friend, Doña Juana de Torres, the
governess of Prince John, for whom his own sons
had been made royal pages. He wrote that
Bobadilla provoked the settlers, gathered
"rebels and other untrustworthy people" and
aroused "a quantity of people [who] did not
deserve baptismal water before God or the
world," including slavers "who go out to look
for women [and] girls [selling them] at a
premium” on the slave market (Id.); some
translations of this passage refer to the
enslaved girls as being nine or ten years old,
others that there were nine or ten of them
currently on sale by the slavers as Columbus was
writing his letter of complaint. Columbus was
sure to clarify matters once he appeared before
the Crown. As Bobadilla’s prisoner, Columbus
learned that Bobadilla "did everything in his
power to harm me" and such damage to Hispaniola
that "Their Highnesses...would be astonished to
find that the island is still standing" (Id.).
This was just the tip of the proverbial
iceberg; Christopher Columbus truly had no idea
of the extent of Bobadilla’s depravity, as the
worst of it occurred while the Genoan mariner
was being shuttled across the sea back to
Europe. Once Bobadilla had removed Christopher
Columbus as an obstacle, as the new,
self-appointed Viceroy, he unleashed all Hell on
the West Indies.
Viceroy Bobadilla undid all the restraints on
the Spanish encomienda system that Governor
Columbus had effected in his years of reigning
in the indolent hidalgos. Bobadilla eliminated
the hidalgos’ requirement to pay all but nominal
taxes. He imposed forced labor upon the
tribal people as miners and cooks so his
fellow hidalgos would not have to labor (Id.,
Book II, Chapter 1). Worse, Bobadilla assigned
Indian tribes to [the colonists], thus making
[the Spaniards] very happy" (Id.).
Young Bartolomé de las Casas, not yet a friar
or historian, but still a settler and observer
of Bobadilla's atrocities, witnessed the comendador take
control of the Crown's military "force [which]
was more than enough...to keep the Indians
pacified, had [the hidalgos] treated them
differently, but also to subdue and kill them
all, which is what [Bobadilla's forces] did."
Bobadilla exonerated and decarcerated all the
traitorous hidalgos Governor Columbus had
imprisoned for sedition and other crimes, most
of whom were very violent men. De las
Casas wrote, "I saw them a few days later, as if
nothing had happened, safe and sound, happy and
living as honored members of the community."
He further lamented, "You should have seen those
hoodlums, exiled from Castile for homicide with
crimes yet to be accounted for, served by native
kings and their vassals doing the meanest
chores. These chiefs had daughters, wives
and other close relations whom the Spaniards
took for concubines either with their own
consent or by force" (Id.). By de las
Casas's accounting "three hundred hidalgos lives
for several years in a continuous state of sin"
after the removal of Columbus as governor, "not
counting those other sins they committed daily
by oppressing and tyrannizing Indians" under
Bobadilla's tyrannical reign (Id.).
In Christopher Columbus's absence, Bobadilla
and his hidalgos enslaved, raped and murdered
tribal people, sometimes simply on a whim and as
cruel jokes. Bobadilla's men called the
Tainos "dogs" and plundered their villages.
Now, without Governor Columbus to keep
the hidalgos in check, "they grew more conceited
every day and fell into greater arrogance,
presumption and contempt toward these humble
people." Without Christopher Columbus's
humane governance and the strict discipline that
he had imposed on the hidalgos, they became "[s]oulless,
blind and godless." They "killed without
restraint and perversely abused" the tribal
peoples of the West Indies (Id.).
Bobadilla and his mob of hidalgo "grievance
squads" engaged in another tactic the modern
reader will recognize. In the words of de las
Casas, Bobadilla enacted "the first plan of
tyrants: to ... continually oppress and
cause anguish to the most powerful and to the
wisest so that, occupied by their calamities,
they lack the time and courage to think of their
freedom" and, thus "degenerate[] into cowardice
and timidity." De las Casas posited that
"if the wisest of the wise, whether Greek or
Roman (history books are full of this), often
feared and suffered from this adversity, and if
many other nations experienced it and
philosophers wrote about it, what could we
expect from these gentle and unprotected
Indians...?" (Id., parenthetical in the
original).
With Bobadilla’s usurpation from Christopher
Columbus of the governance of the West Indies,
the encomienda, as well as Bobadilla’s own
personal brand of murderous tyranny, reigned
supreme. De las Casas writes of this dark time,
"The Spaniards loved and adored [Bobadilla] in
exchange for such favors, help and advice,
because they knew how much freer they were now
than under Columbus" (Id.).
Whereas Christopher Columbus, from the
beginning, had always characterized the Tainos
to the Crown as "intelligent" and willing and
worthy to become Spanish citizens and
Christians, with all the rights and privileges
attendant thereto, Bobadilla, instead, spread
virulent propaganda about the tribal peoples.
Bobadilla deceived the monarchs into "believing
them to be nonrational animals," who were
"incapable" of receiving citizenship or the
faith, and perpetuated this lie "throughout the
world" for the sole purpose that he might "keep
power over them." Of this "evil design of
those deceivers and counterfeiters of truth," De
las Casas lamented, "may he who persists in it
burn for such beastly heresy" (Id.). De
las Casas's lament merits repeating today.
Drunk with power and with an insatiable
thirst for gold that no amount of Taino blood
could slake, Bobadilla knew his reign of terror
could not last long. In perhaps the most
damning statement of record in this history, he
explicitly told the hidalgos, "Take as many
advantages as you can since you don’t know how
long this will last" (Id.). De las Casas
heard the statement with his own young ears.
When he wrote of it years later in his official
capacity as "Protector of the Indians," he
punctuated this grizzly account with the
following words: "And let this suffice to
account for the state of affairs on this island
under Bobadilla's government, after he had sent
Admiral Columbus as a prisoner to Castile"
(Id.).
Indeed, Bobadilla warned his conspirators to
do what they might in what time they had because
he knew that his own calumnious writings against
Columbus were lies soon to be debunked. He
knew that his own deeds as the new Viceroy were
nothing short of the most profane wickedness,
and that when the Crown heard Christopher
Columbus's true accounts, Bobadilla's reign of
terror would be terminated.
Indeed, in the letter to Doña
Juana, Christopher Columbus had already set
forth to set things right, even in chains.
He wrote that he relied not only on his faith
for assurance and internal strength, but on his
confidence in his position and the propriety of
his deeds. "Comendador Bobadilla is
striving to explain his conduct," he declared in
the letter, "but I will easily show him that his
scant knowledge, great cowardice and exorbitant
greed are the motives that pushed him into it."
He added assuredly, "Their Highnesses will know
this when they order him to give an account,
especially if I am present when he gives it"
(Id., Book I, Chapter 181).
Though confident in his rectitude,
Christopher Columbus bore no hubris and still
wrote with humility about his ability to govern,
despite that he had proven himself to be the
greatest governor the West Indies had ever seen
under Ferdinand and Isabella's rule, if not the
greatest governor the West Indies has ever seen.
Despite having freed the Taino slaves, built
multiple settlements and defeated the Carib
marauders, bringing prosperity and a Pax
Columbiana to the land, he lamented about the
naive trust he had placed in the hidalgos to
respect his authority. He admonished that
he should not be "judge[d] as if I were a
governor in Sicily or of a well-regulated town
or city" – where the social fabric is intact and
the laws "observed in their entirety."
Rather, "I should be judged as a captain who
left Spain for the Indies" and found himself
unwittingly in "a warlike nation [with] no towns
or governments," all the while opposed by
villainous hidalgos and conquistadors who
imposed upon him "the ingratitude of injuries"
(Id.).
These days, Christopher Columbus is judged as
neither. The revisionist "historians," the
pseudo-academic re-educators and the mindless
"grievance squad" mobs that echo their calumny
have conflated the evil deeds of Francisco de
Bobadilla, the terror of the West Indies, with
Christopher Columbus, the first civil rights
activist of the Americas and the pious Genoan
who would spare no effort to unseat the reconquistador villain
and undo his wicked deeds. Next week's
"1492 Project" article in Broad + Liberty will
recount just that. We will explore how
the greatest hero of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth
Century vindicated himself, vanquished Bobadilla
and ventured forth on his fourth and last voyage
to once again champion the denizens of the West
Indies.
Editor’s Note: In the next article in PRIMO
Magazine's 1492 Project, the author will explain
how Christopher Columbus managed to defeat
Bobadilla's slander in a court of law, unseat
the villainous viceroy and start the long
process of setting things right once again in
the West Indies.
Credit
http://www.onlineprimo.com
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