The Encomienda

The encomienda is a trusteeship labor system that was employed by the Spanish crown during the Spanish colonization of the Americas and the Philippines.

In the encomienda, the crown granted a person a specified number of natives for whom they were to take responsibility. The receiver of the grant was to instruct the natives in the Spanish language and in the Catholic faith. In return, they could exact tribute from the natives in the form of labour, gold or other products, such as in corn, wheat or chickens. In the former Inca empire, for example, the system continued the Incaic (and even pre-Incaic) traditions of exacting tribute under the form of labor. The grantees of the encomienda were usually conquistadors and soldiers, but they also included women and Native notables. For example, Doña Marina and the daughters of Montezuma were granted extensive encomiendas as dowries. Puppet Inca rulers established after the conquest also sought and were granted encomiendas.

Samora, Julian; Patricia Vandel Simon. "A History of the Mexican-American People.

I don't give a flying fuck about the "cultural" relativism. This just makes me want to vomit. Plundering and violating under the name of religion and education. Brazen, rotten asswipes.

"The Indians were not totally exterminated. Their genes subsist in Cuban
chromosomes. They felt such an aversion for the tension which continuous
work demands that some killed themselves rather than accept forced labor.."

"Many natives of Haiti anticipated the fate imposed by their white oppressors: they killed their children and committed mass suicide."

- Fernández de Oviedo, Eduardo Galeano.