Questioning the Possibility of Unforced Conversions during the Conquest of Latin America

In “Raphael Lemkin as Historian of Genocide in the Americas,” Michael A. McDonnell and A. Dirk Moses explain that Lemkin considered only those Spanish missionaries who “imposed forced conversion [as being] guilty of cultural genocide” (511). I, however, am very skeptical of the notion that conversions of a conquered group to the religion of their conquerors can truly be unforced. I see it as being analogous to what we were discussing last class, the impossibility of consensual sex in situations like Bosnia. The levels of power between the aggressors and conquered peoples in, for instance, the Conquest of Latin America make it practically impossible, I think, for the decision to convert to be made purely on the basis of belief. It seems to me that it almost becomes a prerequisite for survival, or at the very least an attempt to reap the benefits of assimilating into the dominant culture.

In the situation described by Bartolome de las Casas, for instance, the indigenous peoples of the Americas were very aware of the possibility that they could be slaughtered or enslaved by the Spanish conquistadores, and that seems to have contributed to their decision to convert. The instance Las Casas relates about missionaries in Peru, I think, makes this clear. The tribe these missionaries are attempting to convert allows the friars to enter only if they agree to prevent other Spaniards from accompanying them, and guarantee that no “violence or offence would be done the Indians there by any Christians” (51). Obviously, they are very aware that the Spaniards posed a real danger to them. The attempt to assimilate Spanish culture and religion that ensued--swearing fealty to the Spanish monarchs, sending their sons to Catholic school, etc.--could be viewed as the efforts of the indigenous peoples to ensure that the missionaries continue their protection of the city.

It’s also, I think, important to note that one of Las Casas’ key reasons for complaining about the conquistadores’ rapacious behavior is that they are preventing the conversion of the indigenous peoples of Latin America. He describes the various tribes as being very open to Catholicism, and so the conquistadores’ chief crime is that they are condemning these people--who could easily have been “saved”--to eternal damnation. The soldiers, according to Las Casas, always prevent the friars from accomplishing their mission of conversion by building up too much hatred and resentment among the tribes, or by arriving--as in the aforementioned case in Peru--in a town where the conversion has already begun to occur and undoing everything the missionaries have done, thus “condemn[ing the townsfolk] to that same darkness of ignorance and spiritual poverty in which they then were” (53). Las Casas’ primary justification for improving the treatment of indigenous tribes is thus that they can be converted to Catholicism. If the tribes had proven more resistant to the idea of forsaking their own gods, their own culture, I really must wonder whether Las Casas would have been so eager to defend them. 

And if the indigenous people had converted entirely willingly, does that at all alter the fact that the end result of these conversions is the--at least partial--destruction of their culture? Does the cultural genocide become any less devastating or any more justifiable if the conquered peoples supposedly consented to it? And how would we even define or guarantee genuine consent to conversion in these situations?