¿Cuántos Conquistadors Came Aquí?

Morris and Helena Witherspoon had their first fight over something that was supposed to be a romantic celebration of their perfect union–where to spend their first anniversary. The bride wanted the Caribbean; the groom, anywhere else that didn't perpetuate colonialism. The high school math teacher demanded sand and sun; the high school history teacher, more philosophical, didn't want to feel 'white-man’s guilt' for the atrocities committed there.

(x + 1 - x^2) = 2(2x^2 - 1) won out.

He demanded back to her, all pouty like a high school kid, that they find an all-inclusive where it all began, then: they decided, together, on El Norte Playa Resorts, in Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, near the ruins of La Isabela, the first Spanish pueblo established in the Americas. (Morris reminded his wife that the only earlier European settlements in the New World were by the Vikings in Newfoundland which dated 500 years earlier, but neither of the 40-something newlyweds wanted to sunbathe along the chilly, rocky windswept Canadian coastline, especially).

They kissed and made up, booked DR, packed, flew, and landed; then checked-in for their ten-day tropical stay, shed their duds, and headed for the sugary-sand beach.

Still begrudged for giving in, Morris took a stand and refused to let the chicas come to him with cocktails—"natives still waiting on whitey," he fumed to himself as he trudged through the ground-up seashells to the poolside bar to fetch a couple all-you-can-drinks. He returned to his lounge chair and his sunscreen-battered wife with two dirty monkeys, and stretched his vision to the aquamarine horizon beyond, forgetting about class for a while.

Morris smiled as he 'armored up on tanning lotion to protect himself from the fiery spears of sunbeams reigning down from above from the god of light', he thought to himself–he was proud that he was not a rote-by-dates teacher of the past; no, to make the subjects more palatable for the Internet-generation whose communal focus seemed shorter than a blink, he embellished his lectures with visuals, audios, humor, and role-playing–anything to keep the kids’ attention for more than a batted eyelash.

His imagination took no vacation as he could now see, in his mind’s eye anyway, the specks of sun-bleached sails of the fleet of tall ships approaching land bearing the Spanish flag floating over the horizon. He shook his head and asked himself over and over in half-assed espanol: "¿cuántos conquistadors came aquí?" (how many conquistadors came here?) as he sipped his banana, chocolate, rum and coconut smoothie, and played a movie in his mind of what he knew, slipping into the part of a native experiencing the invasion firsthand:

On September 24, 1493, Christopher Columbus sailed from Cádiz with seventeen ships on his second voyage to the New World with supplies enough to establish permanent colonies; the first Mass was celebrated right here in the established pueblo of La Isabela, on January 6, 1494, as the marauders marked time; it was Doomsday to the people who called the island home, and, exponentially, to all the native peoples in the western hemisphere in the coming centuries.

Morris was there at that historic moment, mentally and emotionally at least, the teetotaler's time-warped mind fairly juiced by three-quarters of a plastic cup of low-alcohol resort booze and the hypnotic rhythm of high tide.

He envisioned the Taino natives coming out of the jungle dumbfounded by the giant canoes, taller than the palms, the equatorial sun lighting the massive white patches of cloth spread against the sky, catching the breeze. Even more dumbfounded when the seventeen tall ships off-loaded, and they caught their first views of the tall and muscular light-skinned beings with silver heads and chests, covered in hair; and carrying sticks that shot fire, and rode galloping beasts for transport, and used iron tools, and spoke in gibberish about plans for total subjugation.

He sighed and knew what happened next: one of the first inhabitants Columbus came across on this island was a girl wearing only a gold nose plug. Morris reangled his reclining position, and mumbled what he had practiced: “oro, preciosa, oro. That’s when the genocide began. With haste.”

“Lighten up, Professor Witherspoon,” Helena whispered to her still disaffected honeybunch. “I’ll go get a couple more monkeys then maybe you’ll be in the mood for some honeymooning up in the suite later. For now though, please, sink the remorseful bullshit, Dear.” Her hotfoot across the sand was double-time with the mood she was in.

But Morris, who learned to train his thoughts in one-hour increments still had 45 minutes left of thinking to do before the class-over bell in his head rang. "La Isabela was established to search for precious metals, and was struck by the first known epidemic to spread from Europe to the New World in 1493, and yet here I am at the same location living large like King Fucking Ferdinand. I’m one honeybunth of an athhole,” he slurred in thought.

His lecture in his head, sans students, continued: gold mining using forced indigenous labor began early on Hispaniola. Columbus, who proclaimed himself colonial governor, was responsible for creating a cycle of murder, violence, and slavery to maximize exploitation of the Caribbean islands' resources.

Natives were beaten, raped, and tortured for their known location of imagined gold, or for any other small contrivance. Punishment for an indigenous person, aged 14 and older, for failing to pay a hawk's bell, or cascabela, worth of gold dust every six months was cutting off their hands, often leaving them to bleed to death. Thousands committed suicide rather than face the oppression. Then there was proselytism–those not willingly converted to Catholicism were slaughtered as heretics.

Spanish priest and defender of the Taíno, Bartolomé de las Casas who had lived in Santo Domingo, wrote in his 1561 multi-volume History of the Indies: "There were 60,000 people living on this island [when I arrived in 1508], including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this?" 

Then they brought in African slaves to finish what they started.

Morris drained his monkey and thought the sashaying palm leaves shifting in the breeze sounded like the death moans of all these people. "Oro, preciotha, oro."

With a good buzz on, he grumbled loud enough to draw a frown from the adobe-baked abuela relaxing under the palm tree over, wearing a cross necklace. “It’s a straight line from here to the Vatican, as construction of St. Peter’s basilica began on April 18, 1506,” he shouted to the sea. “Hispanic gold, dug by forced labor, used to glorify a religious figure who preached poverty.” He exhaled, let class out early, and finally began to enjoy the scenery.

“Did you cool down, Honeybunch?” Helena came back with the drinks and the two snow-bird love-birds sat foot-to-sandy-foot underneath a palapa, calm, boozy, and flirty–

Until the Witherspoons and all the other Puerto Plata beach-goers were dumbfounded by the sudden swirling eddies appearing offshore, from which giant discs rose from beneath the waves, larger than any cruise ship; the equatorial sun beaming off the rotating metal crafts like lightning.

They were further dumbfounded when the seventeen Unidentified Submerged Objects off-loaded, and they caught their first view of the short, long-limbed beings with bulbous heads and skinny chests, dressed in what looked like gray latex, and carrying sticks that shot plasma, and rode gimbal pods for transport, used tools from out of this world, and were beeping in gibberish about plans for total subjugation.

It was Stardate 23,435-2.5, as the marauders marked time; it was Doomsday to the people who called the island home, and, exponentially, to all the peoples of the world in the coming months.

By CraigE

From: United States