“The church wanted souls; the government wanted subjects and taxes; the conquistadors wanted gold. In each case, they needed people, and they needed people identified as Indian. But they each sought to remake Indigenous peoples to fit their own desires. The church claimed rights to evangelize Indigenous peoples, the Crown to tax them, and the conquistadors to enslave them. As they jostled for control, they subjected Indigenous forms of religion, governance, and labor to their sometimes-competing objectives.” HistoryIndigenousColonizationCentral America Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration Source: Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
“Paradoxically, they needed Indians to be Indians at the same time they needed to define all that was Indian as inferior and in need of Spanish domination.” HistoryColonizationRacial ProfilingDehumanizationCentral America Book:Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration Source: Central America's Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration
