Requerimiento

The requerimiento was a document that was read aloud by Spanish conquistadors before launching attack on Native American settlements during the conquest of Latin America. It was a key component of the "Guerra Justa" (the "just war"), which it justified by declaring that the Pope had placed the land "with everything that is in it" under the protection of the king and queen of Spain and by theoretically informing the inhabitants of a settlement about the consequences that they would face if they did not submit to the Spanish monarchs and accept Catholicism.

Background

The text was composed in the beginning of the sixteenth century by Juan López de Palacios Rubios in order to address ethical concerns about the conquest. Under normal circumstances, slavery was considered unjust but during war time, captivity was acceptable because it was more humane than killing enemies. The requerimiento justified any enslavement or brutality practiced against the native population of the New World because it supposedly gave them an opportunity to submit peacefully and avoid attack.

The document's justification of the use of force against those who did not submit to the crown's authority hinged on the designation by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 of the line of demarcation, which established zones of control for Portugal and Spain over territories not already claimed by other Christian monarchs. The requerimiento argued that God had named Saint Peter as the first Pope and that his successor had given over the islands and mainland of the ocean sea to the Spanish monarchs, who therefore had the divine right to assert their control over said lands.

Implementation

In practice, the purported function of the requerimiento was not really accomplished. It was read in Castilian, which meant that most of the people to whom it was addressed could not understand it. What is more, Polanco points out that even if the indigenous people had learned the language of the conquistadors or had a translator, they would not have understood many of the concepts that it employed (like "Pope") because they would have been very foreign. The situation was made worse by the fact that the requerimiento was often read out of earshot of the natives to whom it was being addressed.