The first idea was that indigenous people were not "human beings", but animals. The second, is that in being absent from the european God and the catholic religion, were the devil’s product. Third, in that the "Universal Humane" is for the european culture and themselves; so that indigenous people and their culture were inferior. Fourth, from their very origins, the peoples of Europe have lived in a world of threats, rivalries, wars, invasions and loot; so the "law of war and conquest" was for the winning people to use for the profit and benefit, without distinction of men, lands and properties of the conquered people.
"The people and goods of those defeated in a just war are property of the victors. Those defeated in war are to be servants of the victors, not only because the winner, in some virtue is better than the loser, as taught by philosophers, and because it is just in natural law that the imperfect obeys the more perfect, but also that with this greed men prefer to save the life of defeated men (Thus they are called “serfs”: "se servare") instead of killing them: by showing that this type of servants are necessary for the defense and preservation of the human society..." (Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda. 1490-1573)[1]
The european civilization has its foundation on the Judeo-Christian thought, the Greco-Roman and Germanic culture. From the first it is established that, "God made men in his image and likeness and did so to rule over people and things, using the world and killing animals for their benefit". From the second that "Greco-Roman men" has as mission: that because of his supposed "rational superiority", should dominate, transform and exploit nature". The third inspires passion and militaristic vocation, which becomes aggressive, in its perpetual drive to domain, fueled by their voracious exploitative drives, from their earliest origins, to this day. Therefore,
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- ↑ Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1489–1573) was a Spanish humanist, philosopher and theologian. In 1533 and 1534 he wrote to Desiderius Erasmus from Rome concerning differences between Erasmus's Greek New Testament (the Textus Receptus), and the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209. He was the adversary of Bartolomé de las Casas in the Valladolid Controversy in 1550 concerning the justification of the Spanish Conquest of the Indies. Sepúlveda was the defender of the Spanish Empire's right of conquest, of colonization, and of evangelization in the so-called New World. He argued on the base of natural law philosophy and developed a position which was different from the position of the School of Salamanca, as represented famously by Francisco de Vitoria. He wrote the “A treatise on the just causes of the war against the Indians”.
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