April 4 - Enslaved

April 4 – Enslaved

As hideous as it may seem to us today, slavery has been part of mankind’s history for eons and continues in many parts of the world.

When Europeans came to the New World, they discovered sugar. This became an immensely profitable industry, but they needed workers and didn’t want to pay them. The natives became prey. The settlers were supposed to be teaching the natives about Jesus, instead they became slaves to greedy profiteers.

In 1510, Bartolome de Las Casas was the first priest to perform Mass in the New World. He built a plantation in Haiti to help his income and enslaved many natives. But, in 1514, he had a change of heart – released his slaves and returned to Spain to campaign for their rights. A code of law written by him limited Spain’s power over the natives, but these were ignored for the most part.

In Mexico, the diseases that the Europeans brought with them killed nearly 90% of the people there. Spanish and Portuguese settlers could no longer run their plantations, so they began importing Africans – even using scripture sometimes to justify their doings, connecting Africans with “Canaan” from Genesis 9:25.

Another man, Pedro Claver, saw how heinous slavery was and began working against it. Though he had no idea how to speak any of the African languages, he became a Jesuit priest and worked among them. He baptized any of them who wanted to become Christians and helped the Africans in any way that he could.

In Paraguay, Jesuit priests built settlements for the Mexicans who had lived through the European diseases and slavery, offering them safety and care. In 1628, though, Portuguese and Spanish plantation owners attacked the Jesuit missions and enslaved the people again. The Jesuits moved further inland, ending up by arming the missions and teaching the natives to defend themselves. They protected nearly 150,000 natives, but in 1767 were forced by Spain to leave the New World.

Slavery was too comfortable a vice to lose … and as the New World grew … many more men, women and children would have their humanity stripped away in the name of progress.