CHRIST THE KING OF SPAIN
In a surviving Aztec illustration dated between the
years 1519 and 1527, portraying the arrival of Cortez into Mexico, the
horse-straddling Spanish conquistador is depicted holding up a cross in one
hand and a sword in the other.2 It would
not be long before this convergence of symbolism for church and civil authority
was expanded from cross and sword to that of chapel and city hall, or even
cathedral and presidential palace as they faced one another in the plazas of
various Latin American towns and cities.3
From its first appearance in the “New World”, as
alluded to by the sixteenth-century illustration of the simultaneous arrival of
Christianity and Spanish authority, the Catholic Church was a participant right
alongside the civil authorities in the conquest and colonization of the native
peoples of Latin America, albeit playing a subordinate role to the authority of
the monarchy. The overriding ideal
of the Spanish Christian theocracy in Latin America, as in Spain itself, was
that of a single “Christian” state where the civil and ecclesiastical powers
were closely connected, their authority given by God, but one where the
monarchy held sway over the Church.4
Accordingly, the royal-theocratic image of Christ brought to Latin America by
the Spanish was Christ the celestial monarch who reigns from the heavens over
Spain’s imperial, military kingdom.5 When
conquering and colonizing portions of Central and South America, the Spanish
did so as Christians as well as Spaniards, representing both God and the
monarchy; and in the process, impressed the basic tenet of Christendom’s royal
theocratic ideology – unity of God and Crown – into the minds of the indigenous
peoples. At the heart of the
religio-political system of King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella, as well as
kings Charles I and Philip II, was the notion that the Spanish had been chosen
by God to bring enlightenment and salvation to the non-Christian world,6 making the acceptance or rejection of
Jesus Christ and Christianity a corresponding “yes” or “no” to the power and
authority of the Spanish monarchy, and vice-versa. Ironically, either choice
generally resulted in the decimation and collapse, and sometimes the complete
destruction, of a given region’s people and culture.7
2 Cathryn L. Lombardi, John V. Lombardi, K. Lynn Stoner,
Latin American History: A Teaching Atlas, (University of Wisconsin Press, 1983) 67.
3 Phillip Berryman, Liberation Theology: The
Essential Facts About the Revolutionary Movement in Latin America and Beyond, (Pantheon Books, 1987) 9.
4 Ibid. 10.
5 David Batstone, From Conquest to Struggle: Jesus of
Nazareth in Latin America, (State
University of New York Press, 1991) 17.
6 Enrique Dussel, A History of the Church in Latin
America: Colonialism to Liberation (1492-1979), trans. Alan Neely, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1981) 38.
7 Ibid. 41-42. In Mexico alone, the site of Cortez’
plunder between the years 1532-1608 while under the rule of the Spanish
Christians, the population declined from nearly 17 million to just over 1
million.
