From Pacification to Extermination: Independent Indigenous Nations, Bourbon Reforms, and Justifying Genocide in the 18th-Century Spanish Empire

In 1711, the bishop of Nicaragua wrote to King Philip V of Spain, requesting permission and funding to launch the largest military attack ever proposed against an Indigenous group during Spain’s colonial tenure in the Americas. In his letter - which focused on the Miskitu - the bishop did not use the typical Spanish rhetoric of conquest (ie: conquer, subdue, pacify, reduce), but instead argued that New Spain was at risk “if this cruel enemy is not exterminated.” The plan to exterminate the Miskitu offers an unusual example of Spanish colonial policy since Indigenous people were a protected class under paternalistic Spanish law. How, then, were Spanish officials (from local administrators all the way up to the king) able to justify genocidal policies?

This paper explores this question by examining the rhetoric used to define groups like the Miskitu that were targeted by Spain for extermination during the eighteenth century. Set amidst a backdrop of the Bourbon Reforms, conversations surrounding the elimination of the Miskitu preoccupied officials from Spain to Guatemala to Colombia to the Philippines for eight decades. However, the example of the Miskitu is not unique. I argue instead that it was only one piece of a larger, empire-wide project of Indigenous genocide aimed at independent and uncontrolable Indigenous nations living on the empire’s frontiers. These groups, collectively, controlled over half the territory claimed by the Spanish empire in the mid-eighteenth century. Their stories, then, should not be peripheral, used only to challenge the dominant narrative. Instead, they belong front and center, showcasing one of the central tenets of Spanish colonialism - the fact that it was widely incomplete and often overshadowed by the power of Indigenous nations.