From “The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery” by Sarah Augustine
The Requerimiento, or the Requirement, was a document read to Indigenous People from the boats of Spanish colonizers coming to claim their lands. This document explained the legal and spiritual justification for the seizure of their lands. As Spanish soldiers came to claim the New World, a priest would read out the legal justification for the invasion according to this narrative: God, the Creator, mandated one man, Saint Peter, as the lord and superior of all men on earth, and all people should obey him. Saint Peter was the first pope, whom God commanded to be the judge and governor of all the people of earth. Over generations, the first pope had been succeeded by others, who were each affirmed as the ruler of the world in his stead. One of these popes had made a donation of the lands inhabited by the Natives to the king and queen of Spain. The Natives were therefore notified that they were to submit to the rule of the king and queen because the sovereigns had been assigned the legal rulers by the representative of God (the pope). The Native people were asked in the Requirement to submit to this rule. If they would not, the consequences would be dire:
If you do [submit to this rule]…with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as the Highnesses [the king and queen of Spain] may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can…and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of those cavaliers who come with us.
The invaders’ practice of installing a priest to read the requirement was truly a farce, since it was read in Latin from the invading ship as the Spanish disembarked. Even if people on shore could hear them, they could not understand Latin. Many Natives were slain and enslaved, a process justified by the international laws of the time, which were established in Rome, where the church served as the author and arbiter of international law.