During and after the European colonization of the Americas, European settlers practiced widespread enslavement of Indigenous peoples. In the 15th century, the Spanish introduced chattel slavery throug
Painting by Jean-Baptiste Debret depicting bandeiras enslaving Guaraní people in the Brazilian interior
Engraving of Spaniards enslaving Indigenous Peruvians by Theodor de Bry
Cover of the New Laws of 1542
Cerro Rico in the town of Potosí was the most important source of silver in South America, and in all of Spanish America until Guanajuato in Mexico surpassed it in the 18th century.
The genocide of indigenous peoples, colonial genocide, or settler genocide is the elimination of indigenous peoples as a part of the process of colonialism.
A 16th-century illustration by Flemish Protestant Theodor de Bry for Las Casas' Brevisima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, depicting Spanish torture of indigenous peoples during the conquest of Hispaniola. Bartolomé wrote: "They erected certain Gibbets, large, but low made, so that their feet almost reached the ground, every one of which was so ordered as to bear Thirteen Persons in Honour and Reverence (as they said blasphemously) of our Redeemer and his Twelve Apostles, under which they made a Fire to burn them to Ashes whilst hanging on them"
A group of more than 30 women and children Yaqui Indian prisoners under guard, Guaymas, Mexico, ca. 1910
Prisoners in Dawson Island, Chile.
Amazonian Indians enslaved during the rubber boom in the Putumayo region of Peru