"In 1481, Pope Sixtus IV issued a papal bull entitled Aeterni Regis (King Eternal) that argued that pagan natives' right to self-rule was overridden by papal responsibility for their souls. Thus, conquering non-Christian lands was a moral duty to the conquered: Europeans were told to conquer them to save their heathen souls. But they were told it would save European souls as well" (pp. 25-6, Blood Profits: How American Consumers Unwittingly Fund Terrorists, Vanessa Neumann).

"The Mystery [the appearance--at Tepeyac in 1531--of the Blessed Virgin Mary who spoke Nahuatl] which had blotted out the distinction between slave and free, and Greek and barbarian, was striking the victors [the Spanish] with awe and clothing the vanquished [the native Mexicans] with dignity. Those who were made partakers of the blessings of the Divine Incarnation might well share the privileges of Spanish citizenship. If they were recognized as children by the Mother of God, they were manifestly fit to mingle with their conquerors and become the progenitors of the new free people. They were, therefore, preserved and grew into a nation; and Mexican patriots are right to reverence Guadalupe as the cradle of their country" (Our Lady of Guadalupe: Patroness of the Americas, Rev. George Lee, C.S.Sp.). 

"The effects of the Conquest and the long ensuing period of humiliation left the cultural and social identity the Indians had achieved in fragments. Yet in Guatemala this pulverized identity is the only one that persists. It persists in tragedy. During Holy Week processions of the heirs of the Mayas produce frightful exhibitions of collective masochism. They drag heavy crosses and participate in the flagellation of Jesus step by step along the interminable ascent to Golgotha; with howls of pain they turn His death and His burial into the cult of their own death and their own burial, the annihilation of the beautiful life of long ago. Only there is no Resurrection at the end of their Holy Week.

The Maya-Quichés believed in a single god; practiced fasting, penitence, abstinence, and confession; and believed in the flood at the end of the world. Christianity thus brought them few novelties. Religious disintegration began with colonization. The Catholic religion assimilated a few magical and totemic aspects of the Maya religion in a vain attempt to submit the Indian faith to the conquistadores' ideology. The crushing of the original culture opened the way for syncretism" (Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America).