On October 1492, Christopher Columbus arrived to America and founded the first European colony of the New World. At that time, the Crown and the Church were almost the same thing -so religion was a key factor in the colonization of the Americas -, and the conquerors firmly believed they that the right to conquer the New World’s religions by bringing Christianity to America, apart from colonizing local economies and politics. In fact, the pope Alexander VI compelled the Spanish Crown to convert all their subjects to Christianity, including inhabitants of colonized countries. Thus, Spanish and Portuguese conquerors introduced Catholicism in America at the same time they destroyed temples, books and worship of the native inhabitants, so that they were forced to abandon their former religions and to join the Catholic church. In the words of a conqueror, the Spanish went to the New World “to serve God, and to get rich as all men want to do.”
