The article begins by reconstructing the original behavior of the conquistadores of the New World, in which the immense greed of riches was combined with ruthless violence against the Amerindians, and this was accompanied by a moral disengagement, or rather by the skill to perform acts of extreme cruelty without feeling any guilt. In this acute ethical corruption syndrome, the author identifies the roots of bad government established by the Spanish in the New World and then continued in various forms in the political history of Latin America, almost as if it were an original sin beyond repair and capable of generating a sort of destiny which it seems impossible to escape. The continuous revolutions and/or abrupt regime changes that have characterized the affairs of almost all Latin American states have often had among their motivations (real or presumed) that, solemnly announced,
of wanting to abolish the corruption of previous governments; but the intention to clean up, to «drain the swamp of corruption», has frequently led to authoritarian or dictatorial changes, and in most cases has not avoided relapse into the same type of vice. The greed and ruthlessness of the conquistadores led not only to the despoliation of the territories and the extermination of millions of people, but to the establishment of fact or the right to slavery, first of the natives, then also of the blacks. The article reconstructs the alternating phases of tension and compromise between the conquering soldiers and the settlers on the one hand, and the Crown and the Church on the other, on how to treat the Indians. The repeatedly ratified laws in defense of the natives were mostly disregarded and, in any case, failed to constrain a generalized regime of oppression. What is more important to note is was born then, by way of some thinkers like Francisco de Vitoria: the grandiose project of educating whole peoples into civilization, with the underlying corollary of dominating them to instruct them, but also with the intention of including them in the large family of humanity. It must be emphasized that this was not just a simple ideological masking to hide the horrors of oppression. A great philosophical, theological and political confrontation opened up in sixteenth century Spain which became, on the one hand, the field for sowing and cultivating the modern idea of human rights. On the other hand, however, it also became the setting of the dispute —its protagonists being Sepúlveda and Las Casas— on the natural serfdom of the Indians and the legitimacy of leading a «just war» against them. The peak of political and human corruption was reached when violence and oppression were called justice.