Hispaniola is a miracle.

a found poem

Mountains are stripped
a thousand times

They dig
split rocks
move stones
carry dirt on their backs
to wash it in the rivers

Those who wash gold
stay in the water
their backs bent
so constantly
it breaks them

As for the newly born
they died early

Their mothers
overworked and famished
had no milk to nurse them

Husbands died in the mines
Wives died at work
Children died from lack of milk

In a short time this land
which was so great
so powerful and fertile
was depopulated


My eyes have seen these acts
so foreign to human nature
and now I tremble as I write

Found in Bartolomé de Las Casas’ History of the Indies, written in 1542, and recounted by Howard Zinn in A People’s History of the United States.

By de las Casas' count 7,000 Arawak children died during the three month period he describes above, some of them drowned by their desperate mothers. By his estimation three million people died between 1494 and 1508 under Spain’s new world order.

The title is taken from a letter which Columbus penned to his investors about his discovery of the new world:

Hispaniola is a miracle. Mountains and hills, plains and pastures, are both fertile and beautiful ... the harbors are unbelievably good and there are many wide rivers of which the majority contain gold. ... There are many spices, and great mines of gold and other metals.