“the Indian populations survived in large numbers in the Spanish Empire, while they were almost entirely wiped out in English North America”
Huh? The Spanish enslaved and exterminated native populations far beyond the weak efforts of English speaking people in North America. While Mexico, Peru and Bolivia retain a much larger percentage of native peoples, around 30, 45 and 55 % respectively, the USA has just a slight percentage less than countries like Argentina, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Cuba and have larger native populations than Uruguay, Puerto Rico, and another Catholic country, Brazil.
The Spanishmay have “enslaved” the Indians, but they did not exterminate them. Why kill off workers of the land and mines? Disease did indeed decimate the Indian population. It is estimated that the population of Mexico went from about 15 million to one million between 1500 and 1600, when the Spanish took their first census. But it was bad policy to kill Indians after they could no longer fight, especially after they began to adopt the Chirstian religion. The Spanish system was based on the Latifunida system which the Spanish nobility had taken from the Romans. As to the English, it is ironic that after they created the Black Legend—which you repeat without question the English behaved exactly the same in their colonies inf New England and Virginia. But the indians in English North America were too thin on the ground to be enslaved. After being defeated in war, the Indians moved out of the way, for the most part. New England was indeed like Old England, and Virginia was colonized by importing white servants snd black slaves.
The Spanish and the Portuguese were much more tolerant in terms of race and ethnicity than the English EVER were. Remember, that, by law, the illegitimate offspring of Spanish men and Indian and black women had to be recognized as the child of said father, and that it was expected that the father would be present at the baptism. This practice ended with colonialism, but contrast it to the behavior of the Anglos with THEIR illegitimate offspring in the new world.
"Enslavement" of the Indians was abolished via the efforts of Father Bartolome de las Casas. Besides, due to their poor resistence to disease, the Indians did not make good slaves. Enter the Africans.
The "black legend" around the Spaniards and Portuguese is Anglo Saxon propaganda based, in the best case, on exaggeration and, in the worse case, on out and out lies.