[x_plus_one]

Read James Michener's CARRIBEAN. It's fun and very informative. Columbus held show executions of his own men to inspire fear and trembling and obediance. He murdered indigenous populations at will for fun and profit.

Aside from this, it was a given that any Spanish viceroy or governor in charge of a Carribean island would spend years in jail upon recall by the King of Spain. Everything was the spoils system and top dogs had to enrich themselves adequately to payoff the powers that be so that they could reduce jail time back home.

This is why the spanish system of government is so corrupt yet today. The english system was poorer but concentrated on building social infrastructure - not pillaging indigenous locals for silver and gold for personal enrichment.

[muawiyah]

Discounting, of course, the first English government installed in the New World (at Jamestown) that ended up with nearly every settler poisoned in an homosexual flavored intrigue of the worst sort.