It's apparently common knowledge that the Spanish raped and genocided their way through central and South America, with some documentaries I've seen even claiming that the Spanish conquistadors in Peru even had a mission to rape as many women as possible to make sure they all had half Spanish children as a way to destroy the native race. This obviously raises some questions for me, and I wish to know, was the Spanish as cruel as usually taught or is it downplayed/exaggerated?
A reply to /u/MisterTipp
The cruelty of agents nominally working for the King of Spain was and is well-known. There are already quite a few threads listed on our relevant FAQ page.
However, to my knowledge, Spain as a nation never ordered those atrocities that you listed. On the contrary, the monarchs tended to follow very idealistic views, as you can read here. Even from the days of Isabella and Ferdinand, the monarchs had explicitly ordered humane treatment of native Americans. Columbus went against this and was punished, including stripping of his titles.
Charles V largely followed the same idealistic line, As you know, all this came to a sort of culmination in the Valladolid debate even though changes in policy and practice took a very long time.
Contrary to expectation, the debate wasn't a resounding victory for Las Casas. The ideas were hotly debated in the academic circles and within the church, but there was no general agreement that Las Casas had won. Fortunately, at the same time, at the highest royal circles there was already a shift toward more humane treatment of native Americans. So while Las Casas deserves great credit, so do royals such as Charles V and Philip II.
So, was there no progress over the decades between Las Casas' first publication and the debate of 1550? As time neared Las Casas' debate in Valladolid, there were already many regulations that improved treatment of native Americans. Enslavement under any condition was prohibited in 1530. The law reforms of 1542 strengthened requirements for slave-owners to claim ownership of slaves, the same year as the publication in question, although I do not know which came first. Finally in 1549, it was forbidden to substitute forced labor in place of payment of tribute. All these decrees and reforms came even before the debate in 1550.
Of course, the implementation of the decrees took a long time, given that this was the 1500s and communication/control of the monarchs over their far-flung dominions were very limited. Further, many were pragmatic regulations, seeing that so many native Americans have died that they had to change the system. So clearly, the ever-lasting struggle for control between the crown in Spain versus its agents in the New World played a big part. Therefore, while Las Casas was an important leader, and deserve credit for framing the cause in terms of humanism, his cause strongly benefited from the ongoing struggle for control, which in the end dismantled the encomienda system.
There is a lot of material called "La Leyenda Negra" (Black Legend) that highlighted and exaggerated the cruelty of Spaniards in the Americas and elsewhere. Some may be true, most are exaggerations and fantastical. To fully understand the context, you have to understand the divergence between what the monarchs willed and the level of control they had of their agents. It is no exaggeration that their agents tended to follow the "ask for forgiveness alter" approach while they are far abroad, away from their rulers.