September, 1493, barely six months after Columbus returned to Castile (Spain) from his first voyage, the harbor at Cádiz was abuzz with activity. An armada was assembling. Colombo’s second voyage was no reconnaissance expedition, no “exploration”. It was an invasion.

He set out with seventeen ships, over a thousand men (no women), and America’s first horses, pigs, sugarcane, oranges, and lemons. They also packed weapons, armor, and trained dogs of war.

Columbus tried to rendezvous with the thirty-nine men he had left at La Navidad, present-day Haiti, but found the fort abandoned and some of the men dead. He had taken some captives during his first voyage and apparently the locals had risen up after the left.

The second voyage – the invasion – was a total bloodbath in comparison. Within months, the Spaniards documented themselves committing widespread murder, capture, rape (including by Columbus himself), and dismemberment of Native peoples. On Hispaniola (the island that makes up Haiti and the Dominican Republic), the Spaniards imposed the feudal encomienda system, which quickly dissolved into slave plantations where people were bought and sold. Native uprisings occurred regularly. Columbus and his men put down one of them and sent 500 captives, including women and children, back to Spain as slaves; 40% died on the voyage.

In less than ten years, disease and slavers had so decimated the civilization of the Taínos on Hispaniola and the Bahamas that replacements were required. In 1502, the first slaves from Africa – five shiploads – were brought for labor on Caribbean plantations.