One Spaniard testified that in some areas more than half the Indigenous population had killed themselves. When the same man found three boys ill from eating dirt—potentially a form of suicide—he “had their penises and testicles cut off… made them eat them soaked in dirt, and afterwards he had [the boys] burned” to death. He never considered, or maybe never cared, that trying to deter suicide through torture might simply result in more suicide. In a few decades, the Indigenous population in Cuba declined by perhaps as much as 95 percent.24
