Ethnic cleansing of Moriscos appealed to Aragon’s Christian lower orders

Evidence

But we must note that he hoped to persuade them to go home by a promise to achieve by terror the total ethnic cleansing of Aragon. And also note that he was able to remind his men that what had been done at Pina had been done with general complicity. Of course, it would be naive to twist these alleged words of an accomplished double agent and manipulator and to pretend that they tell us the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But Latr´as could never have made this claim if his men had received no assistance whatsoever from the settled villagers during the massacre. From the general tenor of his speech we can see that the elimination of everybody of Morisco descent (and he speaks in racial and not religious terms) was a political program with some demagogic appeal among the Christian lower orders in Aragon. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 1210

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s interest in massacre dynamics and ‘demagogic appeal’ of ethnic cleansing among poor citizens — echoes of modern pogroms and lynch mobs.
• DEFINE: Clarifies that the program was racially, not religiously, framed — Moriscos as a blood rather than a faith category.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that Latras could not have invoked ‘general complicity’ if it were false — using a double agent’s boast as evidence of villager participation — is a subtle source-reading method.