Bartolome de las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas (Seville, 1474 or 1484 – Madrid, July 1566) was a Spanish encomendero, theologian, philosopher, Dominican friar, priest, and bishop of the 16th century, famous as a historian and social reformer. He was an eyewitness and close witness to many prominent figures in the events of the Spanish discovery and conquest in America. He came to Hispaniola as a layman and later became a Dominican friar and priest. He was named the first resident bishop of Chiapas, in New Spain, and the first "protector of the Indians"; officially named. His extensive writings, the most famous of which are A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies and Historia de Las Indias , recount the first decades of the colonization of the Spanish Antilles. He describes the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples.

Arriving as one of the first Spanish (and European) settlers in the Americas, de las Casas initially participated in, but eventually felt compelled to oppose, the abuses committed by settlers against Native Americans. In 1515 he renounced his charge, and pleaded, before King Carlos I of Spain, for the rights of the natives. In his early writings, he advocated the use of African slaves instead of natives in the West Indian colonies, but he did so without knowing that the Portuguese were waging 'brutal and unjust wars in the name of spreading faith". Later, he retracted this position, considering that both forms of slavery were equally evil. In 1522, he tried to launch a new type of peaceful colonialism on the coast of Venezuela, but this company failed. De las Casas entered the Dominican Order and became a friar, leaving public life for a decade. He traveled to Central America, serving as a missionary to the Maya in Guatemala and participating in debates among colonial churchmen about the best way to attract the natives to the Christian faith.

He returned to Spain to recruit more missionaries and continued to press for the abolition of the encomienda, winning an important victory with the approval of the New Laws in 1542. He was made bishop of Chiapas, but held office for a short time before meeting forced to return to Spain due to encomenderos resistance to the New Laws, and conflicts with Spanish colonists over their pro-Indian policies and religious activist stance. He served at the Spanish court for the rest of his life; there he exerted a great influence on affairs relating to the Indies. In 1550 he participated in the Valladolid debate, in which Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued that the Indians were less than human and needed Spanish masters to civilize themselves. De las Casas maintained that they were fully human and that it was unjustifiable to subdue them by force.

Bartolomé de las Casas spent 50 years of his life actively fighting against slavery and the colonial abuse of indigenous peoples, especially trying to convince the Spanish court to adopt a more humane colonization policy. Unlike other priests who sought to destroy the native books and writings of indigenous peoples, he was strongly opposed to this action. Although he did not succeed in completely changing Spanish opinion about colonization, his efforts did result in an improvement of the legal status of natives and increased attention to the ethics of colonialism. De las Casas is often considered one of the first defenders of a universal conception of human dignity (later human rights).

Family facts

When King Ferdinand III of Castile conquered Seville in 1248, he received international support for his crusade, and in his troops he met a French knight of the lineage of the Count of Limonges, whose name was Bartolomé de Casaux. After the conquest of the city he settled there and changed his last name Casaux to De las Casas.According to one of his biographers, this family was of Jewish-convert origin, although earlier others claimed that they were Old Christians.

King Alfonso XI of Castile appointed a member of the De las Casas family as "faithful alderman of the royal ordinances and as alderman number 24 of the kingdom". This number remained attached to the family until the XVII century, following that family line in the exercise of office. In addition, members of the De las Casas family were appointed on several occasions to the position of major treasurer of Andalusia.

King Juan II gave Guillén de las Casas, "most powerful knight of Seville", the Villa de Montilla and, by order of King Henry II of Castile, he was sent to France to obtain military reinforcements. However, Don Guillén died in the battle of the Ajarquía in Malaga. Alonso de las Casas was given the Castle of Priego and, for his behavior in the battle of Las Lomas, he was named Knight of the King. Another De las Casas was granted, by royal decree, the conquest of Tenerife and La Palma and all the lands he would conquer.

Childhood and youth

According to Antonio de Remesal, his first biographer, Bartolomé de las Casas was born in Seville in 1474. However, research by Helen Rand Parish and Harold E. Weidman in 1976 determined that the most probable date of his birth was on November 11, 1484 in Triana, Seville. Juan Antonio Llorente, in his compendium of the works of Fray Bartolomé of 1822, says that it was in 1474 and that it was probably August 24 because it was the day of the celebration of the martyrdom of the Apostle Saint Bartholomew, and it is a very general use in Spain to give children the name of the saint that the diocesan church celebrates on the day of birth when the father's name is not given, which is not given in this case because the father's name was Anthony.

He could have been born in one of these three parishes: San Lorenzo, San Vicente or La Magdalena, in Seville. He was baptized in the Cathedral. He must have spent his childhood hearing much about the battles of the Reconquista in which his relatives had participated and, when the Catholic Monarchs settled in Seville, his uncle Alfonso Téllez Girón de las Casas was one of the eight knights who carried the rods of the canopy under which they entered.

Bartolomé probably completed his primary studies at the Colegio de San Miguel, and his first contacts with religious life must have been when he visited his aunt Juana, who was a nun at the Monastery of Santa María de las Dueñas. Possibly in 1490 he went to study & # 34;both rights & # 34; (canonical and state) to the University of Salamanca. A relative of his was a priest in the convent of San Esteban, where Christopher Columbus lived at the time, so he was able to meet him there for the first time. Columbus also maintained a certain friendship with the De las Casas family and had spent long periods in Seville, the hometown of Fray Bartolomé.

In 1492 his paternal uncle, Juan de la Peña, participated in the first voyage of Columbus, who left the Port of Palos (Huelva) on August 3 of that year. The expedition returned in 1493 having discovered the new route to the Indies, which generated great expectation. On his way to Badalona to present his achievement to the Catholic Monarchs, Columbus passed Seville in March 1493 with his birds and seven Indians and stood in the vicinity of the Church of San Nicolás to exhibit them. This was witnessed by Bartolomé de las Casas.

Bartolomé's father, the merchant Pedro de las Casas, decided, along with his brother Francisco de Peñalosa, to embark with Columbus for the Indies for his second voyage, which departed from Cádiz on September 25, 1493. More Later, his brothers Diego and Gabriel Peñaloza accompanied the father. When the expedition returned, it brought 600 Indians and the father gave one to his son Bartolomé to serve him. However, Bartolomé used the Indian as an object of humanistic study, and asked him about his religion to investigate if he resembled Christianity.. As he had studied Latin in Salamanca and Seville, he took advantage of his knowledge in philology and Latin to study possible similarities with his language.

When Queen Isabella I of Castile learned that Columbus was making slaves of the Indians, she ordered that her subjects not be treated like that, but rather as other subjects of the crown, and ordered that everyone be punished with the death penalty. the one who had Indians as slaves. This deprived Bartolomé de las Casas of his Indian service. Columbus argued that the Indian slaves were only those who had been taken prisoner in "just war" and that the customs of these were pagan and sometimes cannibalistic and that it was well for him to bring them to Castile in order to remove them from those customs. The queen replied that she should strive to convert them to Christianity in her land. Isabel died in 1504 and in her will she asked that the Indians be treated fairly and well, without offending them.

Another aspect that has generated debates about the life of Bartolomé de las Casas has to do with the moment in which he made his first trip to the Indies. In one of the Latin texts by Father Antonio Salucci, a personal friend of Fray Bartolomé, he comments that he traveled to the Indies for the first time, when he was still very young, in 1493 together with his father and uncle, employees on the second voyage of Columbus, and he refers that it was an anecdote that he heard him tell from Fray Bartolomé himself. However, his biographer Llorente believes that Bartolomé de las Casas would not embark for the first time until 1498 on Columbus's third voyage. Other historians argue about this fact as unlikely, since Bartholomew would be a student in Salamanca during those years, and that he made his first trip to the Indies until 1502.

Probably in 1500, Bartolomé de las Casas finished his studies in Salamanca and obtained a place as a scholar in the expedition to the Indies that left from the port of Sanlúcar de Barrameda on February 13, 1502. For some historians, this makes it He did it with the aim of fulfilling the merits to be a friar, and others point out that he did it to take over the landowner's business that his father had left in the Caribbean. That expedition was commanded by Antonio Torres and brought with him Nicolás de Ovando, who was going to take over from Francisco de Bobadilla as Governor of Hispaniola. Bobadilla had previously been sent as an investigative judge to investigate and arrest Christopher Columbus, taking the position of governor and carrying out a series of policies of privatization of the discovered lands and division of parcels. The arrival of Bartolomé de las Casas to Hispaniola occurred on April 15, 1502.

Among the economic activities carried out by the encomenderos, hunting and working in the fields for their masters were more bearable. However, the activity that most justified the Spanish presence on the island was the search for gold, and this was the hardest activity.

When the expedition reached the island, some ships prepared to return to Spain, taking Francisco de Bobadilla with them and, at the same time, Christopher Columbus was approaching Hispaniola on his fourth voyage. The new governor, Nicolás de Ovando, did not allow Columbus to land. Just around those days, a hurricane broke out that devastated Santo Domingo and sank the ships that carried Francisco de Bobadilla to Spain, Christopher Columbus managing to save himself due to his expertise as a sailor, when he landed in a cove that he considered appropriate to withstand the storm. The hurricane caused many deaths and, later, this unsanitary situation generated an epidemic. There are different versions of the role of Fray Bartolomé at this time. Some say that he was in Santo Domingo helping to heal the sick during the epidemic or that he was inland managing his Encomienda.

The War in Hispaniola

Higüey cacicazgo in La Española.

A group of Spaniards decided to go hunting, taking with them some presa dogs. These dogs ran into the Indians in the jungle of Saona and attacked a local Indian chief, killing him. The natives attacked the Spanish who, faced with their anger, decided to embark back to Spain. Some time later, a group of Spaniards set up a camp in that area, being attacked with arrows by the Indians and eight dying. Nicolás de Ovando sent a party of 300 men to take revenge, led by Juan de Esquivel. Bartolomé de las Casas was in the game. The Spanish won the war and the chief Cotubanamá decided to make peace. Then the Spanish set up a fortress in the area and left 9 people in it under the command of Captain Villamán. However, the Indians killed them all and only one survived, who went to Santo Domingo to tell Juan de Esquivel what had happened. Cotubano convinced the Indians of the Higüey province to rebel. When the truce was broken, a real war began that lasted 8 or 9 months. But since the Indians hid very well in the jungle with their bows and poisoned arrows, they had to do it with small contingents of people. De las Casas fought in the chiefdom of Higüey under the orders of Captain Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar, and for this reason he received a commendation in the Villa de la Concepción de la Vega, which he administered until 1506. Finally, after a large number of Killed on both sides, the Spanish managed to find Cotubano's hideout on the island of Saona, arresting him and being sentenced to death by Nicolás de Ovando.

Return to Seville and trip to Rome

In 1506, Bartolomé de las Casas returned to Seville, where he received minor orders to the priesthood. In 1507 he traveled to Rome and was ordained as a priest, but waited until 1510 to sing his first mass in Concepción de la Vega.

Return to Hispaniola

Bartolomé de las Casas returned to Hispaniola in 1508. In September 1509 Nicolás de Ovando was replaced in the government of the island by Diego Colón, son of Christopher Columbus. In Concepción, De las Casas began his work as a scholar, which he combined with his job as encomendero.

In 1510 the Order of the Dominicans arrived on the island, which in the end was the one that made the greatest contribution in favor of the rights of the Indians. The first Dominicans who came to the island were four, of which only the name of three is preserved: Fray Pedro de Córdoba, Fray Antonio de Montesinos and Fray Bernardo de Santo Domingo. Later more arrived, increasing the number to eight. Soon they began to worry about the rights of the aborigines.

On the eve of Sunday, December 21, 1511, the eight members of the congregation prepared a sermon that Fray Antonio was commissioned to transmit and which greatly defended the Indians. This speech was given at Advent. The one known as the Advent Sermon said:

To make it known to you, I have come up here, that I am the voice of Christ in the desert of this island, and therefore it is good for me that with attention, not anyone, but with all your heart and with all your senses, you hear it; which voice will be the newest that you have never heard, the most rough and hard and most frightening and dangerous that you have never thought to hear [...] You are all in mortal sin and in him you live and dwell, for the cruelty and tyranny you use with these innocent people. Decide, what right and justice do you have in such cruel and horrible servitude to these Indians? With what authority have you made these nations so detestable wars, that they were in their land unspoilt and peaceful, where so infinite of them, with death and havoc you have never heard consumed? How do you have them so oppressed and weary, without giving them food and healing in their diseases, that of the excessive labors that you give them incur and die, and better to say you kill them, to bring out and acquire gold every day? And what care do you have of whom the doctrines, and know their God and servant, and be baptized, hear Mass and keep the feasts and the Sundays? These aren't men? Don't they have rational anomalies? Aren't you forced to love them like yourselves? You don't understand, you don't feel this? How are you in this depth of sleep so lethargic, asleep? Be assured that, in the state in which you are, you can only save yourselves, that the Moors and Turks who lack and do not want the faith of Jesus Christ.

The preaching generated great protests on the island, and Diego Columbus went to speak with Fray Pedro de Córdoba at the Dominican convent so that he expel Fray Antonio from the island or, at least, give the following week a softer sermon that would appease spirits. The great surprise was that, the following Sunday, the preaching was much more belligerent for the Indians and gave five principles: that the laws of religion are above the laws of individuals and the State, that there are no racial differences before the eyes of God, that slavery and servitude are illegal, that the Indians should be restored to their freedom and property, and that the Indians should be converted to Christianity by example.

Several encomenderos and religious men complained to King Ferdinand the Catholic and asked him to expel the Dominicans. The provincial of the Dominicans of Castile, Alfonso de Loaysa, came to ask Fray Pedro de Córdoba to stop that attitude, because they ran the risk of the order being expelled from the New World. From Hispaniola, a representative of the encomenderos, the Franciscan friar Alonso de Espinar, was sent to Spain, and the Dominicans sent Antonio de Montesinos. King Fernando listened to both of them and ordered a meeting to be held to study the situation of the Indians. From this board, meeting in Burgos in 1512, and from the later one in 1513, the first norms to defend the natives arose, and with all the subsequent norms they went on to constitute the Laws of the Indies, the first human rights legislation of the history. Although its application in the New World was often overlooked.

After that sermon, De las Casas was denied acquittal because at that time he still maintained his indigenous repartimiento.

De las Casas remained without getting involved in this duel between friars and encomenderos, attending to his work as a doctrine and the management of his encomiendas in La Concepción.

Trip to Cuba

In 1511, Diego Columbus decided it was time to explore the interior of the nearby island of Cuba. Captain Diego Velázquez Cuéllar prepared an expedition of 300 men in four ships, which departed from the Port of Salvatierra de Sabana towards Maisí, a province in eastern Cuba, and disembarked in the so-called Puerto de la Palma.

However, the cacique Hatuey had fled Hispaniola in the war against Cotubano and had organized resistance in Cuba. The Indians began a brazen war against the Spanish in Cuba that lasted three months, and ended with the extermination of the rebellious Indians. It was necessary to Christianize the rest, so, at the request of Diego Velázquez, in the spring of 1512, Bartolomé de las Casas moved to the island of Cuba as a chaplain in the company of Pánfilo de Narváez. The Spanish advanced on the island through the thick jungle, conquering towns, Christianizing them and extending Spain's rule. The work of De las Casas was very important in making his way among the hostile tribes, since he always sent a friendly Indian to parley with the Indians, and for this reason he was known as the good behique .

Bartolomé de las Casas baptizing prisoners in Cuba in 1511

In the biography of Bartolomé de las Casas by the historian Héctor Anabitarte, it is narrated that de las Casas spoke with the Indians and explained Christian doctrine to them. The Indians were participatory and related that in their religion there had been a universal deluge. A native elder indicated that a man saved humanity by putting people and animals in an ark. Once that man fell asleep drinking a wine that the Cubans made with the vines and a bad son laughed at the old man but the other son, who was good, covered him with some blankets. The old Indian explained that they descended from the bad son, and that is why they went naked, and that the Spaniards descended from the good son and that is why they were dressed and rode on horseback. The Indians then explained that everything that existed had been created by people who came from all over the world, and Bartolomé explained to them that these people were really the Holy Trinity. The fame of De las Casas spread throughout the island and the fear of the Spaniards, which had come from the Indians who had revolted in Hispaniola, began to disappear. Bartolomé, always understanding, began to baptize the children and promised the eternal love of God to all those Indians who decided to be baptized.

Lieutenant Narváez entered, with 25 soldiers, the province of Bayamo, where they were attacked by a large number of Indians, who managed to repel the aggression. All those Indians took refuge in Camagüey, until they made an agreement with the Spanish and asked the behique for his forgiveness and protection. They were forgiven and, in gratitude, the Indians gave De las Casas and Narváez some strings of rustic beads that were highly valued by them.

The Caonao Massacre

In 1513 the Spanish arrived at the town of Caonao, where they were received with a banquet. However, the reason is unknown, the Spaniards got excited believing that they were going to be attacked and began to kill Indians with their swords. Bartolomé de las Casas tried to stop the massacre but the soldiers did not obey him. Finally, he approached a young man who was inside a hut and told him that there was no danger, and when he came out he was stabbed by a soldier. He then grabbed Bartolomé and he only had time to baptize him and then he died.

After the Caonao massacre, Narváez questioned him: "What do you think of these our Spaniards, what have they done?", formulating the question as if the captain had nothing to do with those actions. De las Casas replied: "That I offer you and them to the devil."

The Indians began to abandon their towns and the soldiers found themselves with empty towns and no food. Subsequently, De las Casas was commissioned to return to dialogue with the natives, which he achieved thanks to an intermediary, and finally they reached an agreement with the Spanish. However, De las Casas was upset because he was asked to help with the conciliation but he was not consulted about the military decisions that caused deaths, so the natives might think that, in reality, he was a behique bad.

The Spaniards learned that three Spaniards were being held prisoner near Havana and they sent an Indian, who had learned to read, with a letter to read. The Indians considered the letter to be magical because they did not understand that a piece of paper could count things and some even put their ears to the piece of paper to see if it told them anything. De las Casas stayed in a village of houses built on stilts in the sea, called Carahact. When he approached a canoe with two women, who were the ones who were being held captive, they explained that they were accompanied but that they were attacked and that only the two of them were forgiven because they were women. However, there was still a captive Spaniard and De las Casas sent letters asking the caciques to come, that nothing bad would be done to them. They came and brought food to honor the whites. However, Narváez seized the 20 caciques and ordered them to be burned alive. De las Casas told him that he intended to tell the king everything and, out of fear, Narváez backtracked on his decision and decided to release all but one, possibly the most important. However, Captain Diego Velázquez arrived and ordered that he too be released. Finally, the natives released the Spaniard, Pablo Miranda, in a village.

Relinquish his charges

As a reward for his actions during the conquest of Cuba, Bartolomé de las Casas received in 1514 a new division of Indians in Canarreo, on the banks of the Arimao River, near Cienfuegos. And, together with his partner Pedro de Rentería, he ordered the extraction of gold from the gold deposits of the river. He became completely focused on business and began to have a reputation for being greedy. And, although he treated the Indians in a soft way and taught them the doctrine of Christ, he ordered his entrusted Indians to extract gold in the mines and plant fields and everything he wanted. In 1514 the partners decided to expand their businesses and Pedro de Rentería moved to Jamaica in search of more food, which was already scarce in Cuba. Then three Dominicans arrived in Hispaniola: Gutiérrez de la Ampudia, Pedro de San Martín and Bernardo de Santo Domingo. They told de las Casas that they knew about him and the efforts he had made to ensure the well-being of the aborigines. This marked him deeply and he began to consider the objective of his mission in the New World. He gradually became aware of how unfair the system was and convinced himself that he should "procure the divinely ordained remedy for these people ".

At an Easter mass, in Sancti Spíritus, he gave a sermon in which he condemned the ill-treatment of the Indians and explained experiences about them. This aroused criticism among the people, but these criticisms were not so much against his preaching, but against his person, since De las Casas was an encomendero and it was not fair that he insulted a group to which he himself belonged. He then turned to Diego Velázquez and told him that he did not want to continue having parcels. Velázquez tried to persuade him, telling him that he was carving out a deserved future for himself as a rich man, but De las Casas insisted and told him that the decision would be secret until he returned to his partner in Jamaica. He wrote to Rentería to ask him to return because he wanted to return to Castilla. On August 15, 1514, Assumption Day, at the age of thirty, he delivered a sermon in Sancti Spíritus where, in the presence of everyone and Velázquez himself, he said that he reiterated his criticisms and that he relinquished all his charges, before to everyone's astonishment. When Rentería returned and De las Casas informed him of his decision, far from being angry, his former partner told him that he supported him in his demands and that he would make all the money he needed available to him.

In 1515 he went to Santo Domingo, in Hispaniola, to speak with the Dominican Pedro de Córdoba, who listened to him with pleasure and told him that the powerful interests defended by the Bishop of Burgos Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca were known, with 800 encomienda Indians, and the secretary Lope de Conchillos, a large landowner in the discovered lands and with many encomiendas. These two personalities, next to the king, were the ones who handled state affairs.

Universal Protector of All Indians

In September 1515 Bartolomé de las Casas embarked for Seville together with Fray Antonio de Montesinos. The friars arrived in Seville on October 6. There they visited the Dominican convent of San Pablo and Montesinos introduced him to his superiors, who were delighted to help him and recommended him to the Archbishop of Seville, Fray Diego de Deza, a man who had helped Columbus discover the Indies. Diego de Deza, close to the monarch, received a visit from De las Casas who told him about the situation of the Indians, and Deza decided to help him. He advised her to meet with King Ferdinand the Catholic and gave her a letter of recommendation. De las Casas headed for Plasencia, where the Court was located at that time. Thanks to the efforts of the Dominican and confessor of the monarch, Tomás Matienzo, he managed to meet with the king. However, the king was very ill, lying in bed, and told him that he should postpone the decision until later.

Later, he met with Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca, who, when he heard his argument, told him that he did not care at all and that he was a fool to worry about it. King Ferdinand planned to travel to Seville and Deza arranged another meeting between the monarch and De las Casas; however, the monarch died on the way in the Extremaduran town of Madrigalejo. Before dying he handed over the regency to Cardinal Fray Francisco Jiménez Cisneros, Archbishop of Toledo. De las Casas prepared a text for Cisneros and another for Adriano de Utrecht, who was the tutor of Prince Carlos, the future Emperor Carlos V.

Cisneros gave de las Casas his full attention, listening to him several times. And Adriano also gave a good account of his writings by sending them to the regent. In Cisneros's presence, Conchillos's supporters exposed themselves because, during the reading aloud of the laws proclaimed after the Burgos junta, they failed to say that all Native Americans who work on farms deserved a pound of meat for every eight days and on holidays.

In 1516, De las Casas wrote his Memorial de los Agravios, de los Remedios y de las Denuncias, which led to the replacement of Fonseca by the Bishop of Ávila, Francisco Ruiz, and of Conchillos by Secretary Jorge de Baracaldo. The accession to the throne of Carlos V allowed De las Casas to be heard in court, so that the Crown commissioned him a colonization plan in Tierra Firme according to his proposals.

In April, Cisneros decided to send three Hieronymite friars to govern Hispaniola. De las Casas was commissioned counselor of the friars and was named Universal Attorney or Protector of all the Indians of the Indies, a position similar to that of Ombudsman of Sweden that was instituted at the beginning of the century XIX.

Bartolomé de las Casas was, from that moment, protector of the Indians on the islands of Hispaniola, Cuba, San Juan and Jamaica, as well as on the mainland, in reference to the American continent. His mission was to inform the Hieronymite parents or other people who understood about the health and integrity of the aborigines. The Admiral and the appellate judges under orders were to keep this power from Bartolomé, and disobedience to him would be punished with the payment of 10,000 maravedíes.

Parcels

On November 11, 1516, Bartolomé de las Casas embarked together with the three Hieronymite priests for Hispaniola. They did it on different ships. Upon arriving in San Juan, Puerto Rico, De las Casas' ship suffered a breakdown, and he had to extend his stay there for two weeks. Arriving in Hispaniola, De las Casas realized that the encomenderos had earned the favor of the Hieronymite fathers. They received them with celebrations and had told them that the parcels were necessary, because otherwise the Native Americans would rebel and that they also had primitive customs, and the Hieronymite fathers limited themselves to suppressing the parcels of those who did not live on the island. De las Casas only managed to ensure that the Ordinances were respected regarding the freedom of the aborigines entrusted to judges and officials of the king.

In June 1517 he returned to Spain to tell Cisneros that things were not going according to plan and when he arrived in Seville he found out that the Cardinal was dying in Aranda de Duero and he went to talk to him, but, sick, he decided to defer the decision until later and died in September. Prince Carlos disembarked in Asturias and arrived in Valladolid with an important entourage. Facts soon emerged to seize power. On one side were the "Castilians", headed by Bishop Fonseca and Lope Conchillos, and on the other hand are the "flamencos", where they are the Great Chancellor of Castile; Juan Sauvage, the older waiter; Monsieur de Xevres, and the private waiter; Monsieur Laxao. The president of all the Councils was the Grand Chancellor, and he was the one De las Casas addressed and was considered one of his trusted men. In 1519 the Chancellor asked De las Casas to draft memoranda to reform the legislation of the Indies, however Sauvage died shortly after of illness.

In 1518 Las Casas planned a project to colonize aboriginal lands with farmers recruited from Spain. This was an attempt to create a peaceful colonizing experience in a territory not found by conquistadors and encomenderos. However, he had to have an arduous debate against the Franciscan friar Juan de Quevedo, who had been appointed bishop of Santa María la Antigua del Darién, and spoke in favor of the slavery of the indigenous people. Juan de Quevedo relied on Aristotle to argue that rude and barbarous people are slaves by nature. De las Casas argued that the Native Americans could be civilized in peace and respecting their freedom, because God had given them the same talents as the white man.

Just like Pedro Mártir de Anglería, in April 1520, Las Casas met the Totonac Indians who were brought before the presence of the new monarch by Alonso Hernández Portocarrero and Francisco de Montejo, both emissaries of Hernán Cortés, conqueror of Mexico.

A couple of months later, in Santiago de Compostela, the Council of Castilla made for itself the ideas of De las Casas who was convinced that the work of conquest and colonization of America should be carried out peacefully through the announcement and spread of the Catholic faith. Thus, the Council of Castilla authorized him to carry out the project to create a peaceful colony in the territory of Cumaná (Venezuela), so that he could apply his theories consisting of populating the mainland, without shedding blood and announcing the gospel, without the noise of weapons.

However, these are turbulent times in Spain. Toledo, Segovia, Ávila, Zamora, Salamanca and Valladolid rose up against Carlos V and this slowed down the issuance of the royal certificates that Bartolomé needed for his project. In Seville, Juan de Figueroa organized a riot that was crushed the next day by his rivals, the Guzmanes. Bartolomé arrived after these events and it was not possible for him to find partners and capital for his project and he had to content himself with taking as a crew a group of 70 mutineers, condemned and outlawed, who were embarking to flee to America. On December 14, 1520, they left for Puerto Rico.

They arrived in Puerto Rico on January 10, 1521. There they received the news that Alonso de Ojeda had started a slave hunt on the mainland that had infuriated the aborigines, and that for this reason the Chiribichi and Macarapana Indians had assassinated all the Dominican friars who had settled in Cumaná, territory of present-day Venezuela. The Viceroy of Hispaniola, Diego Colón, ordered Gonzalo de Ocampo to teach the aborigines a lesson. Ocampo's expedition arrived with 300 soldiers in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he learned about the Viceroy's plans. However, De las Casas spoke with Ocampo and told him that he could not carry out a military expedition to those lands because they had been granted to him by Royal Decree. Ocampo checked the validity of De las Casas's documents, but decided to ignore him. De las Casas went to Santo Domingo to speak with Diego Columbus so that he validated his titles in the New World, and left his crew of farmers in Puerto Rico. However, the 70 partners of De las Casas, seeing the turn of events, decided to enlist with Juan Ponce de León to explore Florida.

De las Casas was received coldly in Hispaniola. There it was agreed to give him a couple of caravels to go to Cumaná where he was to settle. In addition, his mentor Fray Pedro de Córdoba died on May 4, 1521. After participating in his funeral on July 30, 1521, he left for Puerto Rico with his two caravels, the Concepción and the Sancti Spíritu . Traveling with De las Casas was his deputy, Francisco de Soto, his chaplain Blas Hernández and his assistant Juan de Zamora. Days before, Juan Ponce de León's expedition had ended because the Indians had attacked the Spanish in Florida, killing Ponce de León with an arrow shot. However, once in Puerto Rico the peasants refused to accompany them. There they had been told that Bartolomé was a trickster and that what he wanted was to kill them for work and that if they stayed on the island they would have access to land and Indians to work for them. However, he decided to go to Cumaná anyway. There he was well received by the Franciscans. Ocampo's soldiers, who were in a nearby camp they called Nueva Toledo, did not take it well, because with de las Casas there his slave hunt had ended. The soldiers then moved to Hispaniola, from where they continued to raid de las Casas' land for slaves. This caused the guaiqueríes to rebel and Bartolomé, aware of the danger that the Christian settlement was running, went to ask for help from Santo Domingo in December 1521. However, a storm broke out and he ended up with his ship in Yaiquimo, on the Opposite of Hispaniola. His second in command, Francisco de Soto, took advantage of De las Casas' absence to organize a slave hunt. The Indians took advantage of the absence of De las Casas and attacked and burned the mission on January 10, 1522 and killed Francisco de Soto, the Franciscan Fray Dionisio and the artilleryman Artieda on their return, the rest of the Christians being able to escape to the Araya peninsula, from there to Cubagua and then to Santo Domingo. De las Casas walked from Yaiquimo to Santo Domingo and, upon his arrival, learned of the failure of his mission and fell into depression. He accepted the advice of fray Domingo de Betanzos to enter the Dominican convent of Santo Domingo.

In the convent he continued to share and improve the work of many religious who had been preparing law studies at the School of Salamanca, about the just titles that the Crown of Castile had in the New World and about the civil status that should be granted to the natives, as free men –and not slaves– of the Castilian crown. At the same time he criticized many aspects of the colonization of America and, among them, the encomienda system. He withdrew to devote himself to the study of theology, philosophy, and canon and medieval law, and began writing his History of the Indies.

In 1523, after spending a year as a novice, he professed in the Order of Preachers, or Dominican friars. In 1526 he wrote to the president of the Audiencia, Alonso de Fuenmayor, asking for the aborigines. To satisfy the archbishop, the superiors of the convent sent him to another convent, the one in Puerto de la Plata, in the north of the island. There he arrived in 1527 and devoted three years to study and meditation.

The Bishop of Mexico, Fray Juan de Zumárraga, and that of Tlaxcala, Fray Julián Garcés, appointed him as a reformer of the Dominican Order in the New World. In November 1531 he disembarked in Veracruz, along with Fray Tomás de Berlanga and the president of the Royal Audience of Santo Domingo, Don Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenreal. However, the Dominicans in Mexico enlisted the support of the city council and imprisoned him, later sending him back to Hispaniola.

In 1524 the Royal and Supreme Council of the Indies had been created to take charge of all matters related to American politics. Its president was Fray García de Loaysa. After his expulsion from Veracruz, De las Casas wrote an extensive letter to this organization. That letter was the germ of another work, De Unico Vocationis Modo.

In 1533, a repentant encomendero on his deathbed asked Fray Bartolomé de las Casas to release his entrusted Indians. He did it, however, he earned the enmity of his heir, Pedro de Vadillo, and managed to get him imprisoned. The Dominicans prevented the sentence from being carried out but he was asked to confine himself in a monastery of the order.

The rebellion of Bahoruco

However, in 1534 the authorities specified Fray Bartolomé. The chief Bahuruco, who was baptized as Enrique and educated by the Franciscans, passed to the command of a Spanish nobleman named Valenzuela, who had estates in San Juan de la Maguana. Tired of the humiliations of his mistress, that he had taken his mare and his wife, he went out into the woods, where he joined a group of revolting Indians. He managed to defend himself against the attacks that were sent against them and set up a kind of & # 34; independent republic & # 34; in an extension of thirty leagues. The native chiefs Ciguayo and Tamayo followed Enrique's example and decided to organize parties against the Spanish, attacking all of them, whether they were armed or not. The methods of attacking people without weapons did not please Enrique, but the contained hatred towards the Spaniards was so great that it was difficult to control it. His rebellion lasted for ten years. A certain Fray Remigio was sent to speak to his town but he was arrested by the aborigines and Enrique explained to him the reason for his rebellion. Carlos V was informed that there was a rebel cacique in Hispaniola and ordered that he be reduced, whereupon the president of the Audiencia of Hispaniola, Sebastián Ramírez de Fuenleal, asked De las Casas to intervene in the matter. Enrique recognized de las Casas as a friend. De las Casas explained to him the inconvenience of living outside the law of the whites, how powerful they were and that they were not going to allow this rebellion to continue. Enrique requested "life insurance and general pardon, preservation of his lordship and property and freedom for his men, who would continue to live in the land of his ancestors without receiving any inconvenience." The Spanish accepted.

Nicaragua

For the services rendered, the Court released Bartolomé de las Casas from his imprisonment, allowing him to accept the invitation of Fray Tomás de Berlanga, who had just been made bishop of Peru. They both embarked for Panama, to then continue by land to Lima, but during the trip there was a storm that took the ship to Nicaragua, where she decided to settle in the convent of Granada. This was the land of the Indies that he liked the most and in 1535 he proposed to the king and the Council of the Indies to start a peaceful colonization in unexplored inland areas. However, despite the interest shown by the councilors of the Indies Bernal Díaz de Luco and Mercado de Peñaloza, this could not be done because the Fonseca clan, enemy of the Protector, was still in court.

In 1536 the governor of Nicaragua, Rodrigo de Contreras, organized a military expedition, but De las Casas managed to postpone it for a couple of years by informing Queen Isabella of Portugal, wife of Carlos V. Faced with the hostility of the authorities, De Las Casas decided to leave Nicaragua and went to Guatemala.

Guatemala

In November 1536, he settled in Santiago de Guatemala. Months later Bishop Juan Garcés, who was a friend of his, invited him to move to Tlascala. Later, he moved back to Guatemala. In the year 1537, Pope Paul III dictated the bull Sublimis Deus where he proclaimed that Native Americans cannot be enslaved and that they should not be treated as "brutes created for your service, but as true men, capable of understanding the Catholic faith." Such Indians and all those who are later discovered by Christians cannot be deprived of their freedom by any means, nor of their property, even if they do not believe in Jesus Christ and will not be slaves. On May 2, 1537, he obtained from the licensed governor Alfonso de Maldonado a written commitment ratified on July 6, 1539 by the viceroy of Mexico Antonio de Mendoza, that the natives of Tuzulutlán, when they were conquered, would not be given in encomienda but would be vassals of the Crown. De las Casas, along with other friars such as Pedro de Angulo and Rodrigo de Ladrada, sought out four Native American Christians and taught them Christian songs explaining basic Gospel issues. Later he led a procession that brought small gifts to the Indians (scissors, bells, combs, mirrors, glass bead necklaces...) and impressed the cacique, who decided to convert to Christianity and be a preacher to his vassals. The cacique was baptized with the name of Juan. The natives consented to the construction of a church but another cacique named Cobán burned the church. Juan, with 60 men, accompanied by De las Casas and Pedro de Angulo, went to talk to the Indians of Cobán and convinced them of their good intentions. Subsequently, the Dominicans established headquarters for their doctrines in the towns of Rabinal, Sacapulas and Cobán, from where they led the peaceful conquest of Vera Paz.

Interview with King Carlos I of Spain

Another transatlantic voyage returned Fray Bartolomé de las Casas back to Spain in 1540. In Valladolid, he visited King Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Charles who, among his numerous titles was & # 34; Catholic King & # 34; since 1517, concerned about the situation of the aborigines in America and listening to the demands of De las Casas and the new ideas of the law of nations disseminated by Francisco de Vitoria, he convened the Council of the Indies through the Valladolid Commission or Junta de Valladolid. Among the commissioners were the most important European theologians and jurists of his day.

New Laws

Bartolome de las Casas, Very brief relationship of the destruction of the Indias. Edition of 1552.

As a consequence of what was discussed, King Carlos I promulgated the New Laws on November 20, 1542. They prohibited the slavery of the Indians and ordered that all be freed from the encomenderos and placed under the direct protection of the Crown. They also provided that, with regard to the penetration into lands hitherto unexplored, two religious should always participate, who would ensure that contacts with the natives were carried out peacefully, giving rise to the dialogue that would promote their conversion. The New Laws were one of the most important contributions to the law of nations made by King Carlos I as a result of his conversations with Fray Bartolomé de las Casas.

At the end of that same year, Las Casas finished writing his best-known work in Valencia, A brief account of the destruction of the Indies, addressed to Prince Felipe, the future King Felipe II, then in charge of the affairs of the Indies.

Bishop of Chiapas

He was offered the bishopric of Cuzco, extremely important at the time, but Las Casas did not accept, although he did take over the bishopric of Chiapas in 1543, because it bordered on Tuzulutlán.

He was consecrated bishop of Chiapas in the old Dominican convent of San Pablo, in Seville, now the church of La Magdalena, on March 30, Passion Sunday, 1544. Pando Miranda says that "there were flowers and multiple lights of candles in the convent church, clouds of incense, gold and silk in the sacred vestments of the consecrating bishops, who were those of Córdoba and Trujillo, and a nephew of Cardinal Loaisa". As bishop, he dedicated himself to recruiting a good number of missionaries, most of them Dominicans from the convent of San Esteban de Salamanca, to accompany him on his trip to Chiapas.

However, in Seville there were matters that required his attention. Many residents of the city had Indians reduced to forced servitude. Some had been brought by their encomenderos from America and others had been secretly acquired from slave traders. The aborigines, knowing that De las Casas is there, go to the convent to complain. De las Casas wrote to Carlos V by letter to tell him that he ordered the release of all the Indians of the kingdom, "because in truth they are as free as I am".

He left Seville and arrived in Santo Domingo on September 8, 1544 with thirty missionaries. They were received with hostility by the Spanish in America, for having decreed the New Laws of the Indies. On December 14, 1544, he left Santo Domingo for Chiapas. On January 19, 1545, he landed at San Lorenzo de Campeche, where he also endured hostility from the townspeople and the governor, Francisco de Montejo. From this city, and after spending a few days in Tabasco, he headed for Ciudad Real de los Llanos de Chiapas.

After the conquest of Mexico by Hernán Cortés, the city had fallen into the government of Captain Diego de Mazariegos, who governed with some diligence, with regulations such as maintaining adequate public health and not allowing pack animals to circulate loosely. Mazariegos also cared about the Indians: he gave them their own land and told them that if any Spaniard was interested in it he could pay them, he made sure that their weekly rest periods were respected, he created a school where the children of chiefs and caciques could go.. A church was created in the city, the Church of the Annunciation, which was under the authority of the Bishop of Tlaxcala, but with the growth of the city it became a diocese, its first bishop being Don Juan de Arteaga, and his successor Bartolomé de las Casas himself.

However, when De las Casas arrived, the city was no longer governed by Mazariegos, the Indians' lands had passed into new hands and they were subjugated without anyone taking their interests into account. It was at the end of February 1545 that Bartholomew took office, and on March 20 he published a letter in which he said that absolution was denied to all Spaniards who did not free their Indians who did not return the proceeds from the encomiendas to the Indians. All the Spaniards opposed it, but de las Casas found the support of the Dominican missionaries and the clergyman Juan de Parera.

De las Casas decided to pay a short visit to Tuzulutlán, to verify the success of his peacekeeping mission, and then returned to Chiapas. De las Casas remained in the city until October 1545, when he went to Gracias a Dios, to ask for help from the Audiencia, presided over by Alonso Maldonado. Maldonado ignored De las Casas and he returned to Chiapas.

To ensure compliance with the New Laws, Francisco Tello de Sandoval was sent to the Indies. He disembarked in San Juan de Ulúa and then headed for Mexico City, where he stayed in a Dominican convent. There were many Spaniards who were against the regulations, such as Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza, and a delegation was sent to speak with the monarch to abolish the New Laws. The New Laws encountered difficulties in their final application, especially with regard to the inheritance of the encomienda right.

Bartolomé de las Casas was called by Francisco Tello to Mexico City and had to leave, leaving Canon Juan de Parera to replace him. In May 1546 he arrived in Mexico City in the company of his friend Rodrigo de Ladrada. In the city he joined an Episcopal Board where the bishops of Mexico, Tlaxcala, Guatemala, Michoacán and Oaxaca were. In this Board they debated about the native Americans, winning the thesis of De las Casas in reference to the capacity of the aborigines and the duties they had with the Crown.

Return to Spain

Francisco Tello decided to suspend the application of the New Laws until the issue of the entourage that had gone to speak with the monarch was resolved and the news would arrive that the king was suspending what made reference to inheritance, allowing the parcels already given to be transmitted.

De las Casas decided to return to Spain in 1547 to fight for the welfare of the Indians from the metropolis. He embarked in Veracruz, made a stopover in the Azores, then disembarked in Lisbon and went to Salamanca. In August 1550 he presented his indeclinable resignation as bishop of Chiapas and managed to appoint one of his disciples, Fray Tomás Casillas, to replace him.

On March 10, 1551, Bartolomé was named beneficiary of the inheritance of Don Juan de Écija, and he used this money to ensure the maintenance of himself and his friend the confessor Rodrigo de Ladrada for the rest of his days at the College Dominican of San Gregorio in Valladolid.

In Valladolid, between 1550 and 1551, he had a controversy with Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda called "The Valladolid Controversy" that dealt with the legitimacy of the conquest. It was discussed who won this controversy, since both were considered winners, however Ginés de Sepúlveda's works did not obtain authorization to be published.

In 1552 he arrived in Seville, where he published several of his works. He was accompanied by 20 missionaries that he has been able to recruit and who left on the Navy expedition to Puerto de Caballos. These missionaries carried the Seven Treatises of De las Casas.

In one of his works entitled A brief account of the destruction of the Indies he makes a rather critical allusion to the Requirement of 1512, a document written by order of Ferdinand II of Aragon to be used as an official proclamation in the context of the Laws of Burgos (written by Juan López de Palacios Rubios), was prepared as a response to the debate that arose about the justice of the conquest of America, from the sermons of the Dominican fray Antonio de Montesinos, made in the Island of Hispaniola in December 1511. Said Requirement was also highly criticized as ineffective by other contemporaries, such as Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo, and Bartolomé de las Casas refers to it:

And because the most pernicious blindness that has always had to this day those who have ruled the Indies in ordering and ordering the conversion of those nations... has come to so much depth that they have imagined and practiced and commanded that the Indians be made necessary to come to the faith and give obedience to the kings of Castile, if not that they will war on fire and blood, and will kill them and captivate them,

Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, Brevísima relación de la Destruction de las Indias

Death

The last years of Bartolomé de las Casas were spent in Madrid. He was in the convent of San Pedro Mártir and later in that of Atocha, accompanied by his friend Fray Labrada. In 1561, he finished his Historia de las Indias and ceded it to the Colegio de San Gregorio, stipulating that it could not be published for another forty years. In fact it was not published for 314 years, until 1875. He, too, had to repeatedly defend himself against accusations of treason: someone, possibly Sepúlveda, reported him to the Spanish Inquisition, but nothing came of the case. De las Casas also appeared as a witness in the Inquisition case against his friend Archbishop Bartolomé Carranza de Miranda, who had been falsely accused of heresy. In 1565 he wrote his last testament, transferring his immense library to the college.

Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, known as the Apostle to the Indians, died in 1566. He was buried in the Basilica of Our Lady of Atocha. Previously, he had arranged for his body to be buried in the convent of San Gregorio in Valladolid, but when in the XVII century they left to transfer his remains to that city, the place reserved for the burial of Bartolomé de las Casas was occupied by a clergyman who died there. Due to the successive reforms of the Atocha basilica and a fire that devastated it in 1936, its remains have been lost.

Veneration

In 2001, the Catholic Church began the beatification process for Bartolómé de las Casas. For its part, the Lutheran Church includes him in the celebrations of its Calendar of Lutheran Saints.

Thought

Monument to Bartolomé de las Casas in Seville (Spain).

Along with Francisco de Vitoria, Bartolomé de las Casas is considered one of the founders of modern international law and a great protector of the Indians and a precursor of human rights together with the Portuguese Jesuit António Vieira. Although from opposite perspectives, both he and Vitoria dealt with the problem around which the law of nations emerged in modern times: the definition of the relations between the European empires and the peoples of the New World. This task required the creation of a legal framework broad enough to be valid at the same time for Europeans and aborigines. The legal tradition that was used for this purpose was precisely that of natural law, which was taken from medieval law and the stoic philosophy. De las Casas considered that the Indians had the use of reason, as much as the ancient Greeks and Romans, and that as rational creatures they were human beings. As such, the indigenous were protected by natural law and were holders of the rights to freedom and to appoint their authorities.

His contribution to the theory and practice of human rights can be appreciated in his work Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, which, because it was written in the mid-16th century, constitutes the first modern human rights report. In it he describes the atrocities to which the indigenous people of the Americas were subjected by the Spanish conquerors. A paragraph can give an idea of the facts that this book narrates:

Again, this tyrant month went to a certain town called Cota, and took many Indians and made the dogs [feeding palms] fifteen or twenty masters and principals, and cut a lot of hands of women and men, and tied them in a few strings, and put them hanging from a stick to the luenga, for the other Indians saw what they had done to those seventy hands.

In his Historia de las Indias he developed the atrocities described in the Brief at much greater length.

Although he advocated the defense of the Indians and his defense of blacks has been questioned, he wrote a booklet entitled A Very Brief Account of the Destruction of Africa as part of the A Brief Account of the destruction of the Indies, against the mistreatment of the African population against the abuses of Castile and Portugal. This work remained unpublished until 1875.

Regarding blacks, Frías (1983) says:

From the Houses he filed his claims with the Flemish advisors who at that time surrounded Emperor Charles V, proposing to replace the work of the Indians with that of the Black, of which some small games had already been taken to the Antilles, with the permission of the Catholic Kings.

Later, he backed away from this position, as he considered both forms of slavery to be equally wrong.

Bartolomé de las Casas unsuccessfully proposed that the American continent be called Columba.

The figures for native deaths provided by Bartolomé de las Casas have been considered implausible by the American historians John Tate Lanning and Philip Wayne Powell, the Argentine Enrique Díaz Araujo and the Spanish Elvira Roca Barea. However, the historian Esteban Mira Caballos considers that they conform to reality. Demographic studies such as those carried out in colonial Mexico by Sherburne F. Cook in the middle of the century XX suggested that the decline in the first years of the conquest was really drastic, ranging between 80 and 90%, due to many different causes but all of them, ultimately, attributable to the arrival of the Europeans. The main and overwhelming cause was disease introduced by Europeans. Various historians have also pointed out that exaggeration and inflation of figures was the norm in accounts of the 16th century, and both detractors like contemporary supporters of de las Casas were guilty of similar exaggerations.

Enrique Díaz Araujo also criticizes the lack of credibility of De las Casas' geographical descriptions, for example, when he affirms that in Hispaniola there were twenty thousand rivers extremely rich in gold.

Conflict with Toribio de Benavente

Dominicans and Franciscans disputed the ownership and exploitation of new lands and disagreed on theological issues. Motolinía accused Bartolomé de las Casas of being an excessive idealist, of not wanting to help and teach the indigenous people the way he did, of being anti-colonial, of disturbing the order, who "thus disturbs and destroys the government here" 3. 4; as he affirmed in his letter to Carlos V.

Experts such as Jorge García Castillo, argued that the disputes between Motolinía and De las Casas, rather than of a theological order, seem more of a political nature; but, for his part, Motolinía through his letter to Carlos V, stated that the conquest was a necessary means for the conversion of the natives to Christianity. However, in that epistle, too, the friar expounds to the emperor how to make the conquered lands a new independent nation under a Catholic ruler. Motolinía did not dismiss religious conversion by force. On this, Motolinía himself wrote thus: "that the Holy Gospel be preached throughout all these lands, and those who do not want to willingly hear the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ, be by force; That proverb takes place here: better is good by force than bad by degree".

Toribio de Benavente spoke of him as follows, writing to Carlos I:

By the way, for with a few canons of the Houses he heard, he dares a lot, and very great seems his disorder and little his humility; and he thinks that all of them will and what is only right [...] I marvel at me how V. M. and those of your Councils have been able to suffer so much time a man so heavy, restless and disturbing and pleitistic, in the habit of religion, so detrimental.

Works

Disputation or controversy with Ginés de Sepúlveda contending about the bidding of the conquests of the Indies.

• Remedies Memorial for Indians (1518), also known as The fifteen remedies for the reform of the Indias.
• History of Indias (1527-1547)
• Apologetic summary history (1536)
• Unique vocationis mode, known in Spanish as The only way to attract all peoples to true religion (1537)
• Remedies Memorial (1542)
• Representation of the Emperor Carlos V (1547)
• Thirty very legal proposals (c. 1548)

In 1552 he returned to Seville, where he published books that he had previously written:

• Principia Quaedam (1552)
• Brief relation of the destruction of the Indies, collegiate by Bishop Don Fray Bartolomé de las Casas o Casaus, of the Order of Santo Domingo (1552)
• Treaty on the Indians who have become slaves (1552)
• Eighth remedy (1552)
• Notices and rules for confessors (1552)
• Here is a dispute or controversy between Fray Bartolomé de las Casas [...] and Doctor Ginés de Sepúlveda (1552)
• Testimony of the sovereign empire and the universal principality (printed in 1553)
• About the title of the King of Spain's domain on the people and lands of the Indians (h. 1554)
• Memorial-Sumario to Philip II (1556)
• Twelve Dudas Treaty (1564)
• Request of Bartolomé de las Casas to His Holiness Pius V on the business of the Indians (1566)
• Regia potestate
• Of thesauris

History of the Indies

De las Casas began to compose a History of the Indies in Hispaniola in 1527. He worked on it for the next 35 years, with more intensity after his return to Spain in 1547. He wanted to narrate the history of the continent until the middle of the 16th century, but the manuscript text that survives, in three volumes, only goes back to 1520, which has led some researchers to postulate that there could be a fourth volume that is now lost. De las Casas bequeathed the unpublished original manuscript of his Historia to the Colegio de San Gregorio in Valladolid in November 1559, with the mandate that they not allow it to be published until at least 1600. Throughout the following decades, partial copies of the manuscript circulated in Spain and abroad. At the beginning of the 17th century, the senior chronicler Antonio de Herrera made extensive use of the work of De las Casas to write his General history of the events of the Castilians.

In the eighteenth century, the historian Juan Bautista Muñoz, who had been commissioned by the government to write a History of the New World that never saw the light of day, found copies of the first two volumes of the De las Casas' manuscript in an archive. Around 1820 Muñoz's documents passed to the Royal Academy of History, which reviewed them. In 1821, academics ruled against the publication of De las Casas's Historia "because of the lengthy and importunate digressions that make reading it tiresome and tiresome, and because, always contradicting the rights of the Spanish to the conquest and perpetually penalizing their conduct, it seemed that in present circumstances, its publication would not be convenient or opportune, nor would it be decent for the nation to authorize it". At this time Spain was immersed in the Spanish-American wars of independence. Several decades later, in 1856, a new generation of scholars recommended the publication of a critical edition of the manuscript, "illustrated in such a way as truth demands and claims the honor of those early conquerors".

The first printed edition of the Historia de las Indias was finally published in Madrid in 1875 in five volumes. In the following decades other editions were published. The autograph manuscript of De las Casas is preserved in the National Library of Spain.

A brief account of the destruction of the Indies

It is a book published in 1552 by the Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, the main defender of indigenous peoples in America during the 16th century .

La Brevísima is a work dedicated to Prince Felipe, and its general theme is the denunciation of the effects that colonization by the Spanish in the Americas had on indigenous people. In addition, it served to humanize the conquest from a political, legal, and religious transformation, supported by a Spanish legal context.

In 1659 the book was expunged by the Jesuit qualifier of the Holy Office Francisco de Minguijón, to be finally prohibited by the Spanish Inquisition the following year —108 years after its publication—