BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS (1484-1566)

Like the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, Spaniards who came to the Americas primarily for three motives: they were looking for wealth, chivalric glory and to convert the natives. The conquistadors such as Hernan Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru were largely interested in precious metals: gold and silver. The Spaniards expected the natives to supply them with gold and silver, or else they used the natives for forced labor in mining metals. The brutal mistreatment of native populations throughout the world is characteristic of this period of European and later American expansion.

Europeans, and later Americans, saw themselves as "civilized." If civilization is supposed to provide a standard of ethical conduct, and lead people not to violate that standard; then the European, and later American, treatment of native peoples looks like a massive failure of civilization. It is a history of robbery and murder.

Let's look at this notion and tear it apart a little bit. The European expansion was somewhat more complicated than the usual story would have us believe.

St Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) identified three conditions for a war to be just, that it be

commanded by a sovereign authority,

that a just cause be present owing to some "fault" in the enemy, and

that there exist a right intention to advance good or avoid evil.

European law at the time relied heavily on the this tradition. In order to be legal, the expeditions to the New World had to be sanctioned by crown (and church), they could only enslave non-Christians and they could only kill or seize the lands of people who had some fault (cannibals, sodomites or people who did not respect the law), and they needed a right intention - such as converting heathens to Christianity.

Upon their arrival the Spaniards (and early Italian, French, German, Dutch, and Hapsburg enterprises that were chartered by Charles V) quickly began exploiting and repressing the natives. This kind of behavior led some Spaniards to defend the Indians against their own countrymen.

Most famous of these was BARTOLOME DE LAS CASAS (1484-1566)

Bartoleme de las Casas, a Spanish colonist, a priest, founder of a Utopian community in Venezuela and first Bishop of Chiapas, was a scholar, historian and 16th century human rights advocate. Las Casas has been called the Father of anti-imperialism and anti-racism. He greatly influenced Rousseau and Montaigne - two important Enlightenment thinkers and advocates for human freedom. He inspired independence movements in Holland and was one of the first modern thinkers to advocate universal human rights.

Las Casas Time Line

1484	Born in Seville to Pedro de Las Casas, a small merchant wealthy enough to send his son to learn Latin in the academy at the cathedral of Seville in 1497.
1502	Leaves Spain for Hispaniola in the West Indies with the governor, Nicolas de Ovando. He earns an encomienda for his participation in several expeditions and then proceeds to evangelize the Indians.
1506	Returns briefly to Europe where he is ordained a deacon in Rome.
1511	On August 15, Pentecost, hear a sermon by Father Antonio de Montesinos on "I am a voice crying in the wilderness," denouncing Spain's treatment of the Indians. Las Casas returns his Indian serfs to the governor and the rest of his life is spent defending the Indians.
1512	Becomes first priest to be ordained in the New World.
1513	Takes part in the violent and bloody conquest of Cuba and receives Indian serfs for his efforts.
1515	Returns to Spain to plead the Indian cause before King Ferdinand. With the support of the archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros, is named priest-procurator of the Indies.
1516	In November returns to America as a member of a commission sent to investigate the treatment of the Indians.
1519	Returns to Spain once more.
1520	Presents a defense of the Indian to King Charles I (Emperor Charles V) arguing that the time of military conquest of the Indians has passed and that they could be converted by more peaceful means. The king supports Las Casas plan to build a colony of farm communities in Venezuela inhabited by both Spanish and free Indians. Las Casas sets sail in December.
1522	In January, after more than a year of continuous opposition of local encomenderos who incite Indian attacks on the farmers, the experiment fails.
1523	Disappointed in the results of his political activities, Las Casas joins the Dominicans in Santo Domingo and focuses his energy on writing. Over the next several years he will write several works including the treatise "Concerning the Only Way of Drawing All Peoples to the True Religion" and the beginnings of both Apologetica historia de las Indias and Historia de Las Indies.
1530	Returned to Spain, obtained a royal decree prohibiting the enforcement of slavery in Peru which he delivered personally.
1537	Receives some support from the Pope in the form of Paul III's bull Sublimis Deus which declared the American Indians as rational beings with souls and that their lives and property should be protected.
1542	Returns to Spain where he convinced Charles I to signs the "New Laws" which prohibited Indian slavery and attempted to put an end to the endomienda system by limiting ownership of serfs to a single generation. Writes his most influential and best known work, "A brief report on the Destruction of the Indians," which horrifies the court.
1544	To ensure enforcement of the laws he is named bishop of Chiapas in Guatemala. He meets immediate opposition. He declares in his tract Confesionario that any Spaniard who refuse to release his Indians is to be denied absolution. Many members of his clergy refuse to follow this order. A year later the inheritance limitation is rescinded by Charles V.
1547	Returns to Spain, gives up his episcopal dignity. Becomes an influential figure at court and at the Council of the Indies. Begins conflict with Juan Gines de Sepulveda who defends Spain's treatment of the Indians on Aristotelian principles.
1550	At the order of Charles V meets Sepulveda in the famous debate at the Council of Valladolid. While Las Casas wins the debate and received official approval it was Sepulveda's teachings which largely prevailed in the Indies.
1552	Without clearance from the Inquisition, publishes The Destruction of the Indies. Spends the next fourteen years writing and appearing at court and councils in defense of the Indians.
1566	Dies in Madrid and buried in the convent chapel of Our Lady of Atocha.
1875	Historia de las Indias first published.

Charles V was very concerned about the morality of what was going on in his New World colonies. He consulted many times with Francisco de Vitoria, who is recognized as a founder of international law, and who also wrote on the justice of Spain's Indian wars and Spain's titles to the New World in a famous lecture De Indis in 1539. This sparked a debate with Las Casas.

Vitoria begins by discussing the "seven false titles of conquest." Vitoria declares that the Indians, as rational beings, were true owners of their lands and estates, for paganism could not annul natural rights. Neither Pope nor Emperor could claim to exercise temporal jurisdiction over other princes, Christian or infidel. Refusal of the Indians to receive the Faith could not justify war, for faith cannot be imposed by force. Nor did Indian "crimes against nature," such as human sacrifice, cannibalism or sodomy justify war and conquest.

But what Vitoria so generously concedes to the Indians he soon takes away. We quickly learn that he regards certain Spanish titles to the Indies as legitimate. What are they? The most important is the first title, which he calls "the title of society and natural communication." By the Law of Nations, the Indians are bound to receive Spanish visitors peacefully. A corollary of this title was the right of peaceful trade with the Indians. Refusal on the part of the Indians to permit the Spaniards to enter their lands, trade with them, and search for gold, pearls, and other things "of which," according to Vitoria, "the barbarians make no use or that are common to all who wish to use them" justified the Spaniards in waging war on them, occupying their cities, and enslaving them.

In the twinkling of an eye Vitoria has transformed his peaceful Spanish pilgrims in search of gold and pearls into soldiers who wage war against the Indians, enslave them, and take their lands. "What is the difference," asks Jaime Concha,

between the outright affirmation of natural slavery and this astute crescendo whose climax is enslavement and every kind of violence against the Indians? Clearly, once the right of trade and exploitation of resources has been established, a labor force becomes necessary to work the gold mines and other mines. And who more suitable than those Indians who refused to accept on faith the Spanish soldier's protestations of friendship? There is not the least doubt the title of "natural sociability" ends in the legitimization of slavery. A strange "sociability" is that proposed by Vitoria.

By contrast, Las Casas repeatedly defended Indian resistance to Spanish entrance into their lands in various writings. In Los tesoros del Perú, he wrote:

"Every king . . . if he believes it proper for the peace, avoidance of bad customs, the security and preservation of the kingdom . . . can prohibit any person from entering his land, whether to engage in trade or to reside therein or for any other cause."

With his customary realism, Las Casas showed that the famous right of "sociability" had no application to America for the Spaniards never came there as peaceful pilgrims but as invaders who advanced like Alexander the Great.

On the supposed right of the Spaniards to possess themselves of Indian gold, pearls, and other valuables, Las Casas made this appropriate comment:

"Is it possible that our most serene king Philip and the Kingdom of Castile would allow the French king or the French to penetrate our kingdom without permission as far as the silver mines of Guadalcanal or other places, in order to carry away silver and gold and other precious objects?"

I omit detailed discussion of Vitoria's other justifications for Spanish wars against the Indians: They included Indian refusal to allow the Gospel to be preached to them; intervention to save innocent victims from Indian tyranny, human sacrifice, and the like; and the right of assisting a friendly people in a just war against its neighbor. From these and Vitoria's other titles, Las Casas dissented. I will only cite a passage from Vitoria's general conclusion, notable for its candid opportunism:

"It seems to follow that if all these titles were lacking, so that the barbarians gave no cause for waging war against them, and if they did not want to have Christian princes, etc., there must also cease all expeditions and trade, to the great prejudice of the Spaniards and to the great injury of the interests of the princes, something which cannot be tolerated."

Clearly Vitoria's interest was less part of a wider interest in the rights and wrongs of war and conquest and more about justification of the reality of Spanish expansion.

Jaime Concha observes that Vitoria's argument is not "a pure theological exposition, as Vitoria claimed; it is thought that is a slave to the concrete policy of the Indies, that follows and reproduces all its convolutions, all the uses and abuses against the Indians."

Eleven years later

Las Casas Debates - Sepúlveda on the humanity of the ‘Indios’ of the ‘New World'

In 1550, Charles V of Spain summoned the Council of the XIV to Valladolid to determine the nature of the Indians, how to christianize them, what sort of beings they were, and what their intellectual and religious capacity for receiving European civilization might be.

Juan Gines de Sepúlveda relying mostly on the histories of Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, argued for three hours that Indians were slaves by nature according to the definition of Aristotle. This idea supported the notion of encomiendaro, a force labor system which turned indians into serfs and which allowed the natives to be christianized by violence and justified their enslavement for profit.

Las Casas presented testimony for five days, arguing that the natives were like Europeans in humanity, civility, ability to learn, and artistry. Quoting Acts 17: 26, He noted the single creation, “He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth”

Las Casas' view is considered the basis for the description of natives as ‘noble savages’ that was popularized later, in the eighteenth century, and associated with Rousseau (Gill 1982: 6). Even though the tone is medieval his ideas were very modern:

For all the peoples of the world are men, and the definition of all men, collectively and severally, is one: that they are rational beings. All possess understanding and volition, being formed in the image and likeness of God; all have the five exterior senses and the four interior senses, and are moved by the objects of these; all have natural capacity or faculties to understand and master the knowledge that they do not have; and this is true not only of those that are inclined toward good but those that by reason of their depraved customs are bad; all take pleasure in goodness and in happy and pleasant things and all abhor evil and reject what offends or grieves them....

Thus all mankind is one, and all men are alike in what concerns their creation and all natural things, and no one is born enlightened. From this it follows that all of us must be guided and aided at first by those who were born before us. And the savage peoples of the earth may be compared to uncultivated soil that readily brings forth weeds and useless thorns, but has within itself such natural virtue that by labor and cultivation it may be made to yield sound and healthful fruits."

Las Casas won the debate and the king abolished encomienda but it was restored a short time later when colonists in Peru protested that they could not continue sending shipments of of gold and silver without it.

It is interesting to trace the development of Las Casas' thought. He was a different man at different stages of his very long life. The clérigo who landed in Hispaniola in 1502 was no reformer, much less a revolutionary. Until 15l4 he was a priest-colonist chiefly concerned with feathering his own nest; he served as chaplain in conquests whose barbarity he vainly tried to curb, and was rewarded for his services with a Cuban encomienda. Not until his thirtieth year did he experience a conversion, apparently the awakening of a dormant sensitivity as a result of the horrors he had seen about him. Even after his conversion in 1514, he did not wholly shed his colonial mentality.

Las Casas's successive reform projects of the period 1515-1520 were aimed the organization of colonial exploitation on a more satisfactory basis than the encomienda, with conversion forming only its ideal background or ultimate justification. In this period he assigned a privileged status to the good colonist in a reformed colonial world and would still accept a share in the profits of colonial enterprise.

The disastrous failure of his Venezuelan colonization project -- a fiasco produced by the slave-hunting raids of the very same Caribbean interests on whose cooperation Las Casas had naively counted -- produced a "second conversion."

Las Casas tells us that after the fiasco of Cumana he felt he was dead and buried -- perhaps meaning that he was buried in the Dominican convent which he entered in 1522 and became dead to the world he had known. The Las Casas who "died" in 1521 was the priest-reformer who proposed to reconcile Spanish private interests and Indian welfare; the Las Casas who emerged from the convent in 1531 after years of immersion in juridical-theological study advanced a revolutionary creed based on unshakable doctrinal foundations. Henceforth the Lascasian ideology centered on the right of the Indians to their land, on the principle of self-determination, on the subordination of all Spanish interests, including those of the Crown, to Indian interests, material and spiritual.

Las Casas ultimately advanced a program calling for the suppression of the encomienda, liberation of the Indians from all forms of servitude except a small voluntary tribute to the Crown, and the restoration of the ancient Indian states and rulers, the rightful owners of those lands. Over these states the Spanish monarch would preside as "Emperor over many Kings" in order to fulfill his sacred mission of bringing the Indians to the Catholic Faith and the Christian way of life. This was the only Spanish title to the Indies that Las Casas regarded as legitimate. The Kings' agents in the performance of this mission would be a small number of model religious persons who would cooperate with the native rulers, with the Indians separated from the corrupting and oppressive presence of lay Spaniards.

Experience progressively radicalized Las Casas in his tactics as well as his program. Beginning about 1540 he gradually shifted from moralistic tactics of preaching, persuasion, and threatening encomenderos with divine wrath to promoting practical political measures like the New Laws of 1542, which, if implemented, would have revolutionized the economic and social structures of the Indies. He also began to systematically use the spiritual arms of the Church: excommunication, interdict, and denial of absolution to secure compliance with Indian protective legislation.

LABOR

But the violent reaction of the colonists, and the retreat from the Emperor Charles's relatively pro-Indian policy, which began with the accession of Philip II in 1556, defeated Las Casas's heroic efforts.

By 1560, in the words of Juan Friede, "he was a venerable but quite uninfluential ancient who would not admit defeat." It was from the pen of this ancient that issued works like the Tesoros del Perú and De regia potestate, which carried his ideas to their logical, ultimate, "utopian" conclusion, and memorials to the king containing proposals that had not the slightest chance of acceptance.

Las Casas had suffered an inevitable defeat. But the prophetic vision, the Chilean indigenista Alejandro Lipschutz reminds us, when based on a scientific understanding of the past and present, must ultimately be transformed into reality. Such was the case with Las Casas. Despite tragic reverses and contradictory trends, today we can safely assert that life is transforming Las Casas's prophetic vision into reality.