Barolome de Las Casas's A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

De Las Casas, Bartolome; A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies; Transl. Nigel Griffin; Penguin Classics, London, 2004

This is the text that I have to present to the class for discussion.  I was interested in this text partly because I'm very interested in Latin America and its history.  I also remember reading a biography of Mary I of England which also dealt with Prince Phillip (Felipe II) of Spain.  That period of time (in Spain and in England) has always stuck in my mind and De Las Casas' book was published, and the events he relates occurred, during that period.

Bartolome de las Casas was born in the late 15th c. and sailed as a young man in Columbus' 4th voyage to the Americas, to Hispaniola in 1502.  It was amazing to read a text written by someone who was present 10 years after Columbus first reached the Americas.  De Las Casas initially was there for commercial reasons, to make his fortune, accumulating land and slaves as a colonist.  In 1511 he heard a Dominican priest preach a sermon on the text "a voice crying in the wilderness", denouncing the Spanish treatment of the aboriginal peoples in the Americas.  De Las Casas was also present during Velasquez' brutal invasion of Cuba in 1513 - and he was horrified by what he saw.  His attitudes began to change and he started to protest the brutality used by the Spaniards as they invaded and took over the governance of the Americas, subjugating and tyrannizing the local inhabitants.  Initially De Las Casas objected to the brutality, greed and dishonesty but still thought that governing the local peoples was just if it were done more cooperatively and less brutally.  De Las Casas became ordained and travelled back and forth from Spain to the Americas speaking about what was going on in the Americas and preaching reform.  He received approval from Charles V (Holy Roman Emperor) to set up farming communities in what is now Venezuela where Spanish settlers would try to live in peace with the local people.  His vision was betrayed by the greed and non-cooperation of the settlers.  Their continued slave trade angered the indigenous peoples leading to violence and counter-violence and De Las Casas' project failed.

He was devastated by this failure and retreated to a Dominican monastery for many years.  He began to write and to read many philosophers.  It was this time period that led him to change his thinking about the rights of the indigenous peoples.  When he left the monastery in 1530, he became a very outspoken and dedicated proponent, not only of an end to the brutality and venality practiced by the Spaniards but of the rights of the indigenous people to their land and property.  He did not go so far as to think that Spain had no right to be there (Pope Constantine had granted sovereignty to Spain over all the "newly discovered" lands across the Atlantic Ocean, via the 'Donation of Constantine') but De Las Casas did feel that Spanish sovereignty provided citizenship rights to the indigenous people as well as their pre-existing rights to their property.  He also felt that natural laws, laws of humanity, required just treatment of the native people.

De Las Casas - important dates:

1484	Born in Seville to Pedro de Las Casas, a merchant who travelled to the Indies with Columbus
1502	Leaves Spain for Hispaniola
1511	Listens to a sermon by Dominican priest, Father Antonio de Montesinos, denouncing Spain's treatment of the AmerIndians.
1513	Present during the violent, bloody conquest of Cuba led by Diego Velazquez.
1515	Returns to Spain to plead the AmerIndian cause before King Ferdinand.
1516	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 AmerIndian to King Charles I (Emperor Charles V) The king supports his plan to build a colony in present-day Venezuela inhabited by both Spanish and free Indians.
1522	In January, after more than a year of continuous opposition of local encomenderos who incite AmerIndian attacks on the farmers, the experiment fails.
1523	Disappointed, Las Casas joins the Dominicans in Santo Domingo and focuses his energy on writing, begins both Apologetica historia de las Indias and Historia de Las Indies.
1530	Returned to Spain and 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 AmerIndians 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 AmerIndian slavery and attempted to put an end to the encomienda system by limiting ownership of serfs to a single generation. Writes "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 - meets immediate opposition. He declares that any Spaniard who refuse to release his AmerIndians is to be denied absolution. A year later the inheritance limitation is rescinded by Charles V.
1547	Returns to Spain and gives up his episcopal dignity. Becomes an influential figure at court and at the Council of the Indies.
1550	Meets Sepulveda in the famous debate at the Council of Valladolid.
1552	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.

De Las Casas spent most of his adult life travelling through the Americas and back and forth to Spain, arguing for, preaching and educating about reform of Spanish rule in the Americas.  He initially advocated only for gentler treatment (the doctrine of peaceful conversion), he then progressed to supporting the legal rights of the indigenous peoples and was instrumental in several laws being passed by the Spanish monarchy to protect the indigenous people though these rights were not upheld by the Spanish conquistadors, settlers and some greedy clergy in the Americas.  Eventually De Las Casas became more radicalized and began to use his clerical office to try and compel change, by threatening excommunication or withholding absolution to those not adhering to the revised laws.

By the end of his lifetime he had seen 3 monarchies govern over the Americas (Ferdinand & Isabella, Charles I/V and Felipe II) with little improvement in the conditions for the local people.  He had argued his cause in many forums, had circulated his writings which not only shocked those in Spain but reached a wider audience in Europe.  Though he didn't see much improvement in his lifetime, conditions slowly began to change as the power of the initial conquistadors was curtailed and the encomiendero system was abolished.  

De Las Casas' text is difficult to read only because of its subject matter.  He goes through each country, roughly in the order in which they were "conquered" and the littany of brutal oppression, treachery, greed is very hard to read about.  He reports about one native leader who was about to be executed.  Asked to convert to Christianity/Catholicism so that he would have a chance at Heaven after he died, the local leader asked if the Spaniards around him were examples of Christians and would they be going to Heaven.  When he was told 'yes' he said that in this case he did not wish any chance of going to Heaven.
It's difficult to consider that human beings can do this to any living creature much less to other human beings.  I can't help but think of what it would have been like for the local people to have the Spaniards arrive and to then suffer such change, brutality and oppression.

When you try to explain it by saying those were brutal times you then run up against De Las Casas and the other clerics who spoke out against the brutality and were able to see and recognize the injustice.  Was it a matter of education?  Was it a matter of the type of person who would have been on those voyages of exploration (education, class, situation, greed, fitness for society?).

What was happening in Europe at the time?

15th century Spain:

• Uniting of five kingdoms in the Iberian Peninsula: Castile, Aragón (which included Catalonia, Valencia, the kingdom of Naples, Sardinia and Sicily), Granada, Navarre and Portugal. By early in the 16th century they had been reduced to two: Castile/Aragón and Portugal.
• Castile and Aragón were united in the late 15th century through the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragón (tiny Navarre was swallowed by Aragón in 1513). 
•  The marriage between Isabel and Ferdinand in 1469  (she was 18 and he was 17) 
•  By January 1492, Granada was in Spanish hands.  Granada was the last Muslim kingdom of the once powerful al-Andalus and Isabella and Ferdinand saw its conquest as a necessary step for consolidating their political power and for religious uniformity in the peninsula. 
• The terms of surrender were generous and included freedom of religion. Religious conformity, however, was still the overall objective of the Christians. Already on March 31, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabel signed an edict giving Jews four months to accept baptism or go into exile; by 1501 the Muslims faced the same choice.
•  Christianity was now the common bond that held Spaniards together.  There was widespread suspicion that their conversion was not genuine.  This was not a new phenomenon; the 15th century had seen an explosion of Jews accepting baptism.  Many were sincere in their new faith, many others continued to practice their Judaic faith in secret. It was to investigate the suspicion of heresy amongst Conversos that the infamous Inquisition was introduced into Castile in 1478.
• Under the Mongol Empire's hegemony over Asia, Europeans had long enjoyed a safe land passage, the 'Silk Road', to China and India. After the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire (Turks) in 1453, the land route to Asia difficult and dangerous. A sea route to the Indies was needed.
• Portugal had made advances in navigation, allowing for more ambitious voyages & explorations.
•  Late 15^th c., the Catholic monarchs had just completed an expensive campaign in the Iberian Peninsula (la Reconquista), reconquering Granada, and were desperate for money. Columbus’ proposed search for a new route to the Indies promised access to these riches.  He 1^st sailed to Americas in August 1492

16^th Century  -  Golden Age for Spain

At the beginning of the 16th century, there was a general feeling of pride and self confidence in Spain. 

Further impetus to the general air of confidence was given by two far-reaching events:

• the “discovery” of America (Las Indias) by Christopher Columbus in 1492
• the accession in 1516 to the Spanish throne of the powerful Hapsburg family of central Europe.

With the discovery of Las Indias and the acquisition of vast new lands, Spain embarked on transatlantic imperial conquests.  With the accession of the Hapsburg Carlos I to the Spanish throne, Spain suddenly acquired large areas of central and northern Europe.

From the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand in 1469 there grew within about 55 years an imperial power whose possessions included large areas in Europe and America, and whose reach even stretched across the Pacific (the first voyage around the world was completed in 1522, led by the Portuguese explorer Magellan but under Spanish auspices).

The arranged marriage of Ferdinand and Isabel`s youngest daughter, Juana, to the son of the Hapsburg emperor, Maximilian I lead to the establishment of the Hapsburg dynasty in Spain by their son, Charles.

Charles I/V (1500-1558; ruled Spain 1516-56, Holy Roman Emperor 1519-58)

Charles I/V had large imperial ambitions, costly ambitions.  He requested money in pursuit of the office of Holy Roman Emperor (HRE) and did become HRE (as Charles V) in 1519.  His priorities extended beyond Spain, with high costs to the Spanish treasury. Of the 40 years that Charles ruled, he spent only 16 in Spain; in the last 13 years of his reign he didn’t set foot in Spain. His son, and successor, Felipe II, in contrast, was devoted to and spent most of his time in Spain.

Charles won Spaniards over by identifying them increasingly with the mission of defending Catholicism. His struggle with the threat of heretical Protestants in Northern Europe and with Ottoman (Turkish) activities in the Mediterranean recalled the crusading spirit of the Reconquista, which was still relatively fresh in the collective Spanish memory. 

The costs of defending imperial (HRE) and Catholic interests were enormous. The only recourse was to borrow money against the future gold and silver coming from the Americas. However, Spain had lost a large part of its own banking resources with the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, so the borrowed money came mainly from established bankers in Germany (Fuggers) and Genoa (Italy).  At one point parts of South America were granted by Spain to German banking interests.  I’ve always wondered a bit at the amount of German interests in South America as I didn’t think of Germany as having colonizing interests so far away.  It makes sense now.

SPAIN in the AMERICAS

Two rationalizations put forth for the Spanish Invasion of the Americas and their actions towards the indigenous peoples:

• 1.     There was the moral framework of the ‘just war’.
• 2.     Justification under Aristotelian concept of “natural slaves”

Thomas Aquinas had asked whether war was "always" sinful.  There was a general presumption against the shedding of blood.  The pacifists understood this prohibition to be absolute, while the ‘just war’ theorists maintained the prohibition could be overridden provided certain conditions were fulfilled.

The Thomistic tradition of just war identified three conditions for a war to be just:

1. ·      that it be commanded by a sovereign authority,
2. ·       that a just cause be present owing to some "fault" in the enemy, and
3. ·       that there exist a right intention to advance good or avoid evil.

• The supporters of Spanish conquest believed that rightful authority resided in the papal pronouncement of Alexander VI in 1493 that Spain had just title to the Indies for the purposes of conversion to Christianity. 
• The "fault" of the AmerIndians was usually noted to be refusal to accept the Christian faith.
• I haven’t seen as much discussion about the 'right intention' but it likely went along the lines of bringing Spanish knowledge, religion, advances (iron) to the AmerIndians.

The 2nd rationalization for the Spanish invasion of the Americas derived from classical philosophy rather than religious tradition: the Aristotelian notion that some persons are slaves by nature, born to serve masters. This was the argument used by de Sepulveda in 1550 at Valladolid. Fourteen distinguished judges were summoned by the emperor to assess whether war could be justly waged against the AmerIndians.  De Sepulveda cited the natural slavery argument and De Las Casas made the arguments contained in this text (A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies) and in his massive “History of the Indies” and “Apologetic History of the Indies”.

Part of the just war rationalization relied on the dehumanization of the indigenous peoples and biblical arguments based on Battle of Jericho (Encisco in 1513).

In 1513, Martin Fernandez de Encisco argued before the crown's counselors that "the king might very justly send men to require these idolatrous AmerIndians to hand over their land to him, for it was given him by the pope. If the AmerIndians would not do this, he might justly wage war against them, kill them and enslave those captured in war, precisely as Joshua treated the inhabitants of Jericho."  The biblical record of the legendary battle of Jericho observes that the Israelites "utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, and sheep, and ass with the edge of the sword." (Joshua 6; 1 Sam. 15).

Encisco's biblical paradigm of conquest provided the theological grounds for the infamous Requirement (Requerimiento), issued under the authorization of King Ferdinand, in 1514.  This was a text carried by all conquistadors, to be read out to the indigenous people, warning them that if they did not convert and did not submit to Spain, they would be [rightfully] slaughtered.

De Las Casas discussed this requirement in this text, reporting that the Conquistador’s would obey the letter rather than the spirit of the law, reading the proclamation out loud, at night and at a distance from the sleeping villages where no one could hear the words (not that they would have understood them given that they were read out in Spanish and the meaning would not be obvious without extensive explanation and education).

De Las Casas' ideologies evolved to center on the right of the AmerIndians to their land, on the principle of self-determination, on the subordination of all Spanish interests, including those of the Crown, to AmerIndian interests, material and spiritual. Towards the end of his life, Las Casas ultimately advanced a program calling for

•  the suppression of the encomienda,
• liberation of the AmerIndians from all forms of servitude except a small voluntary tribute to the Crown, and
• the restoration of the ancient AmerIndian 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 AmerIndians 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 King's agents in the performance of this mission would be a small number of model religious who would cooperate with the native rulers, with the AmerIndians separated from the corrupting and oppressive presence of lay Spaniards.

He promoted practical political measures like the New Laws of 1542, and began to systematically use the powers of the Church: excommunication, interdict, and denial of absolution to secure compliance with these protective legislations.  Though he was successful in seeing several laws either revised or brought into being that were intended to offer some protection or justice to the inhabitants of the Americas, in practice De Las Casas' efforts were usually subverted by local Spanish resistance or by later being rescinded or weakened by the monarchs.

His writings in other texts show how his views and thinking were drastically advanced from the self-interest at play in Spain's "conquered lands" as well as the greed and appetite for power and for catholic dominance at play back in Spain.  As early as 1519, in a rebuttal to Juan de Quevedo, Bishop of Tierra Firme, who questioned the morals and capacities of the indigenous peoples, De Las Casas stated:

Our Christian religion adapts equally to all the nations of the world and receives all nations, and strips none of its liberty or dominion, nor does it reduce any people to servitude on the pretext that they are slaves "by nature."

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.

In his last will and testament Las Casas wrote:

To act here at home on behalf of all those people 
out in what we call the Indies, 
the true possessors of those kingdoms, those territories.
  To act against the unimaginable, unspeakable violence
 and evil and harm they have suffered from our people,
 contrary to all reason, all justice,
so as to restore them to the original liberty
 they were lawlessly deprived of,
 and get them free of death by violence, death they still suffer.

He also commented on the probability of divine retribution, a factor that had always been uppermost in his mind throughout his time in the Americas:

I think that God shall have to pour out his fury and anger
 on Spain for these damnable, rotten, infamous deeds 
done so unjustly, so tyrannically, so barbarously 
to those people, against those people.
  For the whole of Spain has shared in the blood-soaked riches,
 some a little, some a lot, but all shared in goods 
that were ill-gotten, wickedly taken with violence and genocide-
and all must pay unless Spain does a mighty penance.

I'm looking forward to the discussion.