8 Bartolome De Las Casas (1484 – 1566)
Angela Weiler
Introduction
Bartolome de las Casas
Bartolome de las Casas was born in Seville, Spain in 1484. In his lifetime, he became one of the most well-known advocates on the behalf of the native peoples of Mesoamerica. His father, Pedro de Las Casas, traveled to the Americas shortly after Columbus’ return from his initial voyage. He returned five years later, bringing with him a boy, Juanico, of the indigenous Taino tribe. For a young Bartolome, this was not only the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Juanico, but was also the origin of his lifelong affection and concern for the Caribbean people.
As a young man, Las Casas studied to be in the priesthood, and first journeyed to America in 1502, landing in Hispaniola (now Haiti). The widespread practice of enslaving the indigenous population left a lasting mark on him, and he began learning several native languages as to converse regularly with these ‘workers’. It is during this period that he began to sympathize with their plight and to deplore the the Spanish treatment of them.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain decreed the encomienda — a system that delineated the treatment of indigenous peoples in Spanish colonies. It stated that colonists would receive land, and that the indigenous peoples of the Americas would be compelled to work for them. In exchange, the workers were supposed to receive the protection of the monarchy, instruction in the Catholic faith, and a small wage. However, in practice their labor was forced, and they received nothing for their labor, making them, for all intents and purpose, slaves of the colonists. Las Casas himself had such workers, given to him by the king in exchange for his services in converting the tribes to Catholicism.
By 1510, Las Casas had been ordained a priest. On the Sunday before Christmas in 1511, a fellow Dominican clergyman delivered a sermon in the church of Santo Domingo, Haiti. This marked the beginning of a movement among a number of Dominicans to help alleviate the subjugation of the Indians. The priest asked his congregation “With what right … do you keep these poor Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? … Are these not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not obliged to love them as yourselves?” These comments, considered extremely radical at the time, aroused great anger among the colonists, but guided Las Casas’s work for the rest of his life.
Eventually, Las Casas realized that challenging other encomenderos’ treatment of the indigenous people was not going to be enough to effect real change. In 1514 he freed his own slaves and began to meet with local officials to advocate on behalf of the workers. Being unable to convince either encomenderos or the authorities to change their practices, he went to Europe in 1515 to make a personal plea to King Charles I of Spain. By this time, he was not alone in his feelings; others in the Americas, mostly influential members of t