Requerimiento (1513) Commentary by Michael J. O'Neal, Ph.D.

Impact

Somewhat paradoxically, the impact of the Requerimiento was both negligible and profound. It was negligible in the sense that the intended audience was unable to understand the document, for it was read in Spanish to people who did not know Spanish. Observers noted that the document was often read to trees, empty beaches, and abandoned villages as well as from the decks of ships far out of earshot of land. One of these observers was Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Dominican friar who was appalled by Spanish treatment of the Amerindians. He wrote that when he first read the document, he did not know “whether to laugh or cry” (qtd. in Kamen, p. 97). Even the document's author, Palacios Rubios, believed that it was faintly ridiculous. One of his contemporaries wrote that Rubios “could not stop laughing when I told him what some commanders had done with it” (qtd. in Kamen, p. 97). From this point of view, the Requerimiento itself had virtually no impact at all.

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