Bartolomé de las Casas: A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484-1566) went to the New World in 1502 at the age of eighteen. He became a land trustee (encomendero) and, like many of his peers, participated in raids to capture new slaves, who routinely died in violent resistance to Spanish control. He became the first priest ordained in the Americas in 1510, although he continued to run a colonial estate and participated in the invasions of new lands in the Caribbean region. In the year 1514, after reflecting on the atrocities he had witnessed during the conquest of Cuba, he had a change of heart and a conversion of will. He freed his slaves, abandoned his estate, and spent the rest of his life trying to reform the abuses of Spanish colonial practices. As noted above, his persistence resulted in the promulgation of the New Laws of the Indies in 1542. Although colonial oppression by no means ended in the New World, de las Casas's humanitarian efforts marks the beginning of the very concept of modern human rights in Spanish America. In 1552 he published a memoir about his experiences in the New World, A Brief History of the Destruction of the Indies.

de las Casas was part of a Spanish colonial empire that began in 1492 with the Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus (1451-1506). In that year Columbus discovered and claimed a chain of islands in the Caribbean for the Catholic monarchs of Spain (Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile). The conquest of these new territories led to an aggressive colonization project that quickly brought the Caribbean and surrounding coastal areas under Spanish control. Benefitting from the direct patronage of the Crown, Spanish conquistadors and colonies of settlers began to transform the economy and ecology of the region through the establishment of a political, economic, and social system known as the encomienda. The encomienda were grants of “New World” land given to trustees called encomendero. These trustees were commissioned to produce wealth on the land by farming, mining, or manufacturing, and typically did so through the oppression and violent control of indigenous populations. In addition to organizing the labor of indigenous people, the encomendero were also obligated to convert them to the Christian faith and provide for their “protection” as new Christians and Spanish royal subjects. The entire system, which in theory imitated the economic and social structure of feudal Spain, in fact became a system of slave labor and ruthless exploitation in its Caribbean incarnation. As the Spaniards expanded their colonial control to the mainlands of Meso- and South America, they expanded the operations of the encomienda system along with it.

Between 1519 and 1521 the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes conquered the Aztec Empire. This was followed by conquests of the Mayan and the Incan peoples in 1523 and 1532, which eliminated Spain's strong American rivals and added greatly to Spanish territorial possessions. The Viceroyalty of New Spain, officially formed in 1535, became the hub of a vast colonial empire that far exceeded Spain in land and population and eventually stretched from North America to the northern region of present-day Argentina.

From the earliest days of the Spanish colonial enterprise, tensions between the soldier- conquistadors (seeking governorships and prestige), farmer-settlers (seeking land and wealth), and priest-missionaries (seeking converts and an opportunity to plant the seeds of an American Church) often erupted into open conflict. The Council of the Indies, formed in 1524, was a royal body for the political, economic, and spiritual administration of the colonies. In cases of disagreement, which were unceasing, all parties sought the intervention of the king, whose own ends were also often in conflict. In response to the persistent urging of churchmen like the author of this document, Bartolomé de las Casas, King Carlos I (also Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor) enacted the New Laws of the Indies in 1542. These Laws abolished the encomienda and ended the enslavement of indigenous Americans. As the Laws were contested by several encomendero, and simply ignored by others, a follow-on council in the Spanish city of Valladolid was convened in 1550 with the purpose of shoring up the New Laws, and affirming the subject rights of indigenous peoples. The king, whose authority was absolute and whose intentions were arguably sincere, was still an ocean away from the administrators of Spanish America. Documents like the present text, which demonstrate that the New Laws were more often honored in the breach than the observance, also show the frustration and anguish of priests and colonial officials who fought for the welfare of their native subjects, yet found their efforts thwarted by the callous policies of local administrators.

de las Casas's famous memoir, from which the present extract is drawn, paints a grim picture of Spain's colonization of the New World. Started after the New Laws were in effect, it not only details the atrocities and humanitarian abuses of the Spanish conquest in the particular, it also invites all readers to contemplate the underlying violence and injustice that informed the European colonial project as a whole.