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Casas: De Las Casas
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A biography, or rather panegyric, of Las Casas has been weritten by QUINTANA in Vidas de Españoles célebres (Madrid, 1807). See ...: YCAZBALCETA, Documentos para la Historia de México (Mexico, 1866), II, and Bibliografía Méxicana del Siglo XVI (Mexico, 1886). Passing over the innumerable more or less correct sketches and mentions of Las Casas in modern works, the sources may be noted which date from the lifetime of the celebrated Dominican. GOMARA, Historia general de las Indias (Saragossa, 1522; Medina del Campo, 1553; Antwerp, 1554; Saragossa, 1555). A most important but partial source is OVIEDO, Historia general y natural de las Indias (Madrid, 1850). From the beginning of the seventeenth century there is HERRERA, Historia de los Hechos de los Castellanos en las Islas y Tierra firme del Marocéano (Madrid, 1601-15; Antwerp, 1728; Madrid, 1726-30).
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Bartholomé de Las Casas was the most distinguished of a number of Dominican friars who raised their voices against the rapacious violence inflicted on the Indians of the Americas. Las Casas was not content to denounce the excesses of the Conquest. Reading the gospel from the perspective of what he called "the scourged Christ of the Indies," he articulated a theological understanding of religious freedom, human rights, and the relation between salvation and social justice, that was scarcely matched again in the Catholic church before the Second Vatican Council. Five hundred years after the collision of cultures in the Americas, Las Casas is chiefly recognized as a prophet, who anticipated by many centuries the church's "preferential option for the poor."
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Since its restoration two years ago, the colonial cathedral of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, in Chiapas, has witnessed extraordinary events. Following the surprise Zapatista revolt of January 1994, masked Maya rebels led by the pipe-smoking Subcomandante Marcos held dramatic public negotiations here with top Mexican officials. The Cathedral facade shown here was recently refurbished and repainted in the original colors - a spectacular sight! You can see at http://www.colonial-mexico.com/junenews.html. Read more about The Cathedral of San Cristóbal and the other colonial monuments of the city in the Chiapas guidebook, More Maya Missions linked below. Drawing by Richard Perry.
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To the end of a long life Las Casas fought passionately for justice for his beloved Indians. As part of his campaign in their defense, he wrote numerous tracts and books. The world generally knows him best for his flaming indictment of Spanish cruelty to the Indians, Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552), a work based largely on official reports to the Crown and soon translated into the major European languages. Historians regard most highly his Historia de las Indias, which is indispensable to every student of the first phase of the Spanish conquest. His Apologética historia de las Indias is an immense accumulation of ethnographic data designed to demonstrate that the Indians fully met the requirements laid down by Aristotle for the good life.
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Las Casas left no linguistic contributions like those of Marroquin, Betanzos, Molina, and other devoted priests. He was... a prolific writer, though not all of his writings have ben published. The "Historia apologética de las Indias", for instance, has been only partly printed in the "Documentos para la Historia de España" (Madrid, 1876). The "Historia de las Indias", the manuscript of which he completed in 1561, appeared in the same collection (1875 and 1876). His best-known work is the "Brevísima Relacion de la Destruycion de las Indias" (Seville, 1552). There are at least five Spanish editions of it. It circulated very quickly outside of Spain and in a number of European languages.
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Bartolome de Las Casas was born in Seville, Spain, in 1474. In 1502 he went to Cuba, and for his military services there was given an Encomienda, an estate that included the services of the Indians living on it. In about 1513 he was ordained priest (probably the first ordination in the Americas), and in 1514 he renounced all claim on his Indian serfs. During the following seven years he made several voyages to Spain to find support for a series of new towns in which Spaniard and Indian would live together in peace and equality. In 1523 he became a Dominican friar and disappeared for a time from public controversy. In 1540 he returned to Spain and was a force behind the passage in 1542 of laws prohibiting Indian slavery and safeguarding the rights of the Indians. He was made Bishop of Chiapas in Guatemala, and returned to the Americas in 1544 to implement the new laws, but he met considerable resistance, and in 1547 he returned to Spain, where he devoted the rest of his life to speaking and writing on behalf of the Indians.
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De Las Casas