Bartolome De Las Casas: An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies

There are two sides to every story and the fact that De Las Casas takes the side of the indigenous people as opposed to his native Spain is especially poignant. The writing style is repetitive, old world and filled with the horrors of war but De Las Casas does this to especially hammer home his point. He gives examples, over and over, of the injustices carried out by Cortez and Pizarro throughout the Americas from Mexico to Peru, under the auspices of the flag and cross, all in the name of God and country. It is a first hand report on the atrocities that greed and glory created. It was a plea for his King to understand how his representatives abroad and the encomienda had drifted far from the ideals originally intended and pursued. The woodcuts reproduced from a 17th century version are especially telling of the cruelties imposed with graphic examples. There are groups of people being strung up and burned alive with their feet barely dangling above the flames. The violence was inhumane to the point where women hung themselves with their children attached and hung to their bodies rather than be a meal to the hungry dogs that assisted the Spaniards and had to be fed. The genocidal colonization became a perverted vision of evangelization that was nothing short of hell for the Indians. It is important to see the other side of colonization, as written by the “The Defender and Apostle of the Indians” to understand both sides of the story. Our education system is full of European versions of the conquest; this is the anti-European version by someone who lived the experience. Recommended for students of history that want a different perspective from the one we are most familiar with that glitters from behind a golden cross.

De Las Casas wants us to see the “Indian” population much like the liberals of today would like us to: meek, helpless, child-like, innocent, ignorant, animalistic. I think this speaks as much of prejudice as the Spaniards referring to the “natives” as dogs, but of course educated people don’t see it that way. And the good friar was a hypocrite in more ways than one: he lived for many years attended to by his personal slaves, all the while fighting for the “rights” of the natives, all the while playing master and thinking he was better than the other Spaniards because he treated his slaves well, like someone might their beloved pets.

One glaring falsity within this book that I can think of is De Las Casas’ account of Cortes’ expedition into Mexico (which of course De Las Casas himself wasn’t there to witness firsthand). Again, the “natives” – the Aztecs, in this case – are portrayed as nothing more than docile, peace-loving, childlike creatures. He mentions nothing of the warlike ways of the Aztecs, of their repeated attempts to wipe out the Spaniards, of their treachery, of their obsession with human sacrifice, of their cannibalism. Instead, we are lead to believe that the evil Cortes marched boldly into Mexico and butchered all the Aztecs and took over without hardly lifting a finger. And some events are pure fiction in themselves, bloody massacres and so forth that I’m sure any detractor of Cortes’ would have been more than happy to fabricate.

BartolomÃ?© de Las Casas, born in 1474, came to Cuba with Diego VelÃ?¡zquez’s expedition in 1511 as a soldier. In Cuba, he became an “encomendero”, receiving Indian labor parceled out to the conquistadors. The horrors of the conquest of the Caribbean sparked a religious conversion in him and he became a Dominican friar in 1515. Soon, he made his way to the Central American mainland, where he started missionary work among the Maya in Guatemala. Dubbed later “The Apostle to the Indians” for his work on their behalf, he was eventually appointed Bishop of Chiapas. An intimate friend of the Indians, fluent in their languages, Las Casas witnessed Spanish cruelties perpetrated against them between the very year of his arrival and some years before his death in Spain in 1566.

In 1552, Las Casas published his impassioned “Short Account” (actually written 13 years earlier), in which he laid bare Spanish cruelties in America. Though generally condemned as slander in Spain, the book rapidly became popular in the rest of Europe, where it served to fuel anti-Spanish hate. Spain’s enemies used it to depict Spaniards as evil tyrants and to rationalize carving out their own empires in the Americas. New editions appeared repeatedly, even as late as 1898, during the Spanish-American War.

Few credible historians take the “Account” for gospel truth. Much of what Las Casas says is certainly true. And while the rest is exaggerated, it is not “propaganda”. Whatever truth the narrative has, though, what I think many people miss when they read it is its importance in understanding the Spanish Black Legend.

The Black Legend is the perception of Spain as a uniquely cruel and bigoted nation in excess of reality. Spanish culture is boiled down to the Inquisition and the bullfight. Spain’s authors are ignored. The Spanish did nothing in the Americas but kill millions of Indians. This is the legacy of the 16th century. The substance of many European attitudes toward Spain up to about 1950 can be traced right to Las Casas’ “Account.” Appearing at the time when England and the Netherlands were emerging as major powers, grappling with Spain, the imagery from the book was woven right into their national mythologies. Because of historical circumstance, other nations that committed atrocities far worse than Spain’s – France, Britain, the United States – never had to undergo the same humiliating scrutiny, the same alienation. Las Casas’s book, certainly against its author’s will, helped shape this.

There are more reliable accounts of the “destruction of the West Indies”, including some by Las Casas. The account’s real value is the key it offers to understanding Western perceptions of Spain. Like so many anti-Spanish documents of its time, the book, in the end, can tell us as much about the fascinating figure of its author and the character of Spain’s enemies as about the horrors of the conquest and the nation it vilifies.