Author: Daniel Castro
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822389592
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 247
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Spanish cleric Bartolomé de Las Casas is a key figure in the history of Spain’s conquest of the Americas. Las Casas condemned the torture and murder of natives by the conquistadores in reports to the Spanish royal court and in tracts such as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). For his unrelenting denunciation of the colonialists’ atrocities, Las Casas has been revered as a noble protector of the Indians and as a pioneering anti-imperialist. He has become a larger-than-life figure invoked by generations of anticolonialists in Europe and Latin America. Separating historical reality from myth, Daniel Castro provides a nuanced, revisionist assessment of the friar’s career, writings, and political activities. Castro argues that Las Casas was very much an imperialist. Intent on converting the Indians to Christianity, the religion of the colonizers, Las Casas simply offered the natives another face of empire: a paternalistic, ecclesiastical imperialism. Castro contends that while the friar was a skilled political manipulator, influential at what was arguably the world’s most powerful sixteenth-century imperial court, his advocacy on behalf of the natives had little impact on their lives. Analyzing Las Casas’s extensive writings, Castro points out that in his many years in the Americas, Las Casas spent very little time among the indigenous people he professed to love, and he made virtually no effort to learn their languages. He saw himself as an emissary from a superior culture with a divine mandate to impose a set of ideas and beliefs on the colonized. He differed from his compatriots primarily in his antipathy to violence as the means for achieving conversion.
Author: Paul S. Vickery
Publisher: Paulist Press
ISBN: 0809143674
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 231
Get Book Here
Book Description
"Bartolome de las Casas (1484-1566) came to the New World in pursuit of material wealth, became virtually a slave owner, and ended up suddenly and dramatically turning his life around to become a Dominican friar and the first great champion of the Native Americans. Daring to challenge the Spanish encontienda system, which was little more than a justification of forced labor, Las Casas, in the spirit of the great Hebrew Prophets, spoke out unequivocally for justice and freedom for oppressed peoples. His The Only Way, which argued that the native peoples of the Americas are fully human, can rightly be called one of the seminal documents of American Catholic social justice." "In this biography, Paul Vickery focuses especially upon Las Casas's "conversion" journey. Drawing upon Las Casas's own words and actions, Vickery describes the historical setting and specific events leading up to Las Casas's spiritual awakening and then interprets this experience in light of his message for us today. Students of history, Western civilization, and social justice will find here an original and provocative text about Colonial Latin America and Native American studies, while students of ethics will find much food for thought in its treatment of questions of conscience and the moral choices with which we are confronted."--BOOK JACKET.
Author: Bartolomé de las Casas
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Bartolomé de las Casas
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504078586
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 96
Get Book Here
Book Description
A Spanish friar documents the brutal treatment of Caribbean natives at the hands of colonial authorities in the sixteenth century. After traveling to the New World, Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas witnessed conquistadors wreak unimaginable horrors upon the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. He later dedicated his life to fighting for their protection. Following numerous failed attempts to reason with authorities in Spain, he chose to document everything he had seen over a span of fifty years and to give it to Spain’s Prince Philip II. In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Las Casas catalogues the atrocities he observed the Spanish colonial authorities inflict upon the native people. He discusses the brutal torture, mass genocide, and enslavement. He passionately pleas for an end to this treatment and for the native peoples to be given basic human rights.
Author: Bartolomé de las Casas
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780875800424
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Get Book Here
Book Description
Author: Gustavo Gutierrez
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1592441386
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 705
Get Book Here
Book Description
In this passionate work, the pioneering author of 'A Theology of Liberation' delves into the life, thought, and contemporary meaning of Bartolome de Las Casas, sixteenth-century Dominican priest, prophet, and Defender of the IndiansÓ in the New World. Writing against the backdrop of the fifth centenary of the conquest of the Americas, Gutierrez seeks in the remarkable figure of Las Casas the roots of a different history and a gospel uncontaminated by force and exploitation.
Author: Henry Raup Wagner
Publisher: Albuquerque : University of New Mexico Press
ISBN:
Category : Indians of North America
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Get Book Here
Book Description
Bartolomé de las Casas spent 50 years of his life actively fighting slavery and the violent colonial abuse of indigenous peoples, especially by trying to convince the Spanish court to adopt a more humane policy of colonization. And although he failed to save the indigenous peoples of the Western Indies, his efforts resulted in several improvements in the legal status of the natives, and in an increased colonial focus on the ethics of colonialism. Las Casas is often seen as one of the first advocates for universal Human Rights. he was also appointed as Bishop of Chiapas, a newly established diocese of which he took possession in 1545 upon his return to the New World. He was consecrated in the Dominican Church of San Pablo on march 30th 1544, the ceremonied being officiated by two Bishops instead of by archbishop Loaysa who strongly disliked Las Casas.[54] As a Bishop Las Casas was involved in frequent conflicts with the encomenderos and secular of his diocese, among them the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo. In a Pastoral letter issued on march 20th 1545 he refused absolution to slave owners and encomenderos even on their death bed, unless all their slaves had been set free and their property restituted to them.[55] Las Casas furthermore threatened that anyone who mistreated Indians within his jurisdiction would be ex-communicated. He also came into conflict with the Bishop of Guatemala Francisco Marroquín, to whose jurisdiction the diocese had previously belonged. Bishop Marroquín openly defied the New Laws to Las Casas's dismay. The New Laws were repealed on October 20, 1545, and riots broke out against Las Casas.[55] After a year he had made himself so unpopular among the Spaniards of the area that he had to leave.
Author: Lawrence A. Clayton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107001218
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 507
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Dominican priest Bartolomé de las Casas (1485-1566) was a prominent chronicler of the early Spanish conquest of the Americas, a noted protector of the American Indians, and arguably the most significant figure in the early Spanish Empire after Christopher Columbus. Following an epiphany in 1514, Las Casas fought the Spanish control of the Indies for the rest of his life, writing vividly about the brutality of the Spanish conquistadors. Once a settler and exploiter of the American Indians, he became their defender, breaking ground for the modern human rights movement. Las Casas brought his understanding of Christian scripture to the forefront in his defense of the Indians, challenging the premise that the Indians of the New World were any less civilized or capable of practicing Christianity than Europeans. Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biography is the first major English-language and scholarly biography of Las Casas' life in a generation.
Author: Bartolomé de las Casas
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9781556127175
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382
Get Book Here
Book Description
Intended for classroom use, work contains 47 pages from Las Casas' life of Columbus plus 24 other selections--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.
Author: Bartolomé De Las Casas
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
ISBN: 1603844945
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189
Get Book Here
Book Description
Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain's conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolomé de Las Casas dedicated his Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brevísima Relación catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king’s colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonization of it.
