Las Casas, who had an encomienda in Cuba, described the forced labor conditions and wanton killings in wrenching detail. He had lost all confidence in the ability of his compatriots to treat the Indians in a Christian way. By way of remedies he suggested that Indians and Spaniards live in separate communities, a measure that to some extent was later put in place in Peru, not so much to protect the Indians as to better exploit their labor. The idea that the Indians should be left in communities of their own was predicated on the notion that they had demonstrable intelligence to rule themselves, even though they still needed the light of Christianity to fully achieve their divinely intended purpose on earth. Thus the Indian communities would be put under the care and tutelage of an evangelizing priest. This idea of separate communities was later embraced by Guamán Poma, who also wrote to the king in search of relief from the death toll of the conquest and Spanish rule. Guamán Poma, however, went beyond Las Casas in that he would also expel the priests about whose greed and unchristian practices he writes a scathing tract in his El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno (1615).
The reforms spelled out in the Memorial de remedios constituted the seedbed for many of the later attempts by the evangelizing orders and even some crown officials to engage in what Las Casas envisioned as a peaceful conversation. His stance in defense of the Indians against the charges made by the school of Spanish imperial jurists, theologians, and historians (Brading, 1991: 2–75) has earned Las Casas the title of defender and protector of the Indians. He is also credited as the progenitor of the modern idea of human, that is, universal, rights.
As we shall see below, Las Casas went even further. After the killings of Moctezuma and Atahualpa, he argued that pagan civilizations had the right to keep their governments, and their members were entitled to restitution of the goods and life the conquerors had usurped. All of this swimming against the current earned him the hatred of many people in both the colonies and Spain. During his long life (1474–1566) he was feared, despised, and opposed by many who saw him as the enemy of Spain. Indeed, from the official point of view among Spanish historians, he was and is still regarded as the architect of what they called the Black Legend – the myriad facts and arguments that together question the legitimacy of Spain’s right to conquer and govern Amerindian societies, together with the unmitigated and unavoidable condemnation of the destruction of the Amerindians. The polemic that Las Casas’s criticism of conquest fueled with his Memorial dominated the whole of the sixteenth century, and nowhere was it heard more loudly or did it play a stronger role than in the dynamics of memory and writing of the former Tahuantinsuyo.
Las Casas crossed the Atlantic several times as he sought to obtain changes in policy in Spain and see them implemented in the New World. What he saw in his many journeys to Venezuela, Mexico, and Nicaragua never ceased to astound and shock him. Peaceful conversation was not even an idea in the heads of most of the evangelizing priests. In his Del único modo de atraer a todos los pueblos a la verdadera religión (1530–40), he argued that all peoples of the world were endowed with the same human qualities and cognitive faculties and that God had predestined all souls for salvation. This universalist argument could, however, be interpreted in two opposing ways. On the one hand, it could support the idea of a God–given human universal condition of all peoples, but on the other, it made conversion only the more urgent. In order to stem the force of the second reading, Las Casas argued that the Gospel should be predicated slowly and peacefully, that evangelists should seek to persuade and engage the cognitive capacities of peoples who, like all men endowed with natural enlightenment, sought to know the true God. Preaching was thus coupled with persuasion, an appeal to knowledge and love (Brading, 1991: 64). The violence of the conquest had created impossible conditions for the proper preaching of the Gospel, and it should stop, he argued.
The news from the Americas was shocking and alarming to many Europeans and there developed a great deal of pressure for reform. The pope finally declared the Indians to have souls. Las Casas’s most radical denunciation of Spain and proposals for change were published in his summary work Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1542). In this text he draws stark differences. Resting on the idea that the discovery of America was an act of divine providence, an idea that Garcilaso de la Vega would later exploit also, Las Casas paints the Indians as gentle and humble human beings in virtual expectation of conversion. The Spaniards, in contrast, are nothing but thieves and tyrants. They burn, torture, murder, enslave, and rape at will, as most eyewitness accounts attest. His proposal for radical reform not only recommends the abolition of the encomienda, but also the idea that once the Indians are converted and Spain has accomplished its duty as provided by God, the Spanish should retreat from America, a suggestion not lost in Guamán Poma, who not only promises the king good Indians (Christian vassals) but also unimaginable tribute. The restoration of Andean order and wealth will only be possible if the Spanish retreat to the coastal cities and leave the Andeans to govern themselves.
In 1542 the Spanish crown came out with new legislation for governing the colonies. Known as the New Laws, and in part influenced by Las Casas’s critique and recommendations for better government, the New Laws were rejected by the colonists. Civil war broke out in Peru and more Andeans were compelled to fight and die in the opposing armies of the Pizarros, Almagros, and other sundry caudillos. Las Casas, deeply influenced by Augustine’s City of God and the difference in the social orders created by the love of God as against the love of self, continued to question the entire legitimacy of the Spanish empire (Brading, 1991: 78). Derived from Augustine’s On the Predestination and the Gift of Perseverance, the idea of the providential discovery of America provides Las Casas with an explanation for the failure of the Spanish to establish the city of God in America. Carried away by the self–love that rules in the earthly city, the Spanish acted as if inspired by the devil (Brading, 1991: 76). The paramount role that providence plays in the polemics and policies of conquest and relations with other civilizations is only comparable to the extended functions invested in the Devil (Cervantes, 1994: 5–75) as the chief presider over the construction of Amerindian “otherness,” or colonial difference.
In response to the barrage of questions brought about by the vociferous interventions of Las Casas, Charles V called for a “junta” or meeting of jurists and theologians. The chief questions to be put to rest in Valladolid in 1550–1 were the human status of the Indians and the problematic behavior of the conquerors, never Spain’s right to dominion over the earth. The jury was composed of Dominican theologians and the two debaters were to be Las Casas, the friar, and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda (1490–1573), the lawyer, known as a defender of the imperial rights of the Spanish crown. The chief debaters never saw each other over the long year in which the debate took place. When Las Casas’s turn came he took five days to read his Apologetica historia to the judges
In the debate at Valladolid Las Casas had to contend not only with Sepúlveda, but also with another, absent adversary. Juan López de Palacios Rubios (1450–1524) had been one of the first Spanish jurists to come to the defense of Spanish lawful right to empire. He based his arguments on scholastic theology and medieval canon law rather than civil law. As far as he could reason and, basing himself on Aristotle, the Indians were “slaves by nature” in need of tutelage and correction before they could be fit for self–rule. This argument, like several of Las Casas’s arguments, would also reverberate through the centuries and can even be found today when “modern” democracies demand to be regarded and adopted as the universal model.
Palacios Rubios also worked very cleverly in finding an imperial genealogy for the pope’s political authority over the world. He argued that the world had seen four previous, universal “monarchies” – Assyrians, Medes, Greeks, and Romans – before Christ had inaugurated the fifth and