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Instructions

The "Lascasian moment" is coming to an end. The "imperial" writers immediately following him will be much more supportive of Spain and its right to rule. And so we are moving on from Las Casas and "The Affair of the Indies," as Las Casas' historical moment is known by historians. I have spent half the class on Las Casas and "The Affair..." because it has always struck me as a singularly important moment in history. Las Casas lived to be 82 years old and began his life in the Indies at the age of 18. And so for sixty-four years he was at the center of the Spanish discovery, conquest, and colonization of Latin America. I believe we should view his life as what the philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre, called a "singular universal." This is to see in his individual life and projects the incarnation of a total historical moment. It is how, as Sartre would have said, his thought remains "radioactive" and he speaks to us today as if still among the living. At the age of 80, Las Casas came full circle and wrote his last great work, "The Treatise of the Twelve Doubts." In the work he posed a series of questions, or doubts, on Atahualpa's ransom, tributes to encomenderos, gold and silver from the mines of Postos, tomb treasures, and the Spanish conquest of Peru. In the work he wrote, "From the beginning until now (January, 1564), Spain's entire invasion and misgovernment of the Indies has been wrong and tyrannical; and from 1510 on, no Spaniard there can claim good faith as an excuse for wars, discoveries, the slave trade, or the munitions business." What followed was an entire rejection of the complete history of the Spanish colonization of the Indies.In the work, Las Casas called for the complete compensation to the Indians of all the tribute that had been extracted from them by the crown, the encomenderos, and the church. He called for the return to them of all the lands taken by the Spanish. And lastly, he called for the restoration of Indian political sovereignty and rule in the Americas, and for the Spanish to withdraw from the Americas and return to Spain. Surely he must have recognized how unrealistic this all was. And so I believe that before his death, he wanted to make a final statement for posterity. We see in him a man who went in search of glory and tribute. Was then converted into a reformer. Then became a passionate radical within the institutions of Spain. A man who when he first came to the defense of the Indians, recommended African slaves be brought in to do the tribute labor in the mines, and who later repented this recommendation and became what was--as far as I know--the first European to write against the African slave trade. He wrote a secular defense and analysis of the Indian societies, and ended with "The Twelve Doubts."In this Discussion, I would like you to comment on the Las Casas readings, "Defense of Indian Civilization (from the Apologetic History) and his "Defense of Human Sacrifice," written after the first rounds of the Great Debate. Lastly, I would like you to reflect on his life as a whole. What are your thoughts and judgments of him? Was he extraordinary, a man of his times, a little of both? Were you surprised by him, or not? Does he speak to you and your concerns today? In short I am looking for a "summing up" of the man and his life and practices, along with your feelings about this historical individual. That is all. But since that is a lot to chew on, I guess that is more than enough.

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