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Fray De Las Casa, to some extent participated in the conquest, but seeing the injustice, repented, and came to protect the Indians. The massacres, the atrocies.most without reason.It is a great book to be aware of the terrible end that awaited the natives at the coming of the Spaniards.
Imagine torturing a native with fire for his source of gold that is unknown,and of little value to him. A great read about the injustice the Spanish inflicted on the Tainos of the Carribean and the Aztecs of Mexico and the natives of South Americ in general.
This is a terrible death that awaited them. His incessant denail meant his death.
Worse yet, imagine a gibbet, a gallows of sorts, with 10 native dangling from it with feet just above wood and kindling. They were very cruel, considering they were supposedly civilized, and worse yet, Christians.
Its a great summary of loss and destruction
I bought this book and I was so interested in it. Once I started comparing it to a copy I had online I saw so many typographical errors (fifty instead of fifteen, palce instead of place) in the first few pages. I do recommend this book but by another publisher.
This first person account of the aftermath of Columbus and the Spanish is an important read from the time period. When so much has been misleading about the time period, at least form a public school textbook view, I found this book a necessary view of reality. Granted, the author completely agreed that the "natives" needed God, but he finally learned that the violence that accompanied the Spanish did not bring the Americans closer to God.
Further, "Short Account" is arguably the first human rights report. He dedicated "short account" to King Philip II, in the hope that once he was aware of the atrocities, he would put a stop to them, as any good kings would. Casas' account has a sense of urgency that things matters might still be reversed. He stood above the men of his time, and contributed, willingly or not, to modern ideas such as liberation theology and human rights theory.
For instance, Casas claims that in Mexico City, the conquistadors herded the natives into a temple and burned it. We don't know the pre-conquest population of the Americas with certainty, nor the number dead as a result of Spanish atrocities. The "blackguards," as he calls them, would even kill pregnant women, the elderly, and children by either burning them alive, running them through with lances, or setting vicious dogs on them. Among other things, Casas reports that the Spaniards, upon coming to the Indian villages, either tortured and killed them for the gold that they might be hiding, or forced them into slavery in gold mines. Bartolome de las Casas, a Dominican friar, witnessed first-hand the colonization of the Americas by the Spaniards, and felt it his duty to document the atrocities.
Nor is it his intent to portray Spaniards as uniquely cruel, as black legend propaganda did; Casas simply saw the Conquistadors who killed and enslaved the Indians, rather than converting them, as sinners. Finally, as other reviewers have noted, Casas advocated replacing Indian slaves with black slaves. In fact, at one point he refers to Protestant German merchants who go to the Americas as heretics, so he certainly never would have countenanced Protestant Anglo-Dutch propaganda against Spain. Supposedly, the Indians welcomed the Spaniards and offered to serve them, and were rewarded with torture, murder, and slavery. That's not to say that Casas was perfect, at least by modern standards.
Moreover, he never questioned the right of the Spanish to be there, or of Pope Alexander VI to grant sovereignty of the Americas to Spain and Portugal. "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies" is a powerful written protest against the Spanish treatment of the American Indians. He eventually realized his mistake, but it was too late. In addition, Casas definitely takes the "noble savage" angle in portraying the Indians, which is now discredited.Of course, not everything in it can be taken as literally true.
That would have been difficult, since the temple was made of stone and so could not have been set on fire. In addition, the number of dead he gives- 15 million- is impossible to verify. Interestingly, he was one of the first to explicitly say that political power comes from the consent of the governed, and that those who are oppressed by some foreign monarch claiming jurisdiction over them have every right to rebel.
Casas documents the "destruction of the indies" in what is today Haiti and the Domican Republic, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru. So in conclusion, this is a must read for those wishing to learn about renaissance, early American, ecclesiastical, and political history. In his view, one of the worst aspects of the wholesale slaughter of the Indians was that they would go straight to Hell, since they never heard the gospel or received the sacraments.
So the fact that the book became central to the "black legend" was in spite of Casas' beliefs, not because of them. But in that the Spaniards killed and plundered is not disputable, so Casas' account is more right than it is wrong.Whatever Casas' flaws were, however, he was the only one in Catholic Spain to raise a loud protest against the treatment of the Indians. It should be required reading in schools.
Focusing on the various kingdoms and territories destroyed by the Spanish, Las Casas uses a very standard format: the Spanish arrive, are treated with kindness by the native people, and then kill/rob/enslave anyone they can get their hands on. There's certainly no denying the importance of de Las Casas' written account of the atrocities committed by the Spanish against the native inhabitants of Central and South America. The accounts Las Casas provides are terrifying and tragic, yet they can become quite repetative. Not only is the author's account moving and heart-breaking, but it's impact on the course of world events and public opinion have been quite profound (whether or not most people realize it). If you're an anthropology, history or social science student, you should definitely read this book.For the lay reader though, here is a word of caution: this isn't a personnal narrative about Las Casas' life in "the new world" or an ethnography. It's important to bear in mind that this book is the work of a humanitarian who wanted desperately to halt the brutality he saw happening around him; this is not a work of fiction meant to entertain. If you can look at this book for what it is, I think you can appreciate it.
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