Daniel Castro's Examination of Las Casas' Work

In Santa Biblia: The Bible Through Hispanic Eyes, Justo L. González invites the reader to read the Bible in fresh ways, and gain insight from the perspective of “those who claim their Hispanic identity as part of their hermeneutical baggage, and who also read the Scripture within the context of a commitment to the Latino struggle to become all that God wants us and all of the world to be—in other words, the struggle for salvation/liberation.” (González 1996, 28-29) Published hot on the heels of the quincentennial of Columbus’ voyage to the new world, and abreast of discussions taking place in the larger Hispanic community, González’s book is both timely and well researched.

Matthew Restall, a Professor of Latin American History, Women’s Studies, and Anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. He also serves the Director of the university’s Latin Studies. Throughout “Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest,” he discusses many false truths that have been passed down through history. For instance, he discusses, “The Myth of Exceptional Men.” “The Myth of Spanish Army,” and “The Myth of Completion.” For the sake of time, I will discuss three myths that correlate with class lectures and serve as the topic of this paper, “The Myth of Exceptional Men,” “The Myth of the King’s Army,” and the “Myth of the White Conquistador.” It should be noted that Restall speaks to his audience assuring us that his “...his purpose is not to degenerate this technique of historical writing completely...Nor do I mean to create a narrative in which individual action is utterly subordinated to the larger structural forces and causes of social change.” (4). He states that his intentions are to react to more than just the works of Columbus, Pizzaro, and Cortez.

The Spanish-American War was considered short lived and relatively mild in terms of American casualties compared to the many wars that our nation has fought. However, it served as a historical marker that set the imperialistic momentum of our nation. It played a significant role in our nation’s strategic move towards acquiring trade routes and further strengthened our naval power. Throughout my research paper I will touch on what led to the Cuban revolution against Spain, America’s political climate at the time, and why our nation eventually decided to intervene and aid the Cubans in their fight for independence.

Convinced of the superiority of Catholicism to all other religions, Spain insisted that the primary goal of colonization was to save the Indians from heathenism and prevent them from falling under the sway of Protestantism. The aim was neither to exterminate nor to remove the Indians, but to transform them into obedient Christian subjects of the crown. To the Spanish colonizers, the large native populations of the Americas were not only souls to be saved but also a labor force to be organized to extract gold and silver that would enrich their mother country. Las Casas’ writings and the abuses they exposed contributed to the spread of the Black Legend-the image of Spain as a uniquely brutal and exploitative colonizer. This would provide of a potent justification for other European powers to challenge Spain’s predominance in the New World.

Casas has a positive attitude towards the natives although it is extremely apparent that those around him do not feel the same. He wants to improve the relations between them and the so – called Spanish Christians, which is why he is writing about these horrors. His approach in improving the relations is to write a brutally honest account of what he witnessed to share with others. He wants the Spanish to realize the brutality they have bestowed upon the natives is unsettling and barbaric for people who call themselves civilized. In this writing, he doesn’t outright tell anyone what to do, but it is implied that he wants the murders and slavery of the natives to end. His story portrays the negative relations between the natives and Europeans from the very beginning of the discovery of the New World.

In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Bartolomé de Las Casas vividly describes the brutality wrought on the natives in the Americas by the Europeans primarily for the purpose of proclaiming and spreading the Christian faith. Las Casas originally intended this account to reach the royal administration of Spain; however, it soon found its way into the hands of many international readers, especially after translation. Bartolomé de Las Casas illustrates an extremely graphic and grim reality to his readers using literary methods such as characterization, imagery, amplification, authorial intrusion and the invocation of providence while trying to appeal to the sympathies of his audience about such atrocities.

Ramon Gutierrez’s When Jesus Came, The Corn Mothers Went Away is an exploration of the merging of Spanish, Franciscan and Pueblo Indian cultures throughout Spain's “frontier” in its colonial American empire before Anglo contact. Gutierrez builds a foundation for his analysis by discussing Pueblo Indian life prior to outside contact, Franciscan theology, and the class structure of Spanish communities in each of its respective book sections. He examines meanings of the cultural interactions of gift exchange, ownership, trade, sexual rights, labor, kinship, social status, religious beliefs, and honor among many others using marriage as a window. His interpretation of the complex cultural meanings of marriage illustrates the ways in which the

The book Ambivalent Conquests, by Inga Clendinnen, is very illuminating read for anyone wanting to know more about the events between the Spaniards and the Maya peoples of the Yucatan Peninsula. The book is separated into two separate parts: the Spaniard and the Indians. In the Spaniards section, Clendinnen wrote of the arrival of the Spanish in search of gold, and the attempts of the Christianization by missionaries. The second part, Indians, covered the way the Maya viewed the Spaniards arrival and following attempts of Christianization. The overall theme of the book was the continuing idolatry by the Mayans in the eyes of the Franciscans who tried to Christianize them and the actions taken by the Franciscans as a response.

separate how De Las Casas might have been an outspoken critic of the Spanish’s treatment of indigenous people, and how he was still a part of a repressive institution. Finally, I

An important aspect of Todorov's thesis is his well-supported claim that it was precisely the claim to European racial superiority that Christianity strongly reinforced and provided justification for the actions of the Spanish, even in its most severe manifestation. In fact, Todorov invokes the unimaginably horrible image of Catholic priests bashing Indian baby's heads against rocks, allegedly to save them from damnation to hell, which their "savage" culture would have otherwise consigned them to. The logic of this deed and others like them illustrates the destructive influence of Christianity in the Colonial project, which lies at the root of the hegemonic self-image of Western experience--first defined from the perspective of Columbus and Cortes.

The first instance of colonialism forced upon the inhabitants of the Dominican Republic was the “discovery” by Christopher Columbus on October 12, 1492. Ernesto Sagas and Orlando Inoa presented the interaction in their book The Dominican People: A Documentary History. The confrontation between these two diametrically opposed cultures proved to be “far from equal; the Amerindians’ Stone Age culture was no match for European military technology. The initial encounter took place on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, part of which is now the Dominican Republic” (Inoa pg. 1). This was the first step in a trek through five and a half centuries of Dominican Republic history, and unfortunately much of it was filled with

The following students papers were accepted by the CUNY Dominican Studies Institute to add to their Archive:

Bartolome de Las Casas, was a friar and latter a Dominican, who is considered by many as one of the few authors who does justice to the native people of the New World. Casas has a particular purpose on his writings, that being letting the King of Spain at that time Charles V know, of the miseries that were being done to the native people of the New World. De Las Casas does not condemn the arrival of the Spanish in this new land, nor does he condemn the conversion of these gentle and innocent people to Christianity, however, he condemns the measures taken to convert these people into Christianity. He is one of the few writers that extends in different places, and it is certain that he was one of the few who travelled all around the New World.

Written in the mid 1500's, when Spain's perception of the monarch was divine and strongly linked to the Catholic Church one can draw the conclusion that each party (both the crown and De Las Casas) had a political interest in this situation. De Las Casas repetitively speaks of the horrific treatment of the Natives by the Spanish settlers and then cleverly draws a connection to the divinity and purity of the crown by stating that such terrible events could only have occurred because the monarch was unaware of what was going on. Due to the connection between politics and the Catholic Church, De Las Casas' writings were taken into serious consideration by the King who was having his own concerns regarding the Americas.

The alternate destiny of Cuba described by Perez-Stable was a realistic possibility, but the "class and state alliances that might have sustained such a transition never quite consolidated, and those that supported the revolution and its radicalization in 1959 did" (Perez-Stable, 35). Castro’s revolutionary movement unified the clases