The Spanish Polemic on Colonisation
Part two: Bartolomé de Las Casas as colonial reformer (3)
Introducing Bartolomé de Las Casas
Bartolomé de Las Casas was born in 1484 in Seville. On his father’s side he was descended from conversos, i.e. Jews who had converted to Christianity. Some of his admirers and some of his detractors have tried to relate this to his political career, but there does not seem to be any evidence of how he felt about his origins. (13)
His father was an unsuccessful merchant who joined Columbus on his second voyage. When he returned, one of the presents that he gave his son was an Indian slave. Afterwards, finding that his business in Spain still didn’t prosper, he went back to the Indies with a new governor, Nicolás Ovando, in 1502, and this time Bartolomé went also. He was about 18 and it seems he had already become a cleric on the lowest level (taking the tonsure). Later he became a priest, but when or where is unclear. He performed his first mass on Hispaniola in 1510.
For about 13 years he was an ordinary colonist, farming and doing some business as a merchant. He insists that he treated his Indians well, but he did require them to till his land and dig for gold, and like everyone else he neglected the duty of making them good Christians. Whether as an armed or an unarmed cleric (it isn’t clear), he participated in military campaigns, and he was present at one appalling massacre of Indians which Ovando engineered by treachery – it was like what would happen in Ireland a few decades later, at Mullaghmast. After the slaughter some fugitives were rounded up and dispensed as slaves, and Las Casas received one. (We know all this from his own testimony.)
Ovando, apart from being a mass murderer, was a sociologist. As governor his original instructions were to abolish the system invented by Columbus, whereby Indians were assigned to colonists for forced labour. Instead he was to establish a PAYE system: all Indians were to become state employees and would pay a regular tribute from their daily wages. A year was sufficient time for Ovando to convince himself that this could not be done. He successfully applied for new instructions permitting him to assign the Indians to the colonists. The new royal order said: “Because of the excessive liberty the Indians have been permitted, they flee from Christians and do not work. Therefore they are to be compelled to work, so that the kingdom and the Spaniards may be enriched, and the kingdom Christianised. They are to be paid a daily wage, and well treated as free persons for such they are, and not slaves.” (14)
Such was the formula, apparently crisp and clear. In practice, it proved to be about as clear as the paradox of the barber of Seville, who shaves every man in Seville who does not shave himself.
The colonists were rough customers. An analysis of the encomenderos (official beneficiaries of forced labour) in Panama in 1519 showed that a third of them were peasants or artisans, with a lesser group of small merchants and bureaucrats. Slightly more than half were professional soldiers and sailors, many from the lesser gentry or hidalgo class (hidalgo is from hijo de algo, “son of something”). In general, the hidalgos wanted big winnings (as Cortés once contemptuously pointed out, prior to his Mexican expedition, when someone offered him a piece of land), while the peasants wanted to be something like hidalgos. Their rightful reward for the difficulties and dangers they had surmounted was that they should never again have to work. Nobody wanted to be a Spanish peasant in America. (15)
Much like the typical 19th century English capitalist, the 16th century Spanish colonist did not care about his labourers’ welfare. The Indians were not owned, so they could not be sold or passed on to heirs. They could only be used, or used up. And so they were worked to death.
Ovando, while administering this system, may have realised that the massive Indian death rate would present long-term problems. Anyhow, on his own initiative he selected the two Indian chieftains who seemed to have adapted best to Spanish ways, absorbing Spanish culture, and he gave each of them an Indian labour force to manage independently, just like a Spanish colonist. “Ovando granted them a repartimiento of Indians, so that they might live like other Spaniards, and favored them in every possible way." What happened when they were left to their own devices? One chieftain was habitually drunk with his wife. The other proved such a poor manager that he and his wife ate in one day the food laid away for a week. Neither couple showed any interest in mining gold or in ordering their Indians to do so. Instead, they passed their days dancing, drinking and doing “other contemptible things” as of old.” This pilot venture was sustained for six years, and then finally the Indians were deprived of their repartimientos. “Thus the first sociological experiment in America ended,” Lewis Hanke remarked. (16)
But while the experiment was still going on, the existing colonial practice was publicly condemned. Dominican preachers in Hispaniola challenged the colonists. Las Casas later reported what they said: “By what right or justice do you keep these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged a detestable war against these people, who dwelt quietly and peacefully on their own land?... Why do you keep them so oppressed and weary, not giving them enough to eat nor taking care of them in their illness? For with the excessive work you demand of them they fall ill and die, or rather you kill them with your desire to extract and acquire gold every day. And what care do you take that they should be instructed in religion?... Are these not men? Have they not rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves?... Be certain that, in such a state as this, you can no more be saved than the Moors or Turks.” (17)
An issue such as this had to be referred to Spain, where it started an unending argument and produced some immediate results. Ambitious theoretical statements were made about the nature of the Indians, their freedom and its limits. For example, one of the king’s preachers “proved dialectically that although the Indians were free, yet idleness was one of the greatest evils from which they suffered, and it was the King’s duty to help them overcome it”. (18) And therefore, although they were free, they had to be kept in some kind of servitude. Aristotle’s idea that certain peoples were naturally slaves had just been rediscovered and was coming into fashion, though the Spanish theologians were cautious when they applied this to America. More positively, although only on paper, there was a set of laws which codified the treatment of the Indians in detail and aimed to protect them from abuse (the laws of Burgos, 1512). Finally, there was one of the most ludicrous examples of official hypocrisy of all time: the Requirement, invented by the theologian Palacios Rubios.
The Requirement was a formal declaration which legally had to be read out to Indians before war could be waged on them. Beginning with a short history of the world, it went on to the foundation of the papacy and Pope Alexander VI’s donation of American territories to the king of Spain. The Indians were then told that they had two immediate obligations. Firstly, they must acknowledge that the Church, with its high priest the Pope, was supreme lord of the world, and the king of Spain as its representative was lord of American territories. Secondly, they must permit the Christian faith to be preached. If they immediately gave these guarantees, they would be treated well. But if they refused, a destructive war would be waged and they themselves, their wives and children would be enslaved. (I should point out that while the Spanish officially considered the enslavement of peaceful people unjustified, it was generally agreed that slaves could be taken in “a just war”.) It was not stipulated that this Requirement had to be translated into Indian languages.
At that point an argument began in Spain which continued in full spate for half a century, with Los Casas at the centre of it for much of that time. Official Spain was unsure. It was never able to feel sure, down to the time of Philip II. Plans, experiments and policies were introduced, withdrawn, re-introduced and re-withdrawn, over and over again. The argument in progress undermined previous findings and the given topic might have to be investigated again. For example, the question of whether the Indians, treated as fully free workers without an imposed labour system, would dig for gold.
Las Casas took about three years to be convinced of what the Dominicans were saying. Then he separated himself from the existing state of affairs, giving up his encomienda to the governor. Allying himself with the Dominicans, he came to Spain to press for a reform of the system. He had a powerful case and could hope to find supporters at the highest levels of Church and state, as indeed he did. Logically, neither church nor state could be as short-sighted as the colonists in the Indies. No benefits would come to either church or state from the destruction within one generation of the gold-digging labour force and the potential Christian flock.