Another Face of Empire

Castro Daniel Castro

Description

The Spanish cleric Bartolome de Las Casas is a key figure in the history of Spain's conquest of the Americas. Las Casas condemned the torture and murder of natives by the conquistadores in reports to the Spanish royal court and in tracts such as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). For his unrelenting denunciation of the colonialists' atrocities, Las Casas has been revered as a noble protector of the Indians and as a pioneering anti-imperialist. He has become a larger-than-life figure invoked by generations of anticolonialists in Europe and Latin America.Separating historical reality from myth, Daniel Castro provides a nuanced, revisionist assessment of the friar's career, writings, and political activities. Castro argues that Las Casas was very much an imperialist. Intent on converting the Indians to Christianity, the religion of the colonizers, Las Casas simply offered the natives another face of empire: a paternalistic, ecclesiastical imperialism. Castro contends that while the friar was a skilled political manipulator, influential at what was arguably the world's most powerful sixteenth-century imperial court, his advocacy on behalf of the natives had little impact on their lives. Analyzing Las Casas's extensive writings, Castro points out that in his many years in the Americas, Las Casas spent very little time among the indigenous people he professed to love, and he made virtually no effort to learn their languages. He saw himself as an emissary from a superior culture with a divine mandate to impose a set of ideas and beliefs on the colonized. He differed from his compatriots primarily in his antipathy to violence as the means for achieving conversion.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Cultural studies
• Latin America
• History of the Americas

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822389590
• Langue: English

Extrait

Another Face of Empire

[ A book in the series Æ l at i n a m e r i c a ot h e r w i s e : l a n g uag e s , e m p i r e s , nat i o n s s e r i e s e d i t o r s: Walter D. Mignolo,Duke University Irene Silverblatt,Duke University Sonia Saldívar-Hull,University of California, Los Angeles

A N OT H E R FAC E O F E M P I R E [Æ Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism

[Æ

Daniel Castro

Duke University Press du r h a m&2 0 0 7l o n d o n

∫2007 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$

Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Granjon by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Program for Cultural Cooperation between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

This book is dedicated to Mariella Ruiz-Castro who made it possible

[ Contents Æ

About the Series. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix

Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi

Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Bartolomé de Las Casas, Savior of Indoamerica?

Chapter One. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Defining and Possessing

Chapter Two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 American Crucible

Chapter Three. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .63 Conversions, Utopias, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism

Chapter Four. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105 Theory and Praxis

Chapter Five. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135 Toward a Restoration of the Indies

Chapter Six. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150 The Legacy of Las Casas

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177

Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .187

Bibliography. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215

Index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .229

[ About the Series Æ

latin america otherwise: languages, empires, nations is a critical series. It aims to explore the emergence and consequences of concepts used to define ‘‘Latin America’’ while at the same time exploring the broad interplay of political, economic, and cultural practices that have shaped Latin American worlds. Latin America, at the crossroads of com- peting imperial designs and local responses, has been construed as a geo- cultural and geopolitical entity since the nineteenth century. This series provides a starting point to redefine Latin America as a configuration of political, linguistic, cultural, and economic intersections that demands a continuous reappraisal of the role of the Americas in history, and of the ongoing process of globalization and the relocation of people and cultures that have characterized Latin America’s experience. Latin America Other- wise: Languages, Empires, Nations is a forum that confronts established geocultural constructions, rethinks area studies and disciplinary boundaries, assesses convictions of the academy and of public policy, and correspond- ingly demands that the practices through which we produce knowledge and understanding about and from Latin America be subject to rigorous and critical scrutiny. The words and deeds of Father Bartolomé de Las Casas have invited recurrent interpretations for nearly half a millennium. He has been por- trayed as the saintly conscience of Spanish imperialism and adopted as the father of Latin American liberation theology. InAnother Face of Empire, Daniel Castro seeks to complicate the picture of Las Casas created by his hagiographers. Castro draws on Las Casas’s own extensive writings and reappraises the consequences of the friar’s advocacy to provide a nuanced portrayal of Las Casas as a historical agent. He also addresses what few scholars have emphasized—the ways in which the Indians themselves con- fronted Spanish domination and abuses.Another Face of Empirehighlights these strategies of resistance while showing how Spanish imperial policies undermined attempts at reform. Despite his strenuous efforts on the Indians’ behalf, Las Casas failed to grasp the difficulties and contradictions in imposing an alien religious belief, Christianity, on a people who already had their own highly developed re- ligious beliefs, as well as forms of social, economic, and political organiza-