The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de Las Casas's Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias

David T. Orique

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000365351
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Histoire
• Categoria: Histoire du monde

The Unheard Voice of Law in Bartolomé de las Casas's Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias reinterprets Las Casas's controversial treatise as a legal document, whose legal character is linked to civil and ecclesial genres of the Early Modern and late Renaissance juridical tradition.

Bartolomé de las Casas proclaimed: "I have labored to inquire about, study, and discern the law; I have plumbed the depths and have reached the headwaters." The Unheard Voice also plumbs the depths of Las Casas's voice of law in his widely read and highly controversial Brevísima relación —a legal document published and debated since the 16th century. This original reinterpretation of his Very Brief Account uncovers the juridical approach voiced in his defense of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. The Unheard Voice innovatively asserts that the Brevísima relación 's legal character is intimately linked to civil and ecclesial genres of the late Renaissance juridical tradition. This paradigm-shifting book contextualizes the formation of Las Casas's juridical voice in canon law and theology—initially as a secular cleric, subsequently as a Dominican friar, and finally as a diocesan bishop—and demonstrates how his experienced juridical voice fought for justice in trans-Atlantic debates about Indigenous peoples' level of humanity, religious freedom, enslavement, and conquest. Reaching the headwaters of Las Casas's hitherto unheard juridical voice of law in the Brevísima relación provides readers with a previously unheard interpretation—an appealing voice for readers and students of this powerful Early Modern text that still resonates today.

The Unheard Voice of Law is a valuable companion text for many in the disciplines of literature, history, theology, law, and philosophy who read Bartolomé de las Casas's Very Brief Account and study his life, labor, and legacy.

1 Argumento

In 1564, Bartolomé de las Casas said that

during the last fifty years, from the year fourteen when I became a cleric, and then later as a friar, and then as bishop for another thirteen years, in which I have seen what happened, I have not ceased tirelessly to inquire how, according to God and natural reason, divine and human justice, we should relate to those people …¹

Many voices in history can be heard through the pens and speeches of prominent individuals. Few voices of history have generated as much scorn and praise as that of Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566).² Of his countless writings, the most infamous and famous was the Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de la Indias, in which Las Casas narrated events, condemned atrocities, and labored to halt the devastation and depopulation of the Indies. This controversial Very Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies has been read and commented on by countless generations.³ Since publication in 1552, this short work has been either derided as a polemical tract of burden or extolled as an exemplary text of liberation. Most readers have heard his voice either as a “promoter” of the Black Legend of exceptional Spanish colonial cruelty or as a “writer” of Golden Age literature.⁴ Through these portrayals, the Brevísima relación has been alternately condemned and ignored for its supposed exaggerations, or published and defended for its purported veracity.⁵ These types of polemical examinations of and approaches to the Brevísima relación have dominated Lascasian scholarship about this Very Brief Account.

However, such rhetorical and literary interpretations are important to comprehend how Las Casas’s tract has been explicated academically and employed historically. For example, the Brevísima relación has played a pivotal role in the debates over the centuries about Spanish colonization and, by extension, any colonial enterprise. Indeed, this tract has been linked even with contemporary struggles of the oppressed against neo-colonialism.⁶ Yet, such examinations and uses of this famous work have tended to discourage further probing for an alternative understanding of the Brevísima relación. Since this text has been—and will continue to be—widely discussed, studied, and debated, new interpretations of this frequently quoted work are important.⁷ As historian John Fiske stated concerning Las Casas,

[f]or the thoughts, words, and deeds of such a man, there is no death. The sphere of their influence goes on widening forever. They bud, they blossom, they bear fruit, from age to age.⁸

Argument and Rationale

This book listens again to Las Casas’s voice and offers a new interpretation that elucidates the juridical approach taken by Las Casas in the Very Brief Account. This study argues that the Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias belongs predominantly to genres of inquiry in the juridical tradition, both civil and ecclesial. To develop this argument, this investigation explicates in detail both indirect contextual support—derived from evidence about Las Casas’s exposures to, training in, and proclivity for the juridical—and direct textual support derived from an examination of the legal character and content of the text of the published tratado.

Indirect contextual support for this argument is discernible in four ways. First, Las Casas had direct exposure to the juridical because he lived in an era of titanic Atlantic world transition as Spain encountered, conquered, and colonized a “New World,” and as legal thinking and structures adapted to the reality of an emerging and expanding Spanish empire. Second, Las Casas received formal education in Latin, canon law and the corresponding sphere of civil law, as well as in philosophical- theological-canonistic-Thomistic scholasticism, which he enhanced by lifelong autodidactic study. Third, Las Casas utilized a juridical approach in his responses to the anthropo-status, religious, economic, and political debates about the Indies and its inhabitants.⁹ Fourth, the specific context of the genesis, writing, and eventual publication of the Brevísima relación (which spanned the decade from 1542 to 1552) possesses a discernible juridical character.

Direct textual support for this analysis derives from an examination of the character and content of the published tratado. From an assessment of its legal character, this study will demonstrate that the discernible triple function of the Brevísima relación—to inform, to denounce, and to petition—corresponds most appropriately to the genres of relaciones (official reports), denuncias (accusatory condemnations), and peticiones (remedial requests) that are found in the civil juridical tradition. This investigation will also demonstrate that the content of the treatise employs forms of discourse from the ecclesial juridical tradition, namely, genres of canon law, of the scholastic tripartite scheme of law, and of biblical juridical scripture.

Historical Significance

This book places the Brevísima relación in its proper genre as a piece of legal writing in the canon of colonial Latin American texts and, as such, moves scholarship away from the polemical and atemporal to the juridical and historical. Moreover, this research contributes to the small but growing body of Lascasian scholarship by systematically demonstrating that, since 1515, Las Casas was primarily a jurist in his training and perspectives rather than predominantly a controversial polemicist, a pragmatic activist, and/or a Thomistic theologian, and that he functioned as a jurist in his labors, writings, and responses to the issues and debates of his time.¹⁰ This book corrects some of the, perhaps, overly encomiastic or anachronistic descriptions of Las Casas as, for example, a virtuous figure, the father of Liberation Theology, a father of the Latin American Church, an early modern historian, a proto-anthropologist, and a Renaissance man. At the same time, this specific focus on Las Casas’s lifelong juridical approach links the context and content of the Brevísima relación more appropriately to the events of the time, to contemporaneous intellectual history, as well as to juridical dimensions of other writings by Las Casas. By addressing these kinds of issues and topics, this examination adds to historical knowledge by demythologizing the tratado, which has grown over time into a “larger-than-life” text—far beyond the original intention of Las Casas.

This book counteracts such aggrandizement by reestablishing the Very Brief Account within its own contemporaneous context and by seeking to understand the tract on its own terms, such that the modern reader might approximate the perspective of the originally intended reader. One of the ways to accomplish this is to indicate what is and is not included in the text. The Brevísima relación is about the actions and agency of certain Spaniards (and Germans), namely, of tyrannical conquistadors, captains, encomenderos, and royal officials. This purposely one-sided Very Brief Account challenges twenty-first-century readers who find the tratado, for the most part, “silent” about the particular actions and differentiating characteristics of Indigenous peoples. Las Casas excluded dissimilarities in their specific pre-Contact political, economic, and social organization. One of the challenges for twenty-first-century readers is this deliberately one-sided Very Brief Account. However, Las Casas’s strident legal critique of the abusers, and his juridical defense of the abused, arose at the very beginning of the modern human rights movement. As such, his past critique is clearly echoed in contemporary calls for responses to ongoing rampant injustices. Both the Brevísima relación and Las Casas’s opus of writings serve as juridical inspiration for legal and economic assessments as well as amelioration of the deplorable situations confronting vulnerable populations in the Americas and around the globe.

Methodology

In general, the methodology utilized in this study is both contextual and textual. Exegetical analysis of the text is also employed to elucidate the presence of juridical genres, which—for heuristic purposes—are categorized as two analytically distinguishable branches of the juridical tradition: civil and ecclesial. By explication of the legal character of the text and its corresponding function(s) (a social feature of genres) and by analysis of its narrative content (a structural feature of genres), the presence of genres of the civil juridical tradition (relaciones, denuncias, and peticiones) as well as of the ecclesial juridical tradition (Thomistic, canonistic, and scriptural) is discernible.¹¹

To situate these identified genres of the text in their contemporaneous contexts, several kinds of lateral contextualization are employed. The first type compares the Brevísima relación with texts of similar genres. This method of analysis addresses questions such as “how typical or atypical are the civil juridical genres of the Brevísima relación in comparison to other contemporaneous juridical treatises?” With respect to genres of the ecclesial tradition, “how typical or atypical is the use of these genres in contemporaneous writings?”

A second kind of lateral contextualization situates the Brevísima relación in relevant institutional matrices of the Indies, Spain, and the Church. This method aids in binding this analysis more closely to institutional contexts, for example, to broader contexts such as the papal donation, Hispano-Indiano law (from Burgos to the New Laws), and its institutions such as the encomienda, the Requerimiento, the Protectorate, and the Consejo de las Indias. This method also helps to better understand the specific juridical circumstances attendant to the original writing of the Brevísima relación in 1542 until its publication in 1552.

A third kind of lateral contextualization elucidates the trajectories of development in the anthropo-status, religious, economic, and political debates that began with the encounter with the Indies and that continued throughout the conquest and early colonial p...