Bartolome De La Casas
Bartolome de las Casas was a Spanish Bishop who spent a sizable portion of his adult life crusading for the rights of indigenous peoples in the Americas, who were generally treated poorly under Spanish colonial rule. He advocated several different solutions to improve the treatment of the indigenous people. These included setting up towns for them, or towns where they could live side by side with the Spanish. He also fought for the abolition of slavery of the indigenous people. His work helped lead to the passage of the New Laws of 1542, which prohibited the enslavement of the native people of the Americas, but his ideas were also met with significant resistance both in Spain and in the colonies (PBS.org, 2010).
To promote his ideas, he undertook several ventures. De las Casas wrote several books that outlined the cruel treatment to which the indigenous people were subjected at the hands of Spanish colonists in an effort to engender sympathy for their plight and spur an emotional...
He also sought funding in Spain for farms and towns that could operate with his vision of harmonious interaction between Spanish and natives. Further, he worked as a religious man to promote the idea of Christian love as a guiding principle for interactions with indigenous peoples. Native peoples should not be forced to become Christian, but rather that the Spanish would set a good example of Christian behavior that would convince the natives to give up their old religions.
I do not believe that the indigenous people would have shared de las Casas' perspective fully. They would clearly have appreciated certain aspects of his views, for example being treated like human beings equal to the Spanish. They would have appreciated his work against slavery, forced labor and other abuses. Such things were clearly horrible for the indigenous people and any cessation of those activities would have very much been welcomed. From that perspective, the indigenous people…
