Bartolomé de las Casas

Bartolomé de las Casas was a Spanish lawyer, clergyman, writer, and activist, remembered mainly as a historian and social reformer. He first went to Hispaniola as a layperson, later joined the Dominican Order, and became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas as well as the first official "Protector of the Indians." His most famous works, *A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies* and *Historia de Las Indias*, document the early colonization of the Caribbean islands and denounce the violence carried out by conquistadores against Indigenous peoples.

Las Casas was among the earliest Spanish settlers in the Americas. At first, he took part in the colonial economy that relied on forced Indigenous labor, but he eventually turned against the abuses by European colonists. In 1515, he freed his own Indigenous laborers and gave up his encomienda. He then argued before Charles V for Indigenous rights. Early in his writing, he supported using African slaves instead of Indigenous workers, unaware that the Portuguese were waging "brutal and unjust wars in the name of spreading the faith." Later in life, he changed his mind, concluding that both forms of slavery were equally wrong.

In 1522, Las Casas attempted to establish a peaceful form of colonialism on the coast of Venezuela, but the project failed. He then entered the Dominican Order, becoming a friar and withdrawing from public life for about ten years. He later traveled to Central America, where he worked as a missionary among the Maya of Guatemala and took part in church debates on how best to bring Natives to Christianity.

Returning to Spain to recruit more missionaries, he kept pushing for the abolition of the encomienda system. A major success came in 1542 with the passage of the New Laws. He was made Bishop of Chiapas but served only briefly before being forced back to Spain due to resistance from encomenderos and conflicts with Spanish settlers angered by his pro-Indigenous policies. For the rest of his life, he worked at the Spanish court, where he had significant influence over matters related to the Indies. In 1550, he took part in the Valladolid debate. There, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda argued that Indigenous people were less than human and needed Spanish masters to become civilized, while Las Casas insisted they were fully human and that forceful subjugation was unjust.

For fifty years, Las Casas actively fought slavery and colonial abuse of Indigenous peoples, mainly by trying to persuade the Spanish court to adopt a more humane approach to colonization. He did not fully change Spanish views, but his efforts improved the legal status of Natives and pushed colonial ethics to the forefront of discussion.

After his death in 1566, Las Casas was widely regarded as a holy figure, and the Catholic Church opened his cause for beatification.