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Notes

The Spanish Polemic on Colonisation
Part three: Bartolomé de Las Casas and Revolutionary Theocracy (2)


Enforcing the Laws 

In Guatemala he came to feel that there simply weren’t enough hands for the job, and in 1540 he returned to Spain to recruit more. The Colombian historian Juan Friede argued that around this time there was a visible change in Las Casas. For a long time he had campaigned for laws to protect the Indians, or for the laws that already existed to be clarified or tightened up. The problem was, however, that these laws came up against active and passive resistance from Spanish colonial society in America. Laws were being passed all the time and remaining a dead letter. The prime example concerned the encomienda, the institution by which Indians were assigned to Spanish colonists for compulsory labour. According to Friede, in 1520, 1523, 1525, 1526, 1528, 1529, 1533 and 1536 there were laws and official reports which attempted either to abolish or to restrict the encomienda, without success. (During much of this period Las Casas had withdrawn from campaigning and was studying theology in his monastery on Hispianiola, which shows that the campaign for colonial reform was not dependent on him completely.) (6)

It was therefore not enough to pass good laws. There would have to be strategic planning and determined, ruthless action to see that they were enforced. The scale of the problem which Las Casas was attempting to tackle is described as follows by Friede: 

“The only way the colonist could survive amid such inhospitable climate and conditions was by appropriating for himself the Indian’s property, and by forcing him to work – overcoming his “idle nature” – for the colonist’s profit. For if utilization of the Indian’s labour had depended only on his voluntary consent, another kind of difficulty would have arisen. The primitive Indian economy did not, as a rule, require production beyond what was necessary for local consumption and a simple form of commerce with neighbouring tribes, and the intensive labour and production surpluses of a commercial economy were alien to the American Indian’s temper. His pre-Columbian social organisation and values did not stimulate him sufficiently to make him greedy in the European sense of the word. Nor did the Conquest raise his living standards or allow him a distinguished position in the new society, which might have overcome his atavisms... 

The interests of the Indian, on the other hand, were inextricably linked with his personal freedom; otherwise, he could protect himself against abuse only if he fled to the impenetrable jungle, where he generally perished from hunger. His fate and his survival as a cultural and racial unit depended on such liberty and an end to the intrusions and arbitrary power of the Spanish colonist. The recovery of his liberty and his protection by the crown were the only means of securing him against a pernicious, destructive dependence. The triumph of the Indianist movement [i.e. the colonial reform movement spearheaded by Las Casas J.M.] would have transformed the Indian from a de facto serf into a free vassal of the crown who had no special obligations to the American Spaniards. It would have produced a radical change in the structure of colonial society, a true social revolution, by freeing a large social class from subjection to a very small but economically and politically powerful class.” (7) 

Las Casas became convinced that it was necessary to separate the two races. There was no question of giving up the preaching of Christianity, but the Christian missionaries in America would have to do it the way Saint Patrick did it in Ireland (Las Casas did not know this very relevant example, much better than some of the examples he gives in his book on The One and Only Method of Attracting All Peoples to the True Religion). And compared with the progress of Christianity, nothing else really mattered. “The economic welfare of the Spanish colonist ceased to concern him because he believed the settlers should live by their labour, as they had done in Spain.” (8) 

Campaigning in Spain in the early 1540s, Las Casas found that to a certain extent he was pushing an open door. Charles V had one of the greatest empires in the history of the world, but he was an un-Machiavellian monarch. His conscience bothered him. He wanted to ensure that all of his American subjects would be treated rightly and justly. Las Casas, who emphasised his own personal experience and gave him horrific accounts of what was actually happening, made a big impression on him and on some of his key advisors and ministers. In 1542 the reform campaign bore fruit with the proclamation of the dramatic New Laws for the colonies. The New Laws “all but abolished [the encomienda] and envisaged a plan that would make all encomienda Indians direct vassals of the crown”. (9) 

But how were these laws going to be enforced? 

Las Casas thought it would be necessary to decapitate the rebellious element in Peru and Mexico, where he foresaw colonist uprisings. He advised that 20 of the most powerful Mexican encomenderos (beneficiaries of forced labour) should be summoned to Spain. When they arrived, they should be detained and their estates should be confiscated. In Peru a reformed royal council should ascertain which Spaniards were the most rebellious and deport them to Spain under a pretext. All this should be kept strictly secret. For the longer term, royal garrisons should be installed to keep order in Mexico and Peru, and there should be a ruthless policy of confiscating the estates of rebels. 

Las Casas proposed to back this up with a policy of spiritual terror. The major punishments of the Church (excommunication, interdict, denial of absolution) were to be used systematically against uncooperative colonists. He produced a booklet of model procedures for priests to follow when hearing the encomenderos’ confessions. In effect, as Friede says, he aimed at a theocracy. There would be Church activism officially supported by the Crown and demanding the support of all civil authorities, on pain of religious persecution. 

However, the key proposal of pre-emptive deportation was not put into practice. “If Las Casas’s advice had been followed – advice of a strictly political character with no notions of abstract justice – it seems more than likely that the Pizarro rebellion could have been averted and the New Laws enforced.” (10) In actual fact, the Peruvian rebellion led by Gonzalo Pizarro defeated the viceroy, and if the boldest rebel strategists had had their way it would have resulted in a separatist Spanish-Peruvian monarchy. The same thing would probably have happened in Mexico if the viceroy had not himself joined the revolt, suspended the operation of the New Laws and associated himself with the colonists’ protest to Spain. 

At that time Las Casas was offered the position of bishop of Cuzco, the richest diocese in America. He turned it down, but afterwards he accepted the much less wealthy Mexican  bishopric of Chiapas (which in recent decades was the centre of the “Zapatista” rebellion of Indian communities against the government of Mexico). (11) In March 1545 he arrived in Ciudad Real, his cathedral town, and immediately set to work to do his part towards enforcing the New Laws. A few days before Holy Week he published an Edict of Public Faults, where he demanded that anyone who had information about certain misdeeds should reveal this in confession without delay. One of the public faults mentioned was the practice of pagan rites and ceremonies, and Jean Dumont (a resourceful defender of Christian conquest and opponent of Las Casas) suggests that this shows “the protector of the Indians” in a different light: he was not quite so protective when he got power in his own hands! (12) In reality, any Mexican bishop asking for information on public faults could hardly have avoided saying something about paganism, but this wasn’t the central issue. And it wasn’t the Indians who were feeling threatened, it was the colonists. “Among the faults he specified all injustices of which the indigenous people had been victims, ‘contrary... to the new laws which His Majesty has now made.’ ” (13)

As Holy Week went by, the tension mounted unbearably. Las Casas was enforcing the policy of refusing communion to non-cooperating colonists. A number of them went to the local courts to try to force him to stop doing so. Some Spaniards refused to show him the usual marks of deference towards a bishop during the ceremonies, while others actually threatened him. On Easter Sunday there was an outright mutiny, and a mob of townsmen, led by the mayor, invaded the bishop’s residence. 

The mob demanded a period of grace of several months, before landowners would be obliged (in accordance with the New Laws) to free their Indian slaves. Las Casas refused, demanding it be done immediately. In the confrontation he lost the support of his Dean of the Cathedral, who gave confession to some of the persons proscribed. Promptly excommunicated by Las Casas, the Dean went off to appeal to the regional authorities. The stand-off ended with no compromise between the colonists and Las Casas: neither side was giving an inch. 

Unable to see any prospects of progress with the Spaniards, Las Casas soon went off to visit the Guatemalan Land of War, which he had managed to have included in his diocese. Returning after three months, he found he was being ostracised by the municipality, with bishops’ dues being withheld. Some people had been threatening to kill him if he appeared in Ciudad Real again. Nonetheless he did, and he attempted to continue his uncompromising policy of refusing confession to slaveholders and other such delinquents. But he suffered a savage blow when the news came that the Emperor had responded to the colonists’ and signed an edict on October 20, 1545 which backtracked on the proposed winding down of the encomiendas

Las Casas removed himself from an impossible situation by going to Mexico to attend a conference of prelates. It seems (judging by the evidence assembled by Jean Dumont) that many of the American-based bishops and monks disagreed with him on the encomiendas. (14) In their opinion, if the Indians were to be effectively Christianised they needed to have structured contact with the Spanish colonists. These bishops and monks therefore supported the appeals against the New Laws. In any case, Las Casas never returned to his diocese. At the beginning of 1547 he set out for Spain. 

It is impossible to know whether Juan Friede was right: whether the maximal policy of making the Indians separate and equal vassals of the Spanish Crown could have been enforced, given sufficient foresight and ruthlessness. The story of the bishop of Chiapas may raise doubts, though after all he was facing forewarned enemies. But it was only this maximal policy that might have made possible an Irish type of Christianisation, without the destructive subjugation of local populations and cultures.

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