A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas

Speaking truth to power in the 16th century

Perhaps a half a dozen contemporary book-length accounts of the Spanish conquest of Latin America have survived. These accounts now serve as foundational texts in Latin American history. Much of what we know about the early days of conquest and colonization come from just a few narratives, such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s True History of the Conquest of New Spain, the autobiographical Journey of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, and the Narrative of Some Things of New Spain by an anonymous member of Hernán Cortés’s army. Indigenous accounts of this period are even scarcer. One Spaniard, however, did stand up for the Native peoples of the Americas and documented their experience of oppression and genocide under the Spanish conquerors.

Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) was among the first Spaniards to arrive in the New World. His father, who had served on one of Christopher Columbus’s voyages of exploration, brought his family across the Atlantic in 1502 to become colonists on the island of Hispaniola. At first, Bartolomé de las Casas lived on a farm with slaves and participated in raids and massacres of the Native population. In 1514, however, he had a change of heart and began campaigning to end slavery and the abuse of the Indigenous people of the Americas. He had been ordained a secular priest in 1507 and entered the Dominican order in 1522. De las Cases wrote A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1542 and, during one of his trips back to Spain, presented the document to King Charles V of Spain and members of the Council of the Indies in hopes of influencing policy changes in Spain’s governing of the Americas. The Brief Account was published in book form in 1552.

The book is divided into chapters based on geographic location, starting with Hispaniola, Cuba, and other Caribbean islands. Mexico is divided into several chapters according to the provincial divisions of the time. Nicaragua, Guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, and the Rio de la Plata region (near Buenos Aires) are all covered. In each district, de las Casas details how the Spaniards subdued, persecuted, and tortured the Native population. De las Casas traveled to quite a few of these locations himself, so much of his testimony is based on first-hand knowledge. Some chapters, however, are drawn from letters or previous documents written by other sympathetic clergymen. De las Casas cites a lot of population and death statistics, but his figures should be taken with a grain of salt considering the difficulty of achieving accurate numbers in those times.

The historical importance of this document is immeasurable, but is it a pleasant read? Of course not. It’s horrifying and demoralizing, but that goes with the territory of this subject matter. De las Casas, as an author, also has some shortcomings. If you’re expecting an eloquent philosophical essay condemning slavery, like someone might have written in the Enlightenment Era, you’ll be disappointed. The text is basically just a catalogue of atrocities listed one after the other, with very little pausing for reflection and almost no conclusive summation. Some of the more interesting passages relate how groups of Indians fought back against the conquistadores. Although such efforts were ultimately crushed, they do indicate that the Native Americans were not merely passive and ignorant victims. One odd authorial choice that de las Casas makes is to omit the names of the perpetrators of these war crimes. Instead, he’ll use phrases like “a certain tyrant” or “this captain” or “that pirate.” In some cases, one can tell when he’s talking about Columbus, Hernán Cortés, or Ponce de Leon, for example, but one would have to be a professor of Latin American history to identify all of the unnamed persons he accuses in this book.

De las Casas has his share of critics. One measure he advocated to lesson the oppression of the Indians was to increase the African slave trade. Whether or not the Brief Account really brought about tangible changes in Spanish America, his speaking truth to power and exposing these crimes is commendable. If nothing else, we owe de las Casas a debt of gratitude for the historical documentation he has provided of this time and place.