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Handout #188 |
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The Fight for justice in the Spanish Colonies |
| Bartolome de Las
Casas made himself the champion of the Indians in the Western Indies
(America) from 1514 A.D. until his death in 1566 A.D. He describes how a
Dominican, Anton Montesinos, had begun the fight for justice in a sermon
to the colonists of Hispaniola (St Dominica) in 1511 A.D.
Montesinos's sermon you are all in a state of mortal sin. You live in this state and you will die in it, by reason of the cruelty and the tyranny that you show to these innocent peoples. What right do you have to keep these Indians in such cruel and horrible slavery? Who could have authorized you to wage all these detestable wars on people who lived quietly and peaceably in their country, and to exterminate them in such unimaginable numbers, by murder and unprecedented carnage? How can you oppress them and exhaust them in this way, without giving them food or tending to the diseases to which they are fatally exposed by the excessive labor that you demand from them? Would it not be more just to say that you are killing them in order to extract and amass your daily gold? What care do you take to see that they are converted? Are not these people human beings? Do they not have a soul? Do they not have reason? Are you not obliged to love them as yourselves? |
