Poster Session 2, 11:30 AM - 12:15 PM: Room 165 [D1]

Bartolomé de Las Casas: Americas First Propagandist

Presenter: Gabriel R. Sathler

Faculty Sponsor: Elizabeth McCahill

School: UMass Boston

Research Area: History

ABSTRACT

Bartolomeo de Las Casas, a 1500s Spanish Dominican friar and social reformer, led a one-man mission against the slavery of his time. Most scholarship revolving around Las Casas is incredibly polarized, viewing him as a reformed saint or as a colonizer hiding behind spiritual liberation. This presentation investigates Las Casas’s works and determines his motives. The goal is to see where he contradicted himself and consider how the audiences he addressed influenced or changed his perspective. In cross-examining his writings, (In Defense of the Indians published around 1550, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies published in 1552, and History of the Indies published in 1561) contradictions abound, and this has led to diverse scholarly readings of Las Casas. The presentation exposes the flaws in the argument of Las Casas’s spiritual transformation (originating from Historian Lewis Hanke) while also questioning the claim that Las Casas was just another colonizer (originating from Professor Daniel Castro). This presentation is interested in examining Las Casas as a man who spread the message of abolitionism to anyone who would hear it, even if the facts had to be skewed to do so. Las Casas’s works are misrepresented depending on the perspective and history of whoever is examining them, leading to Las Casas's depictions across academia being skewed one way or another depending on the camp you fall into. This work attempts to focus n on who Las Casas was and if he was truly fighting Spanish bondage alone.

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