Las Casas' Destruction of Your Emotions

     I can honestly start by saying I did not enjoy reading An Account, Much Abbreviated, of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de Las Casas. The readings did open my eyes to the brutality the Indians suffered when the Spaniards came to the new world. However, the depictions and details of every form of torture, murder, or destruction, that the “Christians” performed, is almost traumatizing. Putting that aside, Las Casas did an excellent job of getting his point across. He wanted people to know and to remember what he saw and lived through in the late 1400s and throughout the 1500s. The numbers of deaths may have been way off, and maybe the stories were stretched pretty far, but the cruelty that occurred needed to be known. I think this account needed to be written the way it was to show the “journey” that both the Christian Spaniards and the Indians lived through during that time period. It needed to be able to shock yet still have truth throughout it, in order for it to be remembered up until the present. 

     This account is about the Christian Spaniards tyranny over the Indian people when they came to the New World. The account consists of all the horrible, malicious, devastating acts that the Spaniards accomplished “in the name of Christianity and God.” The Spaniards, being Christians, believed it was a dire need for the Indians, a lesser people who worshipped unknown gods/idols, to be converted. Any instance, no matter how small, of resistance, would wage a war between the Indians and the Spaniards. The Indians are depicted on almost every other page, as innocence, harmless, “gentle sheep.” Las Casas could be neglecting to include any form of true violence the Indians brought onto the Spaniards to focus on and have a bias towards the cruel Christians. However, it is also possible that he is telling the truth about them. The main point that he is trying to get across, I believe, is just that the Christian Spaniards used their faith in God to justify the way they treated the Indians. (through the cutting of limbs, the burning of bodies, the torturous slave labor, etc.) For example, on page 10, the Spaniards bind thirteen Indians “in honour and reverence, of Our Redeemer and the twelve Apostles” and then burned the them alive. If you have a heart and are actually a sane human being, your jaw will immediately drop to the floor. The fact that something like this has happened in our past, and more than once, is absolutely disgusting. The fact that people justified a hierarchy based on religion, race, gender, or anything else is outrageous and what led to the massacres throughout our history. I would tie this account most closely with the Triangular Trade because of the slavery of the Indians by the Europeans which closely relates to the slavery of the African-Americans, and through the trickery of getting them onto ships which were disguised to be for good. This shows the theme of power throughout our history and how it can lead to destruction once it has corrupted morality. What I mean by this is that once a person or a selection of people, believes that they are better and have more power over those who they believe are lesser and beneath them, they justify incredibly immoral acts based upon what has brainwashed them

     Lastly, I would say this account is another part of the journey of people, (somewhat) learning from their mistakes throughout history. There is evidence of Christianity actually being an honest and good thing for the Indians in one part of the account. In Yucatán, when the friars of St. Francis promise the Indians that if they let them preach their word, they would make sure no malicious Spaniards would sweep in and murder their village/town. However, even when the Indians begin to see the bright side of the religion, the friars begin to sense suspicion and leave. The Indians beg of them to comeback once they realize the friars were truly only trying to inform and convert them without any violence. The friars then return and are welcomed back as “angels.” They do not stay for long though, because the friars come to the conclusion that no matter what good they continue to do, the Indians will one day learn to resent them for the massive amount of brutality the Spaniards brought to their lands. It shows us how we can come so far as to almost turn around the negative view of something brought on by the hate and murder of a group, but the tortured will still see a person from said group (no matter how good they try to be) as apart of what brought the destruction (and therefore attached to that stigma). It is almost like the present-day stereotypes and prejudices that will possibly exist in our society forever.