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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2012
“My eyes saw all these things, so strange to human nature; and I almost fear telling them, not believing myself, thinking perhaps they were a nightmare. In truth, many more cruel and without number were perpetrated through these Indies, but I will never forget these.”
B. de las Casas [HI, IV, p. 1364]Ego vox clamantis in deserto. [I am a voice of one calling in the desert.]
John 1:23Las Casas the Priest
Regardless if he ever made the trip to Rome, Las Casas was on the island in 1509. It was still green and lush, a warm, inviting tropical paradise, but it was also tormented by the man-made disaster inflicted upon the Tainos by the Spanish settlers. Within the next five years, Las Casas turned on his fellow countrymen with a furor that sustained him for the rest of his life. When he did make the decision to oppose the very nature of the conquest, its legality, its morality, and its underlying sinfulness, Las Casas drew deeply from many sources of wisdom, truth, and morality, including revealed wisdom in Scripture, natural and canon law, and wide reading in classical literature. More than anything else, however, he drew from his own experience in the Indies. It would make him a formidable opponent back in Spain.
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