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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
The Full Realization that the brave Admiral of the Ocean Sea had discovered not a new route to India and the fabled wealth of Cipango and Cathay but an otro mundo, another world, soon became inescapable. Here was another world, with all the implications of the term, inhabited by human beings gathered in various groupings, with varying degrees of development, yet none beyond the stone and precious metals stage, none with a fully integrated system of writing, none beyond the stage of human sacrifices in their religious practices. On what grounds had the crown of Spain a right to disturb the existing conditions? The problem presented was new to a Christian world just awakening from the long and troubled slumber of the Middle Ages. The norms developed by Western Europe in its relations with Islam and the Near East did not seem to apply to the peoples of the otro mundo, or New World.
* This paper was read, in part, at the twenty-ninth annual meeting of the American Catholic Historical Association, held in Washington, D. C, on Dec. 28–30, 1948. The Editors of The Americas are grateful to the Rev. Dr. John Tracy Ellis, Secretary of the Association, for permission to print this study by Dr. Castañeda as a tribute to the memory of Fray Juan de Zumárraga.
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9 Ibid., 148–154.
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