The Fight Against the Peruvian Encomenderos

Las Casas left Seville in early 1553 after getting all his missionaries off to the Indies and returned to Valladolid, where he lived in the monastery of the College of San Gregorio until 1561. He then moved to Madrid when the court officially came to rest there as the modern capital of Spain. Until he died in 1566 he remained incredibly active, dictating memos, answering correspondence, petitioning the king, instructing the Council of the Indies, unswervingly and, some would say, fanatically pursuing his obsession. It is hardly out of character for him to have defended his Indians from one of the most persistent and dangerous attacks that came late in his life from Peruvian encomenderos.

Peru was, to state it simply, in a near continual state of anarchy and rebellion at mid-century. The conquistadors and encomenderos (often one in the same) of Peru had been quarreling over the spoils of war ever since Francisco Pizarro entered and conquered the Inca Empire between 1532 and 1535.