Bartolome de las Casas
Spanish Dominican friar, chronicler and theologian (1484–1566), born in Seville, present as a young colonist during the conquest and encomienda exploitation of Cuba and possibly also on Columbus's first voyage to America, and initially an owner of land and indigenous slaves until, following a profound crisis of conscience around 1514, he publicly renounced his American possessions and devoted the rest of his long life to the fierce defence of the rights of the indigenous peoples of the American continent. Ordained a Dominican priest and later appointed Bishop of Chiapas, Las Casas carried out tireless work as chronicler, polemicist and lobbyist at the Spanish court, repeatedly presenting Charles V with detailed reports on the abuses, massacres and near-genocidal conditions of slavery suffered by indigenous peoples under the encomienda system. His most famous and controversial work, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552), is a merciless denunciation, written for purposes of political and moral propaganda before the crown, of the atrocities committed by the Spanish conquistadors, a work which, quickly translated into several European languages, fed for centuries the anti-Spanish 'Black Legend' exploited by rival powers, although the basic facts it denounces have been largely corroborated by later historiography. Las Casas was the central protagonist of the Valladolid Debate (1550–1551), a famous theological and legal dispute in which he confronted Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda directly over the legitimacy of the war of conquest and the enslavement of American indigenous peoples, Las Casas defending with theological and legal arguments their full rationality and natural freedom as human beings. His political pressure contributed decisively to the passage of the New Laws of 1542, which attempted, with mixed success, to limit the abuses of the encomienda system. Regarded by many as one of the earliest and most influential defenders of universal human rights in Western history, the figure of Las Casas continues to generate historiographical debate over the contradictions and limits of his own reformist project.