Survey of Spanish-American Literature to the 1820s

Lo siento – en Inglés 🙁

I prefer this account of the invasion of the Indies by the Europeans because it comes in stark contrast to the account relived by Cabeza de Vaca in Naufragios. Bartolomé de Las Casas understands that the Europeans weren’t helping the natives when they colonized the New World. He writes his book without any compassion for the explorers calling them “malos hombres”, “abominables y crueles hombres bestiales”, and many other things. I’m glad that he touched on the sexual assault that occurred while the Europeans were in the New World. Although it is a terrible thing to be part of one’s history, it is an important aspect of the domination and conquering of the Americas. I think his sentiments towards the explorers is epitomized in the sentence on page 19 where he says “y porque toda la gente que huir podía se encerraba en los montes y subía a las sierras huyendo de hombres tan inhumanos, tan sin piedad y tan feroces bestias, extirpadores y capitales enemigos del linaje humano, enseñaron y amaestraron lebreles, perros bravísimos que en viendo un indio lo hacían pedazos en un credo, y mejor arremetían a él y lo comían que si fuera un puerco.”

He mentions and then describes in detail that in each and every place the Europeans went, the lives of the Indians were changed for the worst. I like how he segregates the novel into specific destruction that he saw in certain places (Nueva España, la provincia de Nicaragua, de isla de Cuba, etc.). This separation gives the impression of authority on the subject and truth of what he’s saying. One point to make is that without using specific names of Europeans, Las Casas’ interpretation appears less authentic that the work written by Cabeza de Vaca because his use of names of actual explorers can be confirmed through historic documents, I’m sure. It is interesting to notice that Las Casas names certain native kings and queens and regular native people by given native name, Behechio, Anacaona y Higuanama (p.22), but always refers to the Europeans as “los cristianos”, “los españoles”, or “los castellanos.” This is yet another example where Las Casas shows his feelings towards the Europeans because this contrasts with Cabeza de Vaca who named many of the Europeans and Christians by name but called the Indians by tribe name or place name (as a group, rather than by their personal names.)