Name: The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account
Price: 41.40 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Bartolomé de las Casas
ISBN: 9780801844300

portada The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account

The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account

Type

Physical Book

Author

Bartolomé de las Casas

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press

Year

1992

Language

English

Pages

138

Format

Paperback

Weight

0.40

ISBN

0801844304

ISBN13

9780801844300

Synopsis "The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account "

Five hundred years after Columbus's first voyage to the New World, the debate over the European impact on Native American civilization has grown more heated than ever. Among the first--and most insistent--voices raised in that debate was that of a Spanish priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, acquaintance of Cortes and Pizarro and shipmate of Velasquez on the voyage to conquer Cuba. In 1552, after forty years of witnessing--and opposing--countless acts of brutality in the new Spanish colonies, Las Casas returned to Seville, where he published a book that caused a storm of controversy that persists to the present day. The Devastation of the Indies is an eyewitness account of the first modern genocide, a story of greed, hypocrisy, and cruelties so grotesque as to rival the worst of our own century. Las Casas writes of men, women, and children burned alive "thirteen at a time in memory of Our Redeemer and his twelve apostles." He describes butcher shops that sold human flesh for dog food ("Give me a quarter of that rascal there, " one customer says, "until I can kill some more of my own"). Slave ship captains navigate "without need of compass or charts, " following instead the trail of floating corpses tossed overboard by the ship before them. Native kings are promised peace, then slaughtered. Whole families hang themselves in despair. Once-fertile islands are turned to desert, the wealth of nations plundered, millions killed outright, whole peoples annihilated. In an introduction, historian Bill M. Donovan provides a brief biography of Las Casas and reviews the controversy his work produced among Europeans, whose indignation--and denials--lasted centuries. But the book itself is short. "Were I t describe all this, " writes Las Casas of the four decades of suffering he witnessed, "no amount of time and paper could encompass this task."

Bartolomé de las Casas

(Author)

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Bartolomé de las Casas (1484–1566) fue un fraile dominico, cronista y defensor de los pueblos indígenas durante la colonización española de América. Nació en Sevilla y viajó al Nuevo Mundo a comienzos del siglo XVI, donde inicialmente participó en el sistema de encomiendas.

Con el tiempo, tras presenciar los abusos cometidos contra los indígenas, experimentó una profunda transformación moral y se convirtió en uno de sus principales defensores. Denunció las injusticias del sistema colonial ante la Corona española y abogó por reformas que protegieran los derechos de los pueblos originarios.

Es autor de obras fundamentales como Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias, donde describe con dureza la violencia de la conquista. Su labor influyó en la promulgación de leyes más humanitarias, como las Leyes Nuevas de 1542.

Bartolomé de las Casas es recordado como una figura clave en la defensa de los derechos humanos en la historia temprana de América.

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