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208 Las Casas, Bartolomé de punishments meted out to offenders against the Christian faith, including floggings, incarceration, and fines The inquisition continued for the next three months Altogether an estimated 4,500 natives were tortured, with many hundreds left permanently disabled and 158 dying in consequence of the interrogations Landa’s illegal and unauthorized excesses led to a prolonged power struggle with the region’s bishop, Francisco de Toral, whose authority he was charged with usurping Ordered back to Spain, he was absolved by the Council of the Indies, and in 1573 he returned to Yucatán as second bishop of Mérida, in which capacity he served until his death on April 30, 1579 See also Inquisition, Spanish and Roman; Yucatán, conquest of the Further reading: Clendinnen, Inga Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatán, 1517–1570 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; De Landa, Diego Alfred M. Tozzer trans Relacion de las cosas de Yucatán Germantown, NY: Periodicals Service Company, 1974; ——— Yucatán before and after the Conquest Mexico City: San Fernando, 1993 ——— Mayas de Yucatán The Mayas of Yucatan San Diego, CA: Fondo de Cultura Economica USA, 1997 Michael J Schroeder Las Casas, Bartolomé de (c 1474–1566) Spanish priest, bishop, historian One of the most influential figures in the history of Latin America, the Spanish priest and historian Bartolomé de Las Casas became known as the “Apostle of the Indians” for his impassioned and relentless moral condemnations of the excesses of violence and cruelty perpetrated by Spanish conquistadores and encomenderos against the native inhabitants of the Americas His book, The Devastation of the Indies: A Brief Account, first published in 1552, caused a sensation across Spain and at the highest levels of church and state Translated into many languages, it also formed an important component of the “Black Legend” of Spanish atrocities, a perspective that continues to hold enormous sway in considerations of the Spanish impact on the Americas An indefatigable writer and activist, he continued writing, publishing, and speaking in favor of Indian rights from 1514 until his death in 1566 His writings were an important element of later Enlightenment discourses on the universality of human rights and continue to reso- nate among liberation theologians, human rights activists, and indigenous rights activists across Latin America more than 450 years after his “brief account” was first published Born in Seville in 1484, son of a well-to-do merchant, Las Casas first came to the New World in 1502, at age 18, in the company of his father and some 2,500 other adventurers in the fleet of Nicolás de Ovando Around 1506–07, he returned to Europe, was ordained a deacon in Rome, and returned to the Indies, where he was granted an encomienda In 1512, he became the first priest ordained in the Americas Over the next two years, an encomendero himself and eyewitness to the forced labor, enslavement, and violence that characterized the conquest of the Caribbean, he gradually came to an understanding of Spanish actions that diverged radically from that of the vast majority of his countrymen His first public condemnation of Spanish excesses was in a Pentecost Sunday sermon in 1514 Freeing his own Indians, henceforth he preached incessantly about the evils of encomienda and other forms of forced labor and violence, making many enemies in the process In 1520, King Charles granted him an official hearing to expound his views and defend himself against his many detractors A handful of other ecclesiastics, most notably Antonio de Montesinos and Juan Quevedo, had been advancing similar arguments The king sympathized with Las Casas’s position and decreed that the Indies would henceforth be ruled without recourse to force of arms—an unenforceable edict that was largely ignored After a failed attempt to establish an economically self-sustaining Indian commune in Venezuela, in 1522 Las Casas became a Dominican monk Over the next four decades, he wrote prolifically and became an obsessive collector of documents that later proved of inestimable value to scholars He was instrumental in persuading the king to issue the New Laws of 1542, which placed severe restrictions on encomienda, sparked furious resistance by encomenderos across the empire, and were repealed in 1545–46 In 1544, he was appointed bishop of Chiapas (Mexico), where he continued his work on behalf of the Indians Three years later, in response to mounting opposition to the radical bishop, the Council of the Indies recalled him to Spain In 1550, came one of the most memorable and important public debates in early modern Europe, on the question of the morality of Spain’s actions in the Americas Pitting two intellectual giants—Las Casas versus the eminent humanist Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who argued from Aristotelian premises that Indi-
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