Inspiring Christian Lives

Anthony Montesinos, Las Casas and Luis Barbastro, c. 1470s – 1570s

Island of Hispaniola, 1511
On the Sunday before Christmas in 1511, a Dominican friar addressed a group of Spanish royalty in a straw-thatched church on the island of Hispaniola. He took as his text: “I am the voice of one crying in the desert. By what right or justice do you keep the Indians in such horrible servitude? Are they not men? Have they not rational souls? Are you not bound to love them as you love yourselves?” He was deliberately challenging powerful vested interests to consider their treatment of the indigenous peoples in Latin America, newly discovered by Europeans in 1492. His name was Father Anthony Montesinos and his message to the military men of Spain was blunt and controversial. This was the first cry on behalf of human freedom in the New World, the first real time that the idea of ‘human rights’ began to be discovered in the modern era. The cry of Montesinos began a long, bloody battle between the defenders of the rights of the indigenous peoples, (normally priests) and their opponents, the Spanish soldiers motivated by greed.

The indigenous peoples were being raped, pillaged and murdered on all sides by gold-hungry adventurers who had come out to the colonies as one of the soldiers said, “Not to teach the Indian about God, but to take his gold away from him”. That said, prior to the arrival of the Europeans, the indigenous peoples had been at each others’ throats for years, aiming to wipe out or subdue rival tribes. Moreover, human sacrifice had been widespread practice in these areas, as testified unanimously by the archaeological evidence, and native and non-native sources. The policy of the King and his men was based upon the presumption that since the indigenous peoples were, in his eyes, less than human, they had no rights and should not be considered the same as other human beings. The challenge that Anthony of Montesinos and his friends laid down to the Spanish royalty blew up in their face and they tried to suppress them. But this only stimulated the friars further. They set about studying the issue of rights in the light of St Thomas Aquinas. Out of their studies and discussions came the ideals that founded nations: that all humans have rights as humans, that conquerors have obligations towards the human race itself, and that all is not fair in war and conquest. This work was developed in particular by Francis Vitoria. It is the intellectual work of this man that ultimately laid the intellectual foundations for the United Nations.

A young Spaniard heard of these debates and began to object. His name was Bartholomew de Las Casas. He was himself a slave-owner, but he treated his slaves relatively well. He insisted that it was better to have slaves and treat them well than to free them to an uncertain future – an argument that was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain in the face of the intellectual challenge represented by Montesinos and Vitoria. But soon, the scales were to fall from his eyes, such that he saw the entire Spanish system of enslavement as a horror in God’s eyes that must be stopped. This was particularly motivated by the sickening Spanish massacre of some 2,000 men, women and children in Cuba in 1514. Las Casas renounced his ownership of slaves and began preaching and campaigning against the system: “The bread of the needy is the life of the poor; whoever deprives them of it is a man of blood. To take away a neighbour’s living is to murder him; to deprive him of his wages is to shed blood”. Las Casas gave up his ownership of slaves and began preaching and campaigning against the system. He joined a religious order, studied hard about the problem and returned to Spain to lobby the government about this injustice. His arguments and pressure bore fruit in 1542, with new laws abolishing totally slavery among Indians. These laws were the only body of laws which included a declaration of rights and freedoms of indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, selfish self interest, greed and power were too deep rooted to mean much in practice – but this was not for the want of trying.

During the violent communist revolution in Mexico some 400 years later (see Miguel Pro) the only religious statues spared by the communists were those of Las Casas, a testimony to his ability to reach out beyond his community to others.

Another religious Spaniard who joined in the struggle against the Spanish forces was Luis Canceri de Barbastro. De Barbastro extracted promises from the Spanish soldiers that they would not go into Guatemala while the friars were there spreading the Gospel. Unable to speak Guatemalan, Luis and Las Casas translated the principal points of Christianity into the native language. They then turned these into rhymed couplets and set them to the music of flutes, ocarinas and native drums. Native tribesmen were also trained to sing the song of salvation to their brethren. Such an approach charmed the Guatemalen leaders who soon opened up to the faith. Unfortunately, the Spanish army did not keep their word - they invaded and crushed and enslaved the people there, destroying the more positive work of the friars.