Antonio de Montesinos (Dominican friar)
| Antonio de Montesino | |
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Sculpture by Antonio Castellanos Basich
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| Native name | Antón de Montesino |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Salamanca, Spain |
| Died | 1545 New Granada |
| Nationality | Castillian |
| Denomination | Catholic |
| Motto | I am the voice of Christ in the desert of this island. |
Antonio de Montesinos or Antonio Montesino (Spain, c. 1475 - Venezuela, 1545) was a Spanish Dominican friar who was a missionary on the island of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti). With the backing of his prior, Friar Pedro de Córdoba, and his Dominican community at Santo Dominigo, Montesinos preached against the enslavement and harsh treatment of the Indigenous peoples of the Island. Montesinos' preaching led to Bartolomé de las Casas' conversion and his entering the Dominican Order.
Montesinos became a Dominican friar at the convent of St. Stephen in Salamanca, where he may have studied. He was part of the first band of Dominican missionaries to go to Hispaniola island, in September 1510, under the leadership of Pedro de Córdoba.
On December 21, 1511, the fourth Sunday of Advent, Montesinos preached an impassioned sermon criticizing the practices of the Spanish colonial encomienda system, and decrying the abuse of the Taíno Indian people on Hispaniola. This was 19 years after Christopher Columbus had landed on the island and Spain started to colonize it.
Listing the injustices that the indigenous people were suffering at the hands of the Spanish colonists, Montesinos proclaimed that the Spanish on the island "are all in mortal sin and live and die in it, because of the cruelty and tyranny they practice among these innocent peoples." According to Bartolomé de las Casas, who was a witness, Montesinos asked those in attendance,
Tell me by what right of justice do you hold these Indians in such a cruel and horrible servitude? On what authority have you waged such detestable wars against these people who dealt quietly and peacefully on their own lands? Wars in which you have destroyed such an infinite number of them by homicides and slaughters never heard of before. Why do you keep them so oppressed and exhausted, without giving them enough to eat or curing them of the sicknesses they incur from the excessive labor you give them, and they die, or rather you kill them, in order to extract and acquire gold every day.
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