Bartolomé de Las Casas
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The Right Reverend Friar Bartolomé de las Casas, O.P. |
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|---|---|
| Bishop of Chiapas | |
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| Province | Tuxtla Gutiérrez |
| See | Chiapas |
| Installed | 13 March 1544 |
| Term ended | 11 September 1550 |
| Other posts | Protector of the Indians |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1510 |
| Consecration | 30 March 1554 by Bishop Diego de Loaysa, O.R.S.A. |
| Personal details | |
| Birth name | Bartolomé de las Casas |
| Born | c. 1484 Seville, Crown of Castille |
| Died | 18 of July 1566 (aged 81–82) Madrid, Crown of Castille, Spain |
| Buried | , Madrid, Spain |
| Nationality | Castilian |
| Denomination | Roman Catholic |
| Occupation | hacienda owner, priest, missionary, bishop, writer |
| Signature |  |
Bartolomé de las Casas Spanish: [bɑr tɔ lɔˈmɛ ðɛ](c. 1484 – 18 July 1566) was a 16th-century Spanish historian, social reformer and Dominican friar. He became the first resident Bishop of Chiapas, and the first officially appointed "Protector of the Indians". His extensive writings, the most famous being A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and Historia de Las Indias, chronicle the first decades of colonization of the West Indies and focus particularly on the atrocities committed by the colonizers against the indigenous peoples.
Arriving as one of the first European settlers in the Americas, he initially participated in, but eventually felt compelled to oppose, the atrocities committed against the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists. In 1515, he reformed his views, gave up his Indian slaves and encomienda, and advocated, before King Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, on behalf of rights for the natives. In his early writings, he advocated the use of African slaves instead of Natives in the West-Indian colonies; consequently, criticisms have been leveled at him as being partly responsible for the beginning of the Transatlantic slave trade. Later in life, he retracted those early views as he came to see all forms of slavery as equally wrong. In 1522, he attempted to launch a new kind of peaceful colonialism on the coast of Venezuela, but this venture failed, causing Las Casas to enter the Dominican Order and become a friar, leaving the public scene for a decade. He then traveled to Central America undertaking peaceful evangelization among the Maya of Guatemala and participated in debates among the Mexican churchmen about how best to bring the natives to the Christian faith.
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