The four hundredth anniversary in 1966 of the death of Bartolomé de las Casas has brought forth many valuable fruits: new and relatively inexpensive editions of his works, fresh controversies, and useful bibliographies. Mexican writers have distinguished themselves in all these fields, and thus have manifested again the truth of Ernesto de la Torre’s reference to “la presencia y la permanencia del espíritu del insigne defensor de los indios en los escritos de los preclaros Mexicanos” (p. 9).
The present volume, meticulously prepared by Ernesto Mejía Sánchez, is no mere listing of the publications by and about Las Casas in Mexico. Over one hundred titles are included, but the special contribution of the editor is his shrewd comments and observations, which will be of interest to old and new Las Casistas alike. The editor also reprints his meaty article on “Manuscritos lascasianos en México” and gives the first version printed in Mexico of the Las Casas “Proclama a los feligreses de Chiapa” dated March 25, 1545.
This is a stimulating volume, unfortunately without an index, and it helps to explain why Las Casas has attracted attention in Mexico from the days of Juan de Zumárraga and Servando Mier y Noriega to our own time, when such a varied group as Agustín Millares Carlo, Edmundo O’Gorman, David Siqueiros, Agustín Yáñez, and Silvio Zavala have all contributed to the enormous Mexican bibliography on Las Casas.
Even so, the bibliographer’s work is never done. Though Mejía Sánchez has discovered a number of items not listed by Manuel Giménez Fernández and myself, the most complete bibliography, by Raymond Marcus, the young French scholar, scheduled to appear in 1969, will include other Laseasiana not found in any previous bibliography.
