The history of Las Casas reputation has attracted numerous scholars—Hanke, Keen, Marcus, Minguet, Batllori, Lohmann Villena, Cantú. This pocket-size volume is a distinct contribution to the subject: an anthology of selections from ‘Mexican authors (1568-1902), who have written about Las Casas or drawn from his writings, preceded by twenty-eight mini-essays on their views and work in the context of their period and their own goals.
Much of this material is new. No one has previously assembled Bernal Díaz’ interesting sidelights on Fray Bartolomé; or culled Lascasiana from the works of such varied figures as the Oidor Zorita, the Augustinian Grijalva, the liberal historian Riva Palacio, the conservatives Alamán and Orozco y Berra, and the geographer García Cubas; or examined the influence of hagiography, the “creole reaction,” the expulsion of the Jesuits, nationalism, positivism, and Porfirism on Mexican opinions about Las Casas. José María Muriá and his assistants (Alma Dorantes and Virginia González Clavería) deserve plaudits for a diligent compilation and fresh presentation.
The work, however, has many minor flaws. Dates should have been supplied for all authors, and original (not just reprint) dates for all selections. Mini-essays reflect Muriá’s unfamiliarity with Las Casas’ works and a belief that only writers who find fault are “analytical” or “critical.” Thus, Muriá is sympathetic to Motolinía’s diatribe against Las Casas (opening essay, pp. 1-16), but implies that Mendieta is insincere and Justo Sierra uncritical for their praise (pp. 23 and 57); Muriá refers to Las Casas’ Teatro de la descripción de las Indias (sic! for Destrucción de las Indias, cf. p. 31 with pp. 139-141); Muriá claims that Clavijero “respected the Apolegética least” of Las Casas works, and thought that “others ‘kept in famous archives’ were better (p. 36), whereas this writer really criticized Las Casas’ printed works and regretted that the Apologética and Historia general were still unpublished (in the eighteenth century) (p. 158); and Muriá considers Las Casas no authority on Jalisco, where “he had never been and of which he knew little” (p. 34)—ignoring Fray Bartolomé’s huge book on the Second Jalisco Conquest. Some inclusions are also questionable—persons who wrote a single sentence about Las Casas (cf. pp. 65-66, 194), accounts of Mexican Councils attended by later bishops of Chiapa (p. 210, items re 1555 and 1565)—and some omissions, too. For example, why only the bibliographer Beristaín and not the more inaccessible Eguiara y Eguren?
But the major flaw is the lack of a solid introduction. The book gives no picture (not even a hint) of four centuries of significant Mexican historiography and polemics on Las Casas—from early monastic chronicles that supplied his first full-scale biographies—to colonial treatises against his ideas, and the reprinting of his tracts to promote independence—to Nicolás León’s discovery and García Icazbalceta’s publication of important Las Casas manuscripts in the nineteenth century—to studies by Zavala and others, and the valuable first edition of Las Casas’ De unico vocations modo and re-edition of his Apologética historia sumaria, by Millares Carlo and O’Gorman, in our own times.
