This is the first of three volumes containing the proceedings of a symposium, one of many events commemorating the supposed fifth centenary of the birth of Bartolomé de Las Casas. The symposium, held in May 1974 under the auspices of the Seminario de Historia de America of the University of Valladolid, had for its general theme Spain’s Indian policy, and the present volume deals with the following aspects: “El inicio del indigenismo,” “El choque y la pugna de ocupación,” “Demografía y salubridad,” “Linguística: El indígena y los problemas idiomáticos,” “El indígena: Su sedentarización y poblamiento,” and La condición jurídico-social del indígena.”
Contributions to symposia are usually of uneven quality and importance. The opening essay by Mónico Melida y González Monteagudo carefully traces with the aid of published materials Las Casas’ links with Valladolid during the course of his long life, with special emphasis on the influence of the Colegio de San Gregorio on his doctrinal formation. It is followed by a paper, somewhat old-fashioned in its methodology, by Antonio Rumeu de Armas on “La primera declaración de libertad del aborigen americano.” Ignoring the political and economic factors that in the last analysis determined the evolution of Spain’s Indian policy, Rumeu de Armas stresses the noble ideals of Spain’s Indian legislation and the piety and goodwill of Queen Isabella. But for the injunction to convert the Indians in the Papal bulls of 1493, he affirms, slavery might have been the fate of many Indian peoples; and he closes with the statement that the cédula of 1549, divorcing forced labor from the encomienda, meant that “the contractual system of the free wage-earner had triumphed for ever”—a statement contradicted by an overwhelming mass of evidence.
In a most original study of “Actitudes ante los Caribes desde su conocimiento indirecto hasta la capitulación de Valladolid de 1520,” Demetrio Ramos demonstrates on the basis of published and manuscript sources that, during this period, attitudes of approval and high regard for the Caribs alternated with the now traditional view of them as ferocious cannibals. Of special interest are his references to Taino Indians who were captured by the Caribs and returned to tell the tale, and other references to peaceful, voluntary coexistence of Tainos and Caribs in the Lesser Antilles; evidence of this kind suggests the need to reassess the stereotyped picture of the Caribs as insatiable maneaters.
In his revisionist study, “El indofeudalismo chibcha, como explicación de la fácil conquista quesadista,” Manuel Lucena Salmoral rejects the traditional view that the conquest of the Colombian plateau was a difficult process of long duration. He argues that the social and political organization of the Chibcha, constituting a peculiar Indian “feudalism,” with local caciques owing allegiance to one of two rulers, named the Zipa and the Zaque, respectively, and with the cacicazgos grouped into two large confederations, greatly facilitated the conquest of the region later known as the Nuevo Reino de Granada. Imitating the strategy of Pizarro, Quesada determined to seize the persons of the Zipa and the Zaque; with their capture or death the quick submission of their domains followed. Following the conquest, Quesada employed the Cortesian model of imposing a “neofeudal” superstructure on the “indofeudal” structure of the Chibcha. Lucena Salmoral claims that Quesada’s policy of distributing whole cacicazgos instead of individual Indians, as was done in the West Indies, preserved the Chibcha social structure and tribute system and saved the native population from the destruction that took place in the islands.
Additionally, I may cite three items that I found of special interest: German O. Tjarks, “Demografía de Nuevo México en el siglo XVIII”; Francisco de Solano Pérez-Lila, “El intérprete: Uno de los ejes de la aculturación”; and José Luis Mora Mérida, “La población paraguaya no reducida.”
