Daniel Castro.Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism.:Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism.(Latin America Otherwise: Languages, Empires, Nations.)

Abstract

I took Daniel Castro's book on Bartolomé de Las Casas to the commemoration of the tenth-year anniversary of the massacre of forty-five members of the Tzotzil Roman Catholic pacifist organization Las Abejas (The Bees) with the expectation that the volume would be a suitable companion for reflecting on Las Casas's legacy in Chiapas, Mexico. I soon learned that Castro's objective was to expose Las Casas's “ecclesiastical imperialism,” which led me to put it down. The last thing I wanted was to “deconstruct” the remembrance of the martyrs of Acteal. Castro's book is more about what Las Casas did not do than about his brilliant career as a pamphleteer, historian, philosopher, and theologian. Following the lead of Fray Toribio Benavente, known as Motolinia (meaning “he is poor” in Nahuatl, not, as Castro claims, “the barefoot one”), Castro unmasks the titles of “father,” “apostle,” and “protector” that historians have given Las Casas over the centuries. Castro revisits Motolinia's denunciation, in the famous 1555 Letter to Emperor Charles V, of Las Casas's disregard for the Indian's spiritual health, his purported ignorance of indigenous languages, and his hypocrisy manifest in using Indian carriers to transport massive files documenting abuses.