The Encomienda in Latin-American History: A Reappraisal

Abstract

The Teacher of Latin-American History in the United States finds himself seriously handicapped by the lack of impartial and fair textbooks on this increasingly important subject. Most of the authors, either through lack of contact with the sources of information and original documents, or just because the trends begun by the “New American School of History” mentioned by Charles F. Lummis some fifty years ago, have not yet reached them, still cling tenaciously to the errors of the “Black Legend.” Their pet source still is the now much discredited and entirely unreliable Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas. They still take their cues from his much translated Brevísima Historia de la Destrucción de las Indias. Seldom do they even mention any of the many saintly bishops and missionaries who opposed him in the great debate of the early colonial times.