The Iconic Experiments to Make Things Right

In the following chapters we are going to move away from what has been to now largely a chronological narrative story of Las Casas from birth to when he decided to return to Spain in 1515. We needed to provide the rationale, the reasons why he devoted the rest of his life, in fact developing as an icon in the Hispanic world, to defending the Indian in the face of the Spanish conquest and settlement of the New World. Much of the rest of his story is available in biographies and other studies of both the man and his life. We examine those in the bibliographical essay at the end of this book (p.243). I would recommend, for example and not being too brazen, my biography of the man, Bartolomé de las Casas: A Biography published by Cambridge University Press, in 2012.

Now let's take up his return to Spain, his meeting with King Ferdinand and Las Casas's first attempts actually to bring his theories on justice and freedom to pass, or, in other words, not simply to espouse them but to put them into practice.

There are, of course, thinkers and activists across the centuries. Often they represent very separate approaches to the world. Occasionally they are one and the same man. Las Casas fit that bill. As the Book of James phrased it, “be doers of the word and not hearers only” (James 1: 22). Bartolomé was a close student of Scripture, just like his contemporary, Martin Luther, and you can be certain he was familiar with James. Don't just listen to the Word of God, put it into action. That is fairly easy to write; not so easy to put justice and truth into action.