A Spanish friar documents the brutal treatment of Caribbean natives at the hands of colonial authorities in the sixteenth century. After traveling to the New World, Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas witnessed conquistadors wreak unimaginable horrors upon the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. He later dedicated his life to fighting for their protection. Following numerous failed attempts to reason with authorities in Spain, he chose to document everything he had seen over a span of fifty years and to give it to Spain’s Prince Philip II. In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Las Casas catalogues the atrocities he observed the Spanish colonial authorities inflict upon the native people. He discusses the brutal torture, mass genocide, and enslavement. He passionately pleas for an end to this treatment and for the native peoples to be given basic human rights.

Witness the chilling chronicle of colonial atrocities and the mistreatment of indigenous peoples in 'A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies'. Written by the compassionate Spanish Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas in 1542, this harrowing account exposes the heinous crimes committed by the Spanish in the Americas. Addressed to Prince Philip II of Spain, Las Casas' heartfelt plea for justice sheds light on the fear of divine punishment and the salvation of Native souls. From the burning of innocent people to the relentless exploitation of labor, the author unveils a brutal reality that spans across Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba.

Fifty years after the arrival of Columbus, at the height of Spain's conquest of the West Indies, Spanish bishop and colonist Bartolomé de Las Casas dedicated his Brevísima Relación de la Destruición de las Indias to Philip II of Spain. An impassioned plea on behalf of the native peoples of the West Indies, the Brevísima Relación catalogues in horrific detail atrocities it attributes to the king’s colonists in the New World. The result is a withering indictment of the conquerors that has cast a 500-year shadow over the subsequent history of that world and the European colonization of it.

Presents Bartolomé de Las Casas's 1552 account of the brutalities he witnessed, committed in the name of Christianity, on voyages to the Spanish colonies of the New World.

The Spanish cleric Bartolomé de Las Casas is a key figure in the history of Spain’s conquest of the Americas. Las Casas condemned the torture and murder of natives by the conquistadores in reports to the Spanish royal court and in tracts such as A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies (1552). For his unrelenting denunciation of the colonialists’ atrocities, Las Casas has been revered as a noble protector of the Indians and as a pioneering anti-imperialist. He has become a larger-than-life figure invoked by generations of anticolonialists in Europe and Latin America. Separating historical reality from myth, Daniel Castro provides a nuanced, revisionist assessment of the friar’s career, writings, and political activities. Castro argues that Las Casas was very much an imperialist. Intent on converting the Indians to Christianity, the religion of the colonizers, Las Casas simply offered the natives another face of empire: a paternalistic, ecclesiastical imperialism. Castro contends that while the friar was a skilled political manipulator, influential at what was arguably the world’s most powerful sixteenth-century imperial court, his advocacy on behalf of the natives had little impact on their lives. Analyzing Las Casas’s extensive writings, Castro points out that in his many years in the Americas, Las Casas spent very little time among the indigenous people he professed to love, and he made virtually no effort to learn their languages. He saw himself as an emissary from a superior culture with a divine mandate to impose a set of ideas and beliefs on the colonized. He differed from his compatriots primarily in his antipathy to violence as the means for achieving conversion.

An unabridged translation of a 16th century Dominican friar's history of the Aztec world before the Spanish conquest, based on a now-lost Nahuatl chronicle and interviews with Aztec informants. Duran traces the history of the Aztecs from their mythic origins to the destruction of the empire, and describes the court life of the elite, the common people, and life in times of flood, drought, and war. Includes an introduction and annotations providing background on recent studies of colonial Mexico, and 62 b&w illustrations from the original manuscript. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.