by Hugh Thomas
Among the matters studied at the end of May was a memorial by Gil González Dávila, accountant of La Española, who urged that two sugar mills and a sawmill be built, as well as plantations of cotton and sugar. The cultivation of wheat and vines would be carried out in order to avoid import bills. González Dávila also suggested the encouragement as colonists of good Andalusians who knew about farming, for whom the passage would be paid. They would be given land on which to produce wheat. He suggested that there should be a melting down every two months for two or three days, not just once a year. He thought, however, that the position of escaped slaves would be easier if the universal enslavement of the Indians were declared.45
His memorandum led to another by Las Casas.46 That took as its point of departure the then forgotten item in the will of Isabel in favor of the Indians. It argued that King Fernando (“to whom it was to be hoped that God would grant a good paradise”)47 had wanted the Indians to be looked after by benign encomenderos. Las Casas also demanded that the Laws of Burgos be fulfilled, and argued the benefit of restoring the officials of Diego Colón in La Española, while denouncing the protégés of Fonseca. Montesinos and a Dominican friar, Domingo de Betanzos, from Galicia, wrote to the court on June 4, 1516, recommending that they pay attention to Las Casas, and attacking the suggestion that Indians were unsuitable for marriage or for the faith: “The only Christians who said that were settlers who wanted the Indians for digging gold.”48
Cisneros asked “the Abulense,” Francisco Ruiz, to report on whether Las Casas was right. Ruiz wrote a paper on the matter. In this, he argued that Indians should be taken away from people who were absentees. Like Las Casas and, indeed, like Dávila, he agreed that workers in Castile should be sent to the islands. Ruiz also thought that the recently founded Santa Marta, in what is now Colombia, should become the main port of the Indies.
But he added: “Indians are malicious people who are able to think up ways to harm Christians, but they are not capable of natural judgment or of receiving the faith, nor do they have other virtues required for conversion and salvation.… They need, just as a horse or beast does, to be directed and governed by Christ.”49
This intolerant view was reinforced by the arrival in Castile of Pánfilo de Narváez and Antonio Velázquez, the representatives (procuradores) from Cuba. The first, as we have seen, had been Diego Velázquez’s second in command in the conquest of that island and before that of Esquivel’s in Jamaica; while the second was one of the Governor’s many cousins. The two accused Las Casas of being “a man of no weight, of little authority, and less credit, who speaks of what he does not know nor has seen, for reasons which are themselves contradictory.”50 Cisneros immediately cut this short: Las Casas’s reputation now stood high with him. They were a curious combination: the austere Cardinal and the ever ingenious agitator. Yet the two served the Crown well.
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“Go back and see what is happening”
Cisneros asked: “In whom can we confide? Go back there yourself and see what is happening.”
Cisneros to Las Casas at the time of the mission of the priors to La Española, 1517
At the end of June 1516, Cardinal Cisneros, surrounded by such contrasting advice about what to do in the Indies, made a remarkable decision. He had sought without success to find among royal officials a man who would truly pursue justice in the Indies. So he decided to request certain priors of monasteries of the Jeronymite order to perform that task. In a letter to Charles explaining this unprecedented decision, he condemned new sinecures in the Indies (for example, those of the courtier Hernando de Vega). He pointed out that the Indians who worked as servants were free, not slaves, and should be treated as such. He thought that the Crown should possess neither Indians nor farms. He denounced the old courtiers and servants of the Catholic Kings, an obvious reference to Fonseca and to Conchillos, without mentioning their names, who, he said, had been corrupted by the concession of too many private interests. He referred to the visit of Las Casas to the late King on his deathbed, “but since he had died, there could be no further remedy.”
This letter probably owed much to Las Casas, who, because of his energy, charm, and persistence, was becoming every day more influential. The idea of asking Jeronymite priors to form the government in La Española was, however, that of Cisneros himself. Las Casas had suggested that Fray Reginaldo de Montesinos, a Dominican, too, and a brother of Father Antonio, might be nominated. But Cisneros decided against nominating either Franciscans or Dominicans, in order “to avoid what they might do in favor of one or the other.”1 The Jeronymites had several advantages: first, they had a good reputation as administrators; second, their recent statute of purity of blood meant that there were few conversos among them. That counted positively with the austere Cisneros. Finally, the difficulties between modernizers and reactionaries that affected both mendicant orders did not exist with the Jeronymites. The order had no experience, it is true, in the New World. But that seemed an advantage to Cisneros.
Cisneros sent an emissary, Dignidad de Tesorero, to talk with the General of the Jeronymite order, Father Pedro de Mora, who was then at the monastery of San Bartolomé de Lupiana in Guadalajara. He told him that the Cardinal thought that up till then no one sent to the Indies had been free of the “greed” that was so notorious. Now was the possibility for a real change.
In late July, Cisneros, Cardinal Adrian (now Bishop of Tolosa and, quite inappropriately, Inquisitor of Aragon), and Bishop Ruiz of Ávila talked with Gonzalo de Frías, prior of Santa María de Armedilla, near Cuéllar; Santa Cruz, prior of La Sisla, near Toledo; and the prior of San Leonardo, near Alba de Tormes. Cisneros explained to the priors that the Indians seemed to be rational persons but that their cultural backwardness obliged Spain to convert and civilize them, submitting them not to slavery but to a moderate level of service. Cisneros asked his friends for the names of two or three men who could govern but at the same time convert the Indians. He asked the prior of the Jeronymite monastery in Madrid to provide him with similar names.2
The court met these priors in that same monastery of San Jerónimo, Madrid. The court (including Fonseca!) sat in the lower choir near the sacristy, where the priors of Sisla, Armedilla, Madrid, San Leonardo, and others were gathered. Several priors were enthusiastic about the suggestion of Cisneros, including Fray Cristóbal de Frías, then the leading theologian of the order. Shortly, three priors were nominated for the reformation of the Indies: Luis de Figueroa of La Mejorada, Olmedo, the favorite priory of Fernando and Isabel, who was originally from Seville; the prior of San Jerónimo de Buenaventura, outside Seville; and Bernardino de Manzanedo, prior of Santa Marta, near Zamora, an ugly but virtuous monk, who was balanced, young, and still robust.3
Here in the Jeronymite monastery in Madrid, Las Casas first launched his famous propaganda cannonade of figures. He insisted that Bartolomeo Colón had said that there had been 1.1 million Indians in La Española in 1492. But now there were only 12,000.4 Almost all Las Casas’s statistics were exaggerated, these more than most.
Cisneros asked the lawyer Palacios Rubios to help him work out a plan for the good government of the Indies, and he consulted Las Casas, who drew up a scheme, in collaboration with Fray Reginaldo Montesinos. This plan, which bore a close relation to what Las Casas had suggested earlier, was accepted, with minor changes.5
Early in August 1516 the prior-proconsuls received their instructions. First, they were “to think and observe what was best for the service of God and the instruction of the Indians in our faith, for their own good, as also for the settlers of those islands and, whatever you think should be provided, provide it.”6 The benefit to the Indians was to be placed ahead of that of the settlers. Then, in any charges against the Christians for ill-treating Indians, Indians could thereafter be called as witnesses. Dominicans and Franciscans already in La Española were to be interpreters. The settlers and a few caciques should be called together and told that Indian rights were to be mai
ntained: for example, the rights to life, not to be ill-treated, to personal security, to dignity, to culture—but not, of course, to religion. Indians, too, were to have the right to hold meetings and to talk with others. There would be in effect a “republic of Indians,” living in free communities, and there would be a “republic of Spaniards.”7 One could not in the circumstances of that era have expected a more humane plan.
On August 8, 1516, Cisneros wrote to Sancho de Matienzo at the Casa de Contratación in Seville, asking him for “a good and secure ship that might take some Jeronymites to La Española.” There were protests at these strange appointments. Antonio Velázquez and Gil González Dávila waited for the friars outside Las Casas’s lodging in Madrid and shouted that he was their “chief enemy … a perverse and evil man.” The friars went to stay at the hospital of Santa Catalina de los Donados, where several men back from the Indies tried to convince them to take the settlers’ view of the position in the Indies, not that of Las Casas.
The friars went home to bid goodbye to their monasteries, but the prior of San Jerónimo de Buenaventura decided not to persist with the plan. There volunteered in his stead Alonso de Santo Domingo, prior of San Juan de Ortega, near Burgos, who had been an energetic reformer of the monastery of Uclés in 1504. By 1516 he was, however, aged and inappropriate. There was also added the equally old Fray Juan de Salvatierra. Fray Luis de Figueroa, prior of La Mejorada, would be the superior of the mission. Palacios Rubios talked to these three priors and was shocked to find that Fray Luis seemed to have already been won over by the friends of the treasurer in Santo Domingo, Pasamonte, and appeared disposed to be hostile to the Indians. Palacios went to Cisneros to tell him that whatever the merits of nominating priors, the actual appointments were mistaken. But Cisneros was suffering from colitis, and even Palacios Rubios was weakened by gout. The tragedy is that even before they set out, these Jeronymite commissars had begun to turn against what Cisneros wanted. But, as is often the case in politics, the Cardinal knew that it was too late to go back on what he had decided: Las Casas went to see Cisneros and told him of his and Palacios Rubios’s doubts. Cisneros said, shocked, “In whom can we confide? Go back there yourself and see what is happening.”8 Las Casas maintained his optimism and prepared to set out once more, with his own instructions.9
Cisneros also named Alonso de Zuazo, a disciple of Palacios Rubios, a clever lawyer from Segovia who had been at the college of the Cardinal in Valladolid, as the official to conduct the residencia of the old judges of the audiencia of La Española, as well as of other officials. He was to operate under the direction of “the pious fathers.” The instructions for the priors were signed on September 18, by Cisneros and Adrian. They contained no explicit order to be kind to the Indians: “You should know that we have been informed of the many injuries and wrongs that the Indians of these islands have received and are still receiving from the Christians who … are there, and the clamors from the part of the said Indians to the effect that they are in many ways merely prisoners.” Cisneros wanted the Indians “to be properly indoctrinated in our Christian religion and live as men of reason.”10 The priors were to have the power to suspend officials and also to fill such places temporarily. They were to be neither governors nor judges, but “high commissioners for the protection of Indians.” They were to think of themselves as in control of Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and “tierra firme”—Panama/Darien—as well as of La Española.11 They had in theory more responsibility in the Indies, therefore, than Diego Colón had had, since his writ had never extended to Pedrarias’s principality on the isthmus.
In October 1516 the designated Jeronymite priors reached Seville. They showed themselves happy with the civil servants of the Casa de Contratación, but suspicious of Las Casas. The latter explained that he wanted to travel to the Indies on the same boat as they in order to inform them in detail of what was going on. But the priors said that Las Casas’s presence would destroy their peace of mind. Actually, they delayed for some time in Seville and, against the explicit ruling of the Cardinal, embarked on a ship that was carrying fourteen or fifteen black slaves entrusted to the captain by their masters.12 This vessel was the San Juan, a ship partly owned by Diego Rodríguez Pepiño and partly by Luis Fernández de Alfaro. They also delayed for eleven days at Sanlúcar de Barrameda and finally departed on November 11, 1516, seen off by the shipowners and López de Recalde, the accountant of the Casa de Contratación. Las Casas sailed on another vessel, the Trinidad, accompanied by four servants and his library. That vessel planned to stop in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in order to deposit cargo. Among the other passengers was Gonzalo de Sandoval, from Medellín, in Extremadura, a youth who would eventually play a great part in the conquest of Mexico.
The co-owner of the San Juan, Luis Fernández de Alfaro, had been a sea captain and then a merchant. His career illustrates well the rise of a Sevillano captain to a position of significance in this first generation of the settlement of the New World. First of all, he was a converso.13 He appears in records as master of the San Juan, bound in 1504 for Santo Domingo, borrowing 32,000 maravedís from a well-known banker, also a converso, Pedro de Jerez.14 On August 29, 1506, the youthful Hernán Cortés paid Alfaro 11 ducats (4,125 maravedís) to take him to the Indies; and Cortés evidently maintained an association with Alfaro, who later sold him armaments and other goods, in combination with the silversmith Juan de Córdoba.15 The same year there is a reference to Francisco de Morales, who, like Cortés, would go to Cuba after 1511, paying 12,000 maravedís to Alfaro for carrying him, his wife, and his daughter, as well as a “box of merchandise,” to Santo Domingo.16 Still in 1506, a certain Constanza Fernández sold this merchant “one black slave born in Guinea” (una esclava negra natural de Guinea) for 8,500 maravedís—presumably she came via Lisbon.17 In the next year or two, Alfaro is remembered as going to the New World as both owner and master of ships, sometimes carrying back gold for the King.18
By his next appearance in the records of Seville, the following year, Alfaro had converted himself into a merchant: Francisco de Lizaur, the secretary to Ovando, and Licenciado Alonso de Maldonado, the judge, both of Santo Domingo, obliged themselves to pay him, as a “merchant,” 27,000 maravedís of gold, which Lizaur owed him for an unnamed public contract.19 In 1507, a well-known captain, Ambrosio Sánchez, agreed with Alfaro to carry “all the merchandise that he wanted to sell in La Española.”20 In 1512, we hear of the establishment of “a mercantile company composed of him, Gaspar de Villadiego, and Fernando de Carrión,” with a capital of 1.6 million maravedís. By 1513, Alfaro had also become a banker and money changer, and he supplied Pedrarias’s fleet bound for Darien with a large quantity of linen, from which to make cushions, sheets, pillows, and sailcloth, as well as all the barrels necessary for the water of the fleet. The company was closed down in 1517, with Alfaro making a profit of over 600,000 maravedís.21 By that time he was co-owner of the San Juan. We shall find him busy again in relation to Cortés and the conquest of Mexico, having become by then a partner of the silversmith Juan de Córdoba.
Soon after the departure of Las Casas and the priors, a letter arrived at court from Fray Pedro de Córdoba directed to the first-named, saying that he thought the Crown should hand over to the religious orders (Dominicans and Franciscans) 100 leagues of the South American coast near Cumaná. If 100 leagues could not be provided, Las Casas was to ask for 10 leagues, or at least an island. Córdoba added that if these requests were not agreed, he would recall all the Dominicans from the New World, for it seemed no use preaching “when those Indians see those who call themselves Christians acting in opposition to Christian ideals.” What the Dominicans desired was administrative responsibility for a large stretch of territory, for Fray Pedro was in no way downcast by the deaths of his namesake and the lay brother Garcés. Their experience told him that the mistake was to have such a small representation on the South American coast.
But Fonseca, who read the letter in Las Casas’s absence, s
aid that one could not give 100 leagues of savage coast to monks without making adequate provision for their defense. He was quite against making any such grant, but in the end, Córdoba never withdrew the Dominicans.
In La Española the interregnum continued, with Diego Colón in Spain, but with his wife, María de Toledo, maintaining something like a tropical court in Santo Domingo. The treasurer, Pasamonte, and the judges were the effective governors, though, awaiting the arrival of the priors, whom they expected to be able to persuade to accept their own point of view—about the nature of Indian labor, slaves, and mines. Presumably they had received news from their friends in Spain about the likely attitudes of the superior, Fray Luis de Figueroa. Their slaving expeditions were of course continuing. In 1516, there were eight such to the north coast of South America from San Juan alone.
One of these, organized by Antón Cansino, one more sea captain from Palos, that home of sailors, was denounced by the Dominicans, recalling the prohibition on the seizure of slaves in the zone of the missions. The government ordered the newly appointed judge—and the Governor of San Juan, Sancho Velázquez de Cuéllar (another member of that family so ubiquitous in the upper reaches of Spanish administration)—to leave the slaves in jail until their case was solved. But Cansino gave Judge Vázquez de Ayllón a present of pearls worth 22,500 maravedís, and he allowed the slaves to be sold. That same autumn of 1516, a similar expedition led by two captains from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Juan Gil and Maese Antonio Catalán, carried out such barbarities against the Indians that even the hard-bitten Audiencia in Santo Domingo condemned them. Gil was imprisoned in the common prison, where he died.22
