The Valladolid Debate (1551) was called by Charles V, the grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand, to determine whether Spain should:
- Keep sending military expeditions to the Indies (the Americas).
- Keep forcing labour from Indians.
In 1542, Bartolomé de las Casas, a bishop in Mexico, wrote “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies”. He told of violence and cruelty by Spanish conquistadors, of millions dying, of Indians being made into slaves. It shocked Europe. Spain’s enemies loved every word of it.
In 1547, Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda hit back with “On the Just Causes of War”. He was one of Spain’s top experts on Aristotle, the last word in science and philosophy in those days. Sepulveda argued that the Spanish had every right to conquer, kill and enslave Indians. He quoted Scripture, saints, popes and, of course, Aristotle.
In 1551, Charles V brought Las Casas and Sepulveda together in Valladolid to debate before the Council of the Indies and his top experts on law and religion.
On the first day Sepulveda laid out his argument. He said the Spanish had:
- The right to rule: Indians were, as Las Casas summarized his argument:
“barbaric, uninstructed in letters and the art of government and completely ignorant, unreasoning and totally incapable of learning anything but the mechanical arts; that they are sunk in vice, are cruel, and are of such character that, as nature teaches, they are to be governed by the will of others.”
The Spanish therefore, being “wiser and superior in virtue and learning”, had the right to rule them, using force if the Indians were too dimwitted to see what was good for them.
- The right to punish: Indians practised human sacrifice and idolatry. The genocide of the Amorites and Perizzites in Holy Scripture proved Christians had that right.
- The right to spread the Christian faith by violence: it is what Jesus would do, as proved by the Parable of the Banquet. Saint Gregory would approve too, as he approved of Gennadius, Exarch of Africa, who spread the faith by the sword in the 600s.
- The duty to stop human sacrifice: to save innocent lives.
Besides, Pope Alexander VI declared wars against Indians to be just.
The next day Las Casas spoke. He spent the next five days reading from his latest book, “In Defence of Indians”. He too quoted Scripture, popes and saints. But, unlike Sepulveda, he had first-hand experience of Indians. He knew that the Aztecs, for example, had had law and government and seats of higher learning. Sepulveda’s picture of Indians, meanwhile, came second-hand from their enemies – the Spanish.
Las Casas said the way to stop idolatry, human sacrifice and disobedience to the Spanish Crown is to bring the Indians to Christ, through good example and persuasion. He tried it: it works! Besides, the Church, except in special cases, has no right to allow violence against unbelievers.
Las Casas won, kind of: the Council agreed to stop sending military expeditions but not to stop the forced labour of Indians.
– Abagond, 2015.
See also:
- Taken for granted by both sides:
- The term “Indian”
- White paternalism – except they would call it something like “Christian duty”
- Staceyann Chin reads from “The Destruction of the Indies”
- The Spanish
- Western views of “natives”
- 1492-1505: Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci
- 1500-2000: Western thought
- 1950-1986: National Geographic
- 1995-2008: US high schools
- Native American views of Westerners
- John Mohawk – he talks about this very debate
- Vine Deloria, Jr – talks about the same issues in the debate as they appear before the US Supreme Court
- Aristotle
- Scripture
- Pope Alexander VI
- Are Christians more violent than Muslims?
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Abagond 
Then Las Casas suggested the Spanish import African slaves instead.
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@ louis2decaro – I know right? What’s up with that.
While later in life he is said to have thought that all forms of slavery were wrong.
Maybe it was easier to see Africans as the enemy of Europe and the Church and accustomed to servitude so he may have believed Sepulveda’s argument – just not as it applied to Indians.
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@ LoM – You know you’re on a site that speaks primarily on Black issues, right? Don’t expect anyone here to ‘bless the soul’ of someone who thought the enslavement of Africans was a good thing.
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“4. The duty to stop human sacrifice: to save innocent lives.”
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So genocide is justification for the ocassional human sacrifice?
I wonder how many millions they had to kill in order to stop this “human sacrifce?”
This same brutish backward thinking (rampant senseless justifications, control, violence, killing) is still with us now, today, as the world’s powers ready themselves to beset us with another world war, so that some men can get rich and fill their lust for blood.
No wonder hungry zombies and vampires (in the media’s ENTERTAINMENT) are back in vogue. They have one track minds, like some of those who persistly drive by here to infect us with their insanity.
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@Fan …
You mean to rhetorically ask “[so] occasional human sacrifice is justification for genocide”, right?
Anyway, seems that the white man was having pangs of conscience even early on in the colonial project … yet their greed was apparently much stronger. Puts to shame that racist tripe about how whites were so GOOD because they abolished slavery … why didn’t they do it SOONER, like in the 1540s? Why did they follow it up in the USA with Jim Crow and worldwide with greedy genocidal campaigns that were carried out under the auspices of “ending slavery” while stealing from the people they were claiming to be “saving”?
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“You mean to rhetorically ask “[so] occasional human sacrifice is justification for genocide”, right?”
Mike,
Maybe I didn’t express that very clearly but I believe I meant it the way I wrote it…in other words the Conquistadors essentially believed:
Genocide is justified because some people are being killed/sacrificed …
Said another way, “Let’s destroy/abuse the whole lot of them because their worship is different/lesser than ours!”
It was just an excuse to oppress, enslave and annihilate these people. Weird how that works.. the Spaniards conducting the genocide felt superior to the Indians who killed/sacrificed their own on a much, much lesser scale. The evil they saw in the Native people existed 1000X greater in themselves.
.
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” Puts to shame that racist tripe about how whites were so GOOD because they abolished slavery … why didn’t they do it SOONER, like in the 1540s? Why did they follow it up in the USA with Jim Crow and worldwide with greedy genocidal campaigns that were carried out under the auspices of “ending slavery” while stealing from the people they were claiming to be “saving”?”
Rhetorical or not, these are excellent questions Mike for the latest drive-by troll, Donnie. Perhaps he’ll bore us with his presence, again, and offer yet another lame view from the blurry lens of a racist.
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@ Fan
From the numbers I have seen, the Aztecs killed about a million people, many as human sacrifices, while the Spanish conquest of Mexico left like 10 million dead, many of disease.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
You do understand, right, that he saw Indians as inferior to the Spanish? That he was an imperialist? That just because Sepulveda was worse does not mean Las Casas was not himself problematic?
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Las Casas did advocate using african slaves in his early writing but he later retracted those views and he did see all forms of slavery as wrong.
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“The Last Word On Science And Philosophy In Those Days”
Literally a ‘God’ then. Wow.
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The Conquistadors were simply a bunch of cavemen dressed in uniform, sent by an equally wicked Catholic church. They (Catholicism), then attempted to justify their genocidal and demonic behavior by either intentionally misquoting the Bible or through the creation of false doctrines to suit their demonic driven propensity for hatred and violence against people of darker skin than them.
For Sepulveda to misquote earlier popes, saints, the Scripture and Aristotle as justification certainly aren’t of equal footing with the true saints of the Bible, the children of Israel, who were black and brown skinned Jews (Psalm 148:14).
In all of their ceremonial veneer and decorative masks designed to shield its true identity, the Catholic church has always perpetuated violence against people of color by twisting the word of Yahawa Bahasham Yahashi (God coming Jesus Christ). There is no difference today in October 2015!
I’ll stop here because I don’t want Abagond to delete my post.
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@Lord of M said: “Las Casas was a true hero, a paragon of European-Indian relations and of the Catholic Church. God bless his soul.”
Your comment is damn near too silly to even dignify with a response. However, why would you refer to the Spanish Inquisition or genocide of a dark skinned people by another people who were white, as an “European-Indian relations”? The murdering of almost an entire group of people by another race of people doesn’t appear to fit the description of what one would usually refer to as a healthy relationship.
These people were uprooted from their land. Some were sent to Seville Spain to be slaves; most were murdered due to non-conformity and the head of toddlers were slammed against trees. Let us not sugar-coat history because a relationship between white Europeans and the indigenous people of the Americas were beset with violence day in and day out. And of course, the natives were usually on the receiving end.
The good Lord has something for the violence white people committed. He will make an inquisition of them in return. In Esdras 6:18-19 – And it said, Behold, the days come, that I will begin to draw nigh, and to visit them that dwell upon the earth, And will begin to make INQUISITION of them, what they be that have hurt unjustly with their unrighteousness.
As opposed to saying “God bless his soul”, you should’ve said may God have MERCY on his soul!
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“You know you’re on a site that speaks primarily on Black issues, right? Don’t expect anyone here to ‘bless the soul’ of someone who thought the enslavement of Africans was a good thing.” @UBJ, Seriously, I was like “da’ fuq did I just read?” when I came across that!
“So genocide is justification for the ocassional human sacrifice?” I almost fell out my seat when I saw your question: and yes, I understood what you meant immediately-regardless I couldn’t help but to giggle a bit (with all respect to an otherwise very serious topic, though)!
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