In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Religion and Reform in Colonial Spanish America:Religious Experience in Latin American Culture before Independence
  • Brian Connaughton (bio)
Another Face of Empire: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Indigenous Rights, and Ecclesiastical Imperialism. By Daniel Castro. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Pp. xii + 233. $21.95 paper.
La ilustración en el Río de la Plata: Cultura eclesiástica y cultura laica durante el Virreinato. By José Carlos Chiaramonte. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2007. Pp. 383. $16.19 paper.
Religion in New Spain. Edited by Susan Schroeder and Stafford Poole. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Pp. ix + 358. $39.95 cloth.

The works under review here are united not only by their concern for religion, ideas, and society in colonial Spanish America but equally by a common didactic orientation, which is very strong in each of them. Taken together, they are a good gauge of recent advances in dealing with religion in studies of Latin American history and the rethinking of how religion touches the heights of empire building, the valleys of confrontation and crisis, and the daily and frequently inglorious struggles of quotidian existence.

Castro's book and the collective volume edited by Schroeder and Poole share a common concern for the Indian in colonial Latin America. But in dealing with the great lifework of Bartolomé de Las Casas, Castro is more directly concerned with how today's misunderstanding of Las Casas's moment and his efforts in the past reveal an enduring legacy of colonialism toward indigenous Americans in the New World. Consequently, his study is clearly argumentative, with a singular desire to make the reader perceive Las Casas and his times in a new and more critical light than Lewis Hanke purportedly shed on the great defender of the Indians of [End Page 215] the New World.1 Taking issue with a Hanke-inspired vision of Las Casas has a long history, yet Castro's stance is extreme.2 Schroeder and Poole's collection has no such singular intent. The contributors to this carefully crafted volume work from a great variety of sources in pursuit of their analytical goals.

The strength and weakness of Castro's study is its clear and reiterated key argument. In the title, introduction, chapters, and conclusions, we are told that Las Casas must be understood as a more benevolent face of Spanish imperialism but in no way as a counterpoint or contradiction to it. Castro sees Las Casas as a proponent of "ecclesiastical imperialism" (8), which, in conjunction with royal interests, allegedly sought to control the "semi-feudal" (9) tendencies of the conquistadores and other Spanish colonialists. Castro gradually recounts the fascinating life of Las Casas and the stages through which it developed, depicting along the way his amazing power of personality and endurance. However, given his declared sympathy for the native peoples of the Americas—who are conceived as thoroughly vanquished in the processes of conquest and colonization—Castro cannot or will not empathize with his protagonist. Consequently, he does little to flesh out the germane cultural and juridical contexts that might help to explain Las Casas more fully as one of many—as Castro himself admits—crusading reformers. Las Casas is shown to be self-promoting, distant from the native peoples he sought to protect, and more at ease in the Spanish court than in the stormy confines of America. But Castro does not view his constant appeals to a higher concept of justice and his insistence on law and natural rights as participating in critical ruptures and recompositions within Spanish culture.

Castro's passionate and single-minded argumentation should prove useful for stimulating discussion, especially when read alongside materials that help question and relativize some of its severe judgments. There are not many facets to the Indians so dear to Castro in this book. The interpretations Castro puts forth would gain needed tension if one would bring in other studies on Indian demographic survival, resistance, and cultural continuities; changing Spanish policies; and growing sensitivity to the destructiveness of these policies, mestizaje, and increasing Indian resourcefulness in resorting to Spanish law and values in the defense of native rights. However, it should be clear that Another Face of Empire...

pdf

Share