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Taylor Langle
Professor Williamson
English 2327-300
5 May 2017
Disturbing the Mind to Succeed in Persuasion: A Literary Analysis of Bartolomé de Las Casas’s
Writings
Bartolomé de Las Casas was one of the first humans to represent the idea of equal rights.
Throughout his life, he did not always support this idea. After being exposed to the treacherous
treatment of the Indians and becoming a priest, he devoted the entirety of his life to defending
the Indians in order to obtain fair treatment for them. Casas uses several types of rhetoric in his
narratives, “The Very Brief Relation of the Devastation of the Indies” and “The Coast of Pearls,
Paria, and the Island of Trinidad”, to effectively convince his audience to ban the encomienda
system and bring an end to slavery for the Indians. The imagery used to depict the inhumanities
of the Spaniards, the irony of calling the Spaniards “Christians”, as well as using animal imagery
all help toward his cause of revealing the Spaniards atrocious actions in the most disturbing and
descriptive way possible to open the eyes of his audience to their cruelties. This strategy,
although it is disturbing, is brilliant and very effective for the purpose of persuasion that Casas
utilized it for.
Modern literary critics have also analyzed Casas’s work and the importance of it along
with his many rhetorical strategies. Most of their opinions are centered around the idea that he
was a great historical figure and documenter. For example, in the article, “Bartolomé de Las
Casas”, it states that “[t]he writings of Las Casas contain good anthropological and historical
material” (par. 1). Similarly, Travis J Tanner, a writer for the Kenyon Review, claims that the
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pieces “bear witness to the historical silence that seals over the death and inequality that is the
origin story of the New World” (par. 1). Although Tanner believes he is a solid historical figure,
he also points out that “Las Casas may want to save the Indians from the Spanish ‘devils’ (77),
but to do so he must dehumanize him. This conflict tortures Las Casas’s rhetoric, turning his
good intentions inside out” (par. 3). I would have to disagree with Tanner on his last claim.
Casas did whatever he had to do to gain equal treatment for the Indians. It is also true that Casas
was more than just a historical figure. His use of rhetoric and the strategies in which he applied it
to his writing effectively opened the eyes of many. Santa Arias, a professor and researcher at the
University of Kansas, holds the same opinion, stating that, “[t]he Dominican friar Bartolomé de
Las Casas became one of the most influential and polemical intellectuals of the sixteenth century
through his writing and active political life, both of which challenged the imperialist ideological
