by Hugh Thomas
A formal visitor, Francisco Tello de Sandoval, reached New Spain in February 1544. He was a characteristic bureaucrat of the age. A Sevillano, he had attended the University of Salamanca and afterwards had entered the bureaucracy of the Inquisition in Toledo. Then, in 1543, Tello joined the Council of the Indies. His nature was inflexible, and he would eventually become a bishop. He brought with him to New Spain not only an instruction to explain the New Laws to the settlers but a document authorizing him to investigate the conduct of almost everyone: viceroy, judges of the supreme court, treasurer, and their subordinates, down to the most insignificant officials in the poorest towns. In addition, he was named inquisidor of New Spain.7 Tello arrived with a financial adviser, Gonzalo de Aranda, who left an account.8 The colonists wanted to go and greet him to reproach him for the New Laws, but the prudent Viceroy, still Mendoza, restrained them. No grander reception in the event could have been held in Seville or in Valladolid. Tello de Sandoval himself repaired then to the convent of Santo Domingo in Tenochtitlan, where Bishop Zumárraga greeted him and where he installed himself. The very next day, a large number of the colonists and conquistadors besieged him with their complaints, but Tello dismissed them for the time being since he had not yet presented his credentials. Later, he met Miguel de Legazpi, the Basque notary, and some others of the town council, as well as the chief prosecutor, to whom he talked reassuringly.
The next month Tello devoted to meeting people and listening to their anxieties. Then on March 24, Tello instructed the notary Antonio de Tuncios to proclaim publicly the New Laws on the treatment of Indians. The announcement was received with no pleasure. Tello was therefore persuaded by the councillor Alonso de Villanueva to stay the execution of five of the provisions that especially distressed the settlers until an appeal could be made. Then the provincials—that is, the leaders—of the three main orders, the Franciscans, Augustinians, and Dominicans, declared in favor of the encomiendas. The same three provincials went to Spain to protest at the high-handed manner with which they were treated, as did three important councillors: Alonso de Villanueva, mentioned above; Jerónimo López, a survivor of the conquest (he had reached New Spain in 1521 with Julián de Alderete); and Pedro Almíndez Chirino, the odious ex-inspector and enemy of Cortés.
The day after the proclamation of the New Laws, Bishop Zumárraga invited all the leaders of the viceroyalty to take part in a Mass that he celebrated in the cathedral. Tello attended this occasion. Zumárraga preached intelligently and eloquently. But, with the announcement of the New Laws, all business came to a stop in Mexico. Wheat rose in price to 11 reales a fanega, maize to five reales. Settlers went about saying that they would be obliged to kill their wives and their daughters “lest they seek a life of shame.” The first fleet returning to Spain after the proclamation carried thirty-five to forty families, six hundred people in all. The Viceroy and the supreme court judges distributed charity to the families of conquistadors to prevent their flight.9
The Dominicans mounted an effective counterattack to the New Laws. Thus the provincial Diego de la Cruz and the eloquent Fray Domingo de Betanzos, the onetime friend of Las Casas, wrote to the emperor Charles to say that Indians should not be encouraged to study “since no benefit could be expected for a long time … Indians are not stable persons to whom one can entrust the preaching of the Holy Gospel. They do not have the ability to understand correctly and fully the Christian faith nor is their language sufficient and copious enough to be able to express our faith without great improprieties, which can easily result in great errors.”10
So no Indian should be ordained a priest. This document was signed on May 4, 1544, by all the leading Dominicans in Mexico. A similar letter was written by the town council of Mexico. The councillors begged to be heard before the New Laws were put into execution. This letter was signed, too, by several old conquistadors still on the town council.11 Meantime, the procuradores of New Spain reached Castile, and they immediately sought out Sepúlveda, who had become the prop and stay of the opponents of the New Laws. They could not seek out Las Casas even if they had wanted to, since that now-famous preacher had been named bishop of Chiapas and was on his way to his see.
Both Alonso de Villanueva and Jerónimo López argued in the town council that the Indians would be better off if the encomiendas were given to the settlers in perpetuity. Surely that would be best too for the land concerned? They also insisted that, since the leaders of the orders had given their views, individual friars should keep silent.12 But it had become evident that those same leaders of the orders were more opposed to the New Laws than anyone expected. Thus Fray Diego de la Cruz, who had been the Dominican provincial for nine years, agreed that encomiendas in perpetuity should be granted, to avoid Spaniards abandoning agricultural projects in the middle of them. He did not think that the Indians would work hard even if the judges ordered it. The Indians were no longer afraid of horses. So he anticipated a revolt.
The Viceroy sent a serene commentary to the Crown. He noted that even Tello had used Indian services, including slavery, when he had been in Mexico. Anyway, personal services had not been invented by Spaniards but had been used by the Mexica themselves. Even if His Majesty cut off the heads of the settlers, he could not make them enforce his laws, which actually damaged his rents and his income, and would in the end depopulate the country, which really needed people.13
A meeting of the Council of the Indies was held in Spain to discuss these matters. The Duke of Alba, who came across from the Council of State—every day more important in the Emperor’s counsels—having talked to churchmen from Mexico, advised the King to suspend the New Laws. He urged the grant of encomiendas in perpetuity, though without legal confirmation, so that “the Spaniards there would always need some favour of the King of Spain.” He opposed the idea of pensions for conquistadors. The Indians should be subject to the Spaniards, of course, but they should be treated well and not required to be slaves or even servants. If the troubles continued, they should be crushed by “a large and powerful armada”—Alba’s usual solution to political problems.14
The archbishop of Toledo, still Cardinal Pardo de Tavera, thought that some reward should be given to conquistadors but that they should not be in the form of encomiendas. Licenciado Juan de Salmerón, who had spent several years as chief magistrate in Castilla del Oro and had been a judge in New Spain, thought that the New Laws were neither just nor practical.15 Dr. Hernando de Guevara, learned and imaginative as well as eloquent, thought that till the council received more information about encomiendas and encomenderos, the New Laws should not be enforced. The count of Osorno, who had acted as president of the Council of the Indies and whose name is preserved in one of the cities founded by Valdivia in Chile, backed the idea of encomiendas in perpetuity, though he thought that the encomenderos should have only civil jurisdiction. Cobos said that, though he had no experience himself of the Indies, he had noted that two out of the four members of the council who had opposed giving encomiendas in perpetuity had indeed been there. Dr. Ramírez de Fuenleal wanted to consider the New Laws themselves first. The trouble had been caused by individuals, not only by the injustice of the laws. He considered that the heir of a conquistador should receive two thirds of his father’s property as an entailed estate.
In the end, Cobos argued simply that encomiendas should continue to be given to worthy Spaniards in the Indies and agreed with Alba that the New Laws should be temporarily suspended. Cardinal García de Loaisa also supported the concept of encomiendas being granted in perpetuity, which he believed would guarantee an income for the King, the conversion of Indians, and peace. Dr. Bernal, Licenciado Velázquez, and Licenciado Gregorio López (an Extremeño from Guadalupe, whose uncle Juan de Sirvela had been prior of the Jeronymite monastery there) supported pensions for conquistadors and “moderate” pensions for other Spaniards who had served in the Indies for two generations. Conquistadors should not collect tribute and should not own property in Spain “so that th
ey would identify themselves with the [new] land.”16
All these views were passed on to the Emperor, at the time in Germany, and some representatives of New Spain went there to present their views in person.17 The prince regent Philip wrote to his father that he had talked with representatives of the New World and with “appropriate people” of both the Council of Castile and the Council of the Indies, but “as the matter was so grandiose and of such weight and importance” he, Philip, did not think that he could take a decision which was for his father to resolve.18
Philip added, though, that the Council of the Indies evidently wanted someone to put Peru in order. Everyone thought that the ideal person would be Antonio de Mendoza, but all realized that he was too valuable in New Spain to go. Alba and Dr. Guevara thought it essential not to send a letrado, or university-educated civil servant, but a gentleman (caballero), a person in the confidence of the Emperor. But everybody else thought that a letrado would be best.19
Fray Domingo de Betanzos thought that laws that assumed that sooner or later the Indians would disappear altogether were sound and good. He added that he, like Bishop Zumárraga, longed to go to China, where apparently the “natives were so much more intelligent than those of New Spain.”20
This decision taken in Malines was against Charles’s wishes. He had, however, been much disturbed by the rebellion in Peru of Gonzalo Pizarro, which had been inspired by the New Laws. Las Casas, of course, differed. From Chiapas he sent a message dated September 15 that all who pressed for the revocation of the New Laws should be hanged, drawn, and quartered (merecen ser hechos cuartos).21
The encomenderos in New Spain were breathing a sigh of relief, so much so, indeed, that they set aside the second day of Christmas 1546 for a general rejoicing. But their problems continued: A destructive epidemic of smallpox in 1546 killed thousands; there was a new revolt of black African slaves, which frightened everyone. No doubt the encomenderos were pleased that García de Loaisa at last left the presidency of the Council of the Indies when in February 1546 he became inquisidor general (he died soon thereafter). He was succeeded by Luis Hurtado de Mendoza, the elder brother of the Viceroy.
Don Luis was one of those noblemen whose education had been formed by Peter Martyr. He was as much a Renaissance prince as his father had been in Granada and as his brother was in New Spain. He had been much concerned in the building of the cathedral in Granada, Spain’s most obvious Renaissance cathedral, having been designed by Pedro de Machuca, who was said to have worked with Michelangelo. Luis Hurtado de Mendoza inspired, too, the plans for a Renaissance palace in the Alcázar in Seville, also designed by Machuca. He had been Viceroy of Catalonia and captain-general of Navarre. His father had brought him up in Granada.
When named president of the council, Hurtado de Mendoza was in Regensburg with the court. The Emperor told his new president of the great pressure being exerted on him by encomenderos.
The establishment of the Mendoza brothers in the two most important places in the empire articulated perfectly both the importance of their family and the fact that, despite the prevalence of middle-class letrados in so many fields, the Emperor preferred aristocrats in the leading positions. The Mendozas’ younger brother, the cultivated and creative Diego, was in 1544 ambassador in Venice and would move to the all-important Rome in 1545. It was characteristic of him that, on his journey to Venice, he took both the novels Amadís and La celestina to read.
No doubt the encomenderos of New Spain were also confronted by the open quarrel between the two most prominent friends of the Indians, Las Casas and Motolinía. This occurred because a mere friar such as Motolinía could not at that time legally baptize Indians. He asked Las Casas to act in his stead. Las Casas refused, because he thought that the Indian concerned was inadequately prepared. Motolinía never forgave Las Casas. Motolinía thought that the Christian faith should be disseminated as quickly as possible. This caused Las Casas to lobby against Motolinía’s claim for a bishopric.22
Actually, in 1546, the Viceroy, Mendoza, was enduring a serious personal crisis, since Tello de Sandoval had presented a list of forty-four accusations against him. The Viceroy was accused of, in particular, favoring his friends, receiving gifts in return for favors, abusing Indians on his ranches, neglecting to send royal revenues, and using the income of certain councils for an improper purpose. Mendoza was accused of forcing his sister María to marry Martín de Lucio, an elderly conquistador who had come to New Spain first with Pánfilo de Narváez.23 He was also said, more seriously, to have covered up or concealed a murder by a friend of his, Pedro Paco. Mendoza had his replies ready by October 30, 1546. He also drew up a counter-questionnaire of more than three hundred questions, to which most prominent citizens of Mexico replied. Then he successfully carried his case to the Council of the Indies. But, before that, the economy of New Spain had been transformed.
One of the hopeful conquistadors in Mendoza’s New Spain was Juan de Tolosa, whom we assume to have been in origin a Basque from Guipuzcoa. At any rate, that is the origin of the surname, and Tolosa has been for generations an important stop on the way from San Sebastián to Burgos. Juan de Tolosa married Leonor, a daughter of the great Cortés by Isabel (Techuipo), the daughter of Montezuma. One day in early September 1546, Tolosa camped at the base of the Cerro de la Bufa, near what became the town of Zacatecas, in central Mexico, and in return for some meretricious trinkets brought from Spain, he received presents of a few stones, which, according to a metal analyst in Nochistlán, turned out to be high in silver content. The mines nearby surpassed all previous such discoveries. Tolosa founded the town that was later Zacatecas, and he and some others turned the place into a silver town. Of these others, the most important were Cristóbal de Oñate, a hero of the war against the Mixton Indians, and Diego de Ibarra, who had also had a role in that conflict. Oñate soared far ahead of Tolosa in terms of achievement, for in the end, he owned thirteen silver mines, a hundred slaves, and a magnificent residence with a chapel. At last it seemed that New Spain was going to justify the expense that its conquest had entailed. There were, of course, problems—one of which was that there was no river near Zacatecas, so the machinery of production had to be turned by horsepower, or by slaves. All the same, the news intoxicated the colony.
This knowledge arrived just in time for it to become known to the creator of New Spain, then living in a house in Seville, in the Plaza San Lorenzo. In October 1547, Hernán Cortés went to stay just outside Seville in the house of a friend, Juan Rodríguez de Medina, and there on December 2, 1547, having made his will, he died, probably at age sixty-six.24
Cortés had transformed the history of Spain and the Americas. Nothing was the same again after his astonishing achievement of leading a few hundred Spaniards to triumph over a powerful indigenous monarchy. Matters might easily have gone differently had the Spaniards been led by a less intelligent commander who did not see, as Cortés did, the importance of interpreters; who did not have the gift of serenity in difficult moments, as Cortés had; who did not believe, as Cortés did, that leaving aside gold and glory (important motives certainly), the Mexica would soon find the Christian God and the attendant saints, not to mention the Virgin Mary, irresistible. Cortés’s tactic of kidnapping Montezuma was copied afterward a hundred times, not just in Peru. His skill at transforming the Americas by using a small company of soldiers was an inspiration to other conquerors, who thought that, with a few cavalrymen, they, too, could capture a kingdom.
Yet this great conqueror did not seem quite at ease with his victory, nor did his country help him to be so. The King of Spain, the emperor Charles, never forgot that Cortés had in effect rebelled against Diego Velázquez; so he never gave Cortés the European command that might have transformed the history of Europe. Cortés’s life was after 1525 full of disappointment and even sadness.
Several of the contemporaries of Cortés died at much the same time. For example, Cobos, the great secretary for the Indies and for most other t
hings, died in his palace in Úbeda in May 1547. Other advisers, such as Zúñiga, Pardo de Tavera, García de Loaisa, Cifuentes, and Osorno, all vanished for good in the two years prior to Cortés’s death. Charles the Emperor must have felt alone in 1550, when he would be faced by some of the most difficult moments of his life.
45
Las Casas and Sepúlveda
Some qualities are always good in any language.
CASTIGLIONE, The Courtier
In August 1550, the epic dispute between Sepúlveda and Las Casas came to a head in a formal confrontation in Valladolid in the monastery of San Gregorio.1 It was an appropriate year. The best historians of the Spanish world have argued that it marked the culmination of Spanish civilization, though evil memories of the past were not yet quite hidden: In New Spain, for example, a rebellion was mounted by the Zapotecs in Oaxaca by a leader who proclaimed himself to be Quetzalcoatl.
This encounter between Las Casas and Sepúlveda was set on foot by María de Bohemia and Maximilian of Austria, her husband, regents of Spain in the absence of both the emperor Charles and the prince regent Philip.
A junta of fifteen (including seven members of the Council of the Indies, four theologians, two councillors of Castile, and the bishop of Ciudad Rodrigo) had to decide between the point of view of Juan Palacios Rubios, who had said that the pope had full authority and, therefore, so did the Catholic Kings, against the Dominicans, who denied all authority to the pope and therefore indirectly to the Catholic Kings. (The Franciscan Fray Bernardino de Arévalo was ill from the beginning, so the junta was in effect a board of fourteen.)