Bartolomé de las Casas

Born in Seville in 1484, Bartolomé de las Casas traveled to the Caribbean in the early years of Spanish colonization. After first taking part in that world himself, he underwent a moral change that led him to devote much of his life to defending Indigenous peoples against enslavement, violence, and exploitation.

He became a Dominican friar and later bishop of Chiapas, and spent decades arguing before church and royal authorities for more humane treatment of the peoples of the Americas. He is especially remembered for A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, a vivid and deeply influential work that described the abuses he believed Spain had to confront.

Las Casas remains a complicated and important figure in the history of colonialism, religion, and human rights. Even centuries later, his writings are read as an urgent appeal to conscience from inside an empire at war with its own ideals.