I finish posting about my recent research trips to Spain and the Dominican Republic with photos of monuments commemorating two famous Spaniards who decried conquest tyranny and fought for the rights of Indians in the New World, Bartolomé de Las Casas and Antonio de Montesinos.
The monument to Las Casas, shown in the first two photos, stands beside the Guadalquivir River in Seville, just upstream from the Puente de Isabel II. Las Casas appears briefly as a youth in Encounters Unforeseen, and the upcoming sequel depicts the fleet of 1502 on which he first crossed from Seville to the Caribbean and what he learned on arrival. He came as a conqueror.
The monument to Montesinos, shown in the third and fourth photos, stands by the sea at the mouth of the Ozama River in the colonial zone of Santo Domingo. In 1511, Montesinos delivered a sermon declaring that the cruel treatment of Indians was a mortal sin, and the sermon aroused anger and debate in Española and Spain and converted Las Casas from an oppressor to defender of Indians.
The next post will announce the sequel, which relates the cruel treatment.