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European Colonization

Born in 1474, Bartolome de Las Casas was one of the most famous modern historians who defended the Apostles of Indians. He would condemn and expose violent activities of Spanish colonizers in the modern Native America. Casas used emotional language while giving his views and his work faced a lot of criticism because he acted as a threat to the Spanish rulers in America. Dictators and defenders value his work even four hundred years after his death.

Most Spanish citizens termed Bartolome de Las Casas as a traitor and fanatic and made all efforts to ban his writings. Spanish government officials demanded his arrest because he was a threat to their evil activities. Despite all this, Casas’s influence from his writings created strong political repercussions. During the new conquest, he defended Philip II’s ordination in 1953 by influencing use of armed forces. Many nations including Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, and United States used Bartolome de Las Casas’s ideas to form an anti-Spanish motion in the end of the sixteenth century. In addition, he published a book that demonstrated negative activities of the Spanish in Cuba in 1898. Today’s Spanish historians still refer Bartolome de Las Casas as a dangerous and delusional writer. Some also he exaggerated his testimonies whose statistics never prove his humanitarian principles.

Juana Ines de la Cruz was born in 1651 in Mexico. She lived in the seventeenth century as a nun and a scholar. She wrote during the Latin American colonial era and the Hispanic Baroque, mostly concentrating on the women’s rights. Just like Bartolome de Las Casas, Juana;s writings received many criticisms from her readers, especially the Hispanics.

Juana’s pieces of writings formed the subject of discussion by political and religious leaders, but all these never stopped her from fighting for women’s rights. In 1690, she wrote a letter criticizing Jesuit’s sermon. The letter was by her own imposter published without her knowledge, an issue that brought many questions from her church. Bishop Puebla made some critics about Juan’s letter. In addition, her letters and poems received a lot of controversies from people surrounding her who forced her to quit the writing job and surrender all her musical and scientific instruments. Juana Ines de la Cruz stands today as one of the great feminists of the seventeenth century and many modern historians make reference to her great letters and poems.