«Esclavizar para asentar, educar y evangelizar: la justificación teológica y jurídica de la esclavitud chichimeca en la frontera norte de la América española en el siglo XVI» del Doctor Manuel Méndez

The Doctor and member of the Atlantic History, Heritage and Documentation Division of the University Institute of Textual Analysis and Applications, Manuel Méndez Alonzo has recently published an article in the Regional and Border History Yearbook called «Enslave to settle, educate and evangelize: the theological and legal justification of Chichimec slavery on the northern border of Spanish America in the 16th century.”

The objective of this work is to present the theoretical arguments used by the New Spanish clergy to continue justifying indigenous slavery in the Indies after its prohibition after the New Laws of 1542, especially in regions where which the imposition of political and religious power was disputed by local populations, emphasizing the case of the Chichimecas. For the Spanish, the nomadic groups lived without a seat, without making usufruct of the land and without an organized religion, due to their bellicosity, the only solution to subdue these groups was to impose, in the worst case, a regime of slavery. . Under the iron supervision of the mendicant orders, a new conception of time would be imposed on the Chichimecas within spaces built ex nihilo for evangelization and the defense of the territory. Finally, it will try to prove that the writings of the School of Salamanca offered general propositions that were to be used as criteria to discern, based on the law of nations and natural law, about the moral world of the Indians and, subsequently, in pertinent cases. justify their slavery.

Access the full article