The year 2022 marks the 500-year anniversary of Las Casas’s entrance into the Order of Preachers, an event that some scholars refer to as his “second conversion.” This denominated “conversion” was the culmination of an intimate relationship that Las Casas developed with the community of Dominican friars in Hispaniola. As is known, the Dominicans played a critical role in the early stages of the conquest and colonization of the Americas, and they were charged with the evangelization of the Indigenous people; accordingly, the friars learned many new languages and endeavored to translate complex Western Christian concepts into numerous sophisticated autochthonous religious cosmovisions. In Las Casas’s missiological method—emblematically seen in his De unico vocationis modo—he proposed peaceful and persuasive evangelization as well as principles governing the christianization of the Indigenous. As a Friar Preacher, he traveled with his confreres throughout the circum-Caribbean, observing, learning, and writing about the different cultures in the region—knowledge he later used in his advocacy. In particular, after returning permanently to Spain in the 1550s, the then Bishop Las Casas employed his broad understanding of the Indies as he refined his copious writings demanding justice for the Indigenous people.
Las Casas was a complex figure who transcended his times in many ways, but he was also constrained by them. For instance, in this advocacy, Las Casas—as a diocesan cleric—proposed the use of African slave labor in the region. In his Memorial de remedios of 1516, he recommended the importation of enslaved Africans to ameliorate the plight of the Indigenous people. In doing so, Las Casas voiced commonly held proto-racist views about the supposed physical strength and the assumed disease resistance of Black people from Africa. Later in life, as a Friar Preacher, he expressed profound remorse for and denounced vigorously his earlier policy recommendation. In his labors, Las Casas continued to draw on the Dominican intellectual tradition, as he sought to articulate theological, philosophical, juridical, and political responses to Spanish imperialism. In fact, his increasingly deeper understanding of this tradition arguably permitted him to transition from being merely an agent of the Spanish empire to becoming one of its most fierce critics.
This second volume of Lascasian scholarship signals Las Casas’s continued relevance and the importance of his thought five centuries later. In fact, cultivating a deeper understanding of him is crucial to better appreciating a period that sealed the trajectory of world history for centuries to come. The vibrancy and dynamism of the scholarly conversations generated around the figure
Another fruitful result of the first conference was the creation of a network of scholars from Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States who were interested in the life, labor, and legacy of Las Casas. Inspired by this inaugural success, the organizers of the initial gathering and the editors of the first volume arranged for another conference at Providence College in July 2019—an event that surprisingly surpassed the 2016 gathering on many levels, including the participation of an even wider range of multidisciplinary Lascasianists. Although the first conference and the resultant publication were exceptional, the second exchange of views and the quality of presentations are arguably superior; the fruits of that exchange are hereby presented to the reader.