Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Tears of the Indies and the Power of Translation: John Phillips' Version of Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias

2012; Routledge; Volume: 89; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14753820.2012.712321

1478-3428

Roberto A. Valdeón,

Literary and Philosophical Studies

Abstract This paper explores the ideological transformations which have been carried out in producing Tears of the Indies, one of the first English translations of Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias by the Dominican Bartolomé de las Casas, a tract which he addressed to the future King Philip II, and in which he denounced the actions of the conquistadors in the New World. The translator, John Phillips, appropriated the text to create an anti-Spanish narrative with a view to promoting English nationalism as well as encouraging the construction of an English empire in the Americas. The article examines the changes to the title, the replacement of the original preface by one addressed to Oliver Cromwell and the translation strategies adopted, which were intended to portray the Spaniards as a nation of Catholic butchers. Evidence is also provided of the long-lasting influence of this version, which, five centuries later, continues to be used in Anglophone schools and academia (particularly in the United States), in spite of its serious flaws and the existence of more recent and accurate retranslations. Notes *I would like to express my gratitude to the Centre for Translation Studies (Leuven/Antwerp), whose generous funding for a research stay allowed me to consult the archives of the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp. 1Henceforth Brevísima for short. 2The term was coined by a Spanish journalist at the turn of the twentieth century, and has been widely used by those who denied its existence and by those who, regardless of political ideology, view it as a construct resulting from the clash among Europe's Renaissance empires. Among the latter authors are: Charles Gibson, Spain in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 43; Bill M. Donovan, ‘Introduction’, in The Devastation of the Indies. A Brief Account (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U. P., 1992), 1–25 (p. 9); Hugh Thomas, Conquest: Cortes, Montezuma and the Fall of Old Mexico (New York: Touchstone, 1993), 69. 3See Ramón Menéndez Pidal, El padre Las Casas: su doble personalidad (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1963) for a Spanish critical approach to the figure of Las Casas, and Philip W. Powell, Tree of Hate (Alburquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press. 1971) for an American one. 4See, for example, James M. Blaut The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History (New York/London: The Guildford Press, 1993) for a count of enslaved Native Americans (195) and deaths (184), and Miguel Molina, La Leyenda Negra (Madrid: Nerea, 1991) for a comparison of four different authors who estimate the population of pre-Columbian Spanish America as between 7,500,000 and 100,303,750 (74). Despite the obvious inaccuracy of some of the descriptions, and the fact that few current historians actually take his numbers literally, others still rely on the figures given by Las Casas. In a book conveniently published in 1992, Stannard wrote: ‘Historian after historian has shown not only that Las Casas's reports were remarkably accurate (and often, in quantitative terms, even underestimates) but that they were supported by a host of other independent observers’ (David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: The Conquest of the New World [New York/Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1992], 82). For his part, Ward Churchill relies only on Las Casas’ figures for his count of the victims (see A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present [San Francisco: City Light Books, 1997], 87). It is significant that Churchill uses one of the translations widely recognized as a major contributor to the anti-Spanish propaganda campaign of sixteenth-century England, The Spanish Colonie, rather than the original text or one of the more recent retranslations, which keep the numbers of the original text (however accurate or inaccurate) as well as the descriptions of the killings. On the other hand, authors hardly suspicious of revisionism such as José Rabasa state that ‘his demographic numbers of Amerindians living in the New World before the conquest fulfill in the Brevísima a rhetorical function rather than accurate census; the dimensions of the destruction is what matters’ (Inventing America. Spanish Historiography and the Formation of Eurocentrism [Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1993], 166–67. 5Lynne Guitar, ‘Black Legend’, in The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery, ed. Junius P. Rodriguez, 2 vols (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 1997), 84–85, (p. 84). 6Julio César Santoyo, ‘Blank Spaces in the History of Translation’, in Charting the Future of Translation History, ed. Georges L. Bastin and Paul F. Bandia (Ottawa: Univ. of Ottawa Press, 2006), 11–43 (pp. 35–36). 7Kristina Bross, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in Colonial America (Ithaca: Cornell U. P., 2004), 15. 8Roman Jakobson, ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, in Selected Writings. Volume 2: Word and Language (Hague: Mouton, 1971), 260–66. 9Guitar, ‘Black Legend’, 84. 10Gonzalo Lamana, ‘Of Books, Popes, and Huacas; or, The Dilemmas of Being Christian’, in Rereading the Black Legend: The Discourses of Religious and Racial Difference in the Renaissance Empires, ed. Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo and Maureen Quilligan (Chicago/London: The Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007), 117–49 (p. 133). 11Margaret R. Greer, Walter D. Mignolo and Maureen Quilligan, ‘Introduction’, in Rereading the Black Legend, 1–26 (p. 6). 12Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, The Conquest of History: Spanish Colonialism and National Histories in the Nineteenth Century (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2006), 132. 13Nicole Greenspan, ‘News and the Politics of Information in the Mid Seventeenth Century: The Western Design and the Conquest of Jamaica’, History Workshop Journal, 69:1 (2010), 1–26. 14E Shaskan Bumas, ‘The Cannibal Butcher Shop. Protestant Uses of las Casas's Brevísima relación in Europe and the American Colonies’, Early American Literature, 35:2 (2000), 107–36 (p. 107). 15Kenneth R. Williams and William B. Taylor, Colonial Spanish America: A Documentary Story (Oxford: SR Books, 2006), 82. O'Gorman follows a similar line in his interpretation of other works by the friar and the role of the Christopher Columbus in the conquest of America: ‘Para Las Casas, Colón tiene que cumplir fatalmente las intenciones divinas independientemente de las suyas personales’ (Edmundo O'Gorman, La invención de América: investigación acerca de la estructura histórica del Nuevo Mundo y del sentido de su devenir [México D.F.: FCE, 2003], 28). 16Noble David Cook, Born to Die. Disease and New World Conquest (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1998), 9. 17Ángel Losada, Bartolomé de las Casas (Madrid: Tecnos, 1970), 15. 18Lewis Hanke, Bartolomé de las Casas: An Interpretation of His Life and Writings (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1951). 19José Luis Reyna, ‘An Overview of the Institutionalization Process of Social Sciences in Mexico’, Social Science Information, 44:2–3 (2005), 411–47 (p. 422). It is interesting that Reyna refers to the Conquest with a capital ‘c’. Reyna regards the Brevísima as a historical account. 20Schmidt-Nowara, The Conquest of History, 132. 21Tzvetan Todorov, The Conquest of America: The Question of the Other (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 170. 22David Lambert and Alan Lester, ‘Geographies of Colonial Philanthropy’, Progress in Human Geography, 28:3 (2004), 320–41 (p. 338). 23Stamatov calls this ‘Iberian Indigenism’ and describes the Dominican friar thus: ‘Bartolomé de las Casas was the central figure in this larger network of religious activists. In 1514, he converted to the radical stance of the Hispaniola Dominicans and, coached by them in the art of political lobbying, returned to Spain to seek official intervention against the enslavement and dispossession of indigenous people. Reforming exploitative imperial institutions became the main preoccupation of Las Casas's long life’ (Peter Stamatov, ‘Activist Religion, Empire, and the Emergence of Modern-Long Distance Advocacy Networks’, American Sociological Review, 75:4 [2010], 607–28 [p. 610]). 24Margarita B. Melville, ‘“Hispanic” Ethnicity, Race and Class’, in Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States: Anthropology, ed. Thomas Weave (Houston: Univ. of Houston, 1994), 85–106 (p. 95). James B. Scott uses the expression ‘the apostle of the Indians’ in his book on Francisco de Vitoria, The Spanish Origin of International Law: Francisco de Vitoria and the Law of Nations (Union: The Lawbook Exchange, 2000), 77. 25Richard Frohock, Heroes of Empire: The British Imperial Protagonist in America, 1596–1764 (Cranbury: Rosemont Publishing, 2004), 30. 26Henri van Hoof, Histoire de la traduction en Occident: France, Grande-Bretagne, Allemagne (Paris: Éditions Duculot, 1991), 142. Carmelo Cunchillos wrote ‘es la peor, no merece el nombre de traducción, es una deshonra para el cervantismo universal’ (‘Traducciones inglesas del Quijote: la traducción de Phillips’, Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies, 6 [1985], 1–20 [p. 20]). 27Howard Mancing, The Cervantes Encyclopedia (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), 424. 28Elizabeth Sauer, ‘Toleration and Translation: The Case of Las Casas, Phillips, and Milton’, Philological Quarterly, 85:3–4 (2006). Consulted online 22 September 2010 at . 29Quotations in this article taken from Phillips' Tears of the Indies come from the copy owned by the British Library. 30Mona Baker, Translation and Conflict (London/New York: Routledge, 2006). 31See Theo Hermans, Translation in Systems (Manchester: St Jerome, 1999). 32Teun Van Dijk, ‘Discourse and Manipulation’, Discourse & Society, 17:3 (2006), 359–83 (p. 359). 33Van Dijk, ‘Discourse and Manipulation’, 360. 34Van Dijk, ‘Discourse and Manipulation’, 361. 35Santoyo, ‘Blank Spaces in the History of Translation’, 35–36. 36Van Dijk, ‘Discourse and Manipulation’, 362. 37Baker, Translation and Conflict, 132–39. 38Baker, Translation and Conflict, 133. 39The introductions of Phillips' original text are not numbered. 40Baker, Translation and Conflict, 62. 41Baker, Translation and Conflict, 133. 42Baker, Translation and Conflict, 122. 43References to the Spanish text of Las Casas come from the Castalia edition: Bartolomé de Las Casas, Brevísima relación de la destrucción de Las Indias, ed. Consuelo Varela (Madrid: Castalia, 1999). As previously stated, the English quotations are taken from the copy of Phillips' Tears of the Indies version in the British Library. 44Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven/London: Yale U. P., 1997), 33. 45Frohock, Heroes of Empire, 31. 46Baker, Translation and Conflict, 111. 47Baker, Translation and Conflict, 71–77. 48Lamana, ‘Of Books, Popes, and Huacas’, 125–26. 49Baker, Translation and Conflict, 71. 50Baker, Translation and Conflict, 67–71. 51Margaret R. Somers, ‘The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach’, Theory and Society, 23:5 (1994), 605–49. 52Nigel Smith, ‘Milton and the European Contexts of Toleration’, in Milton and Toleration, ed. Sharon Achinstein and Elizabeth Sauer (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 2007), 23–44 (p. 41). 53John Green, A Short History of the English People (London: MacMillan, 1895), 575. 54Cromwell's words are cited in Frohock, Heroes of Empire, 32. 55Peter T. Bradley, ‘El Perú y el mundo exterior. Extranjeros, enemigos y herejes (siglos XVI–XVII)’, Revista de Indias, 61:223 (2001), 651–71 (p. 657). 56Paul Stevens, ‘Paradise Lost and the Colonial Imperative’, Milton Studies, 34 (1997), 3–21 (p. 9). 57Rodger Martin, ‘The Colonization of Paradise: Milton's Pandemonium and Montezuma's Tenochtitlan’, Comparative Literature Studies, 35:4 (1998), 321–55. 58Maja-Lisa Von Sneidern, Savage Indignation: Colonial Discourse from Milton to Swift (Cranbury: Associated University Presses, 2010), 32. 59Janet Clare, ‘The Production and Reception of Davenant's Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru’, Modern Language Review, 89:4 (1994), 832–41. 60Susan Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1997). 61Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War, 148. 62Wiseman, Drama and Politics in the English Civil War, 149. 63Steven Pincus, ‘From Holy Cause to Economic Interest: The Transformation of Reason of State Thinking in 17th Century England’, in A Nation Transformed: England after the Restoration, ed. Alan C. Houston and Steve C. A. Pincus (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 2001), 272–98 (p. 281). 64Francis A. MacNutt, Bartholomew de las Casas: His Life, Apostolate, and Writings (Cleveland: The Arthur H. Clarck Company, 1909), xi (available online on the Project Gutenberg Ebook at ). MacNutt made some other curious observations based on the information provided by Las Casas. Thus, he makes a sharp contrast between the Spanish and the English colonial systems: ‘The gentle, unresisting native of the West Indian Islands, whose delicate constitutions incapacitated them to bear labours their masters exacted of them’ whereas ‘The English colonists found different conditions waiting them when they landed on the northern coasts of America, where the Indian tribes were neither gentle nor submissive’ (xi, xii). 65John C. Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire (New York/London: W. W. Norton, 2001), 61. 66William J. Duiker and Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History, 2 vols. (Belmont: Thomson Learning, 2007), I, 371. 67Jackson Spielvogel, Western Civilization: Since 1500 (Belmont: Thomson Learning, 2009), 422. 68‘The Tears of the Indians’, in Encyclopædia Britannica (2010), (consulted 21 October 2010). 69 (consulted 16 September 2010). 70 (consulted 16 September 2010). 71See, for example, (consulted 6 November 2010). 72Henry Kamen, Imagining Spain: Historical Myth and National Identity (New Haven/London: Yale U. P., 2008). 73Bill M. Donovan, ‘Introduction’ to The Devastation of the Indies. A Brief Account, trans. Herma Briffault (London/Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins U. P., 1992), 1–25, (p. 2). 74He has posted an interesting, even if somehow anecdotal, story of how the Black Legend permeates through US academic life in the twenty-first century under the title ‘La Leyenda Negra/The Black Legend: Historical Distortion, Defamation, Slander, Libel, and Stereotyping of Hispanics’, (consulted 16 September 2010). 75María DeGuzmán, Spain's Long Shadow. The Black Legend, Off-Whiteness, and Anglo-American Empire (Minneapolis/London: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2005), 76. 76Carmen África Vidal, ‘Translation As an Ethical Action’, Forum 7:1 (2009), 155–69 (p. 160), and, by the same author, Traducción y asimetría (Bern: Peter Lang, 2010), 32. 77Crosby stresses the importance of disease in the decimation of Amerindians, and relies on the accounts of Las Casas himself. He also states that it is hard to understand some of the accounts of the massacres given by Las Casas and used by Protestant historians, on the basis that the Spaniards needed the natives for the exploitation of the land (Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 [Westport: Praeger, 2003], 37 and 45). 78Molina, La Leyenda Negra, 76. 79Molina, La Leyenda Negra, 29. 80Gibson, Spain in America, 43. 81Molina, La Leyenda Negra, 21. 82Gibson, Spain in America, 43. 83Available online at (consulted November 2010). 84Bumas, ‘The Cannibal Butcher Shop’, 108. 85Bartolomé de las Casas, The Tears of the Indians (Danvers: General Books, 2009).