El nativo americano en Bartolomé de las Casas : la proto-etnología “colegida” de la polémica

Abstract

The Historia de las Indias by Bartolome de las Casas is a constitutively polemical text. Itsnarrative episodes attemp to become refuting evidence particulary against Gonzalo Fernández deOviedo’s Historia General y Natural de las Indias and Juan Ginés de sepúlveda’s writings for the Valladolid Debate. From this controversy, a particular representation of the native American arises: wewill carefully study the inversion strategies of the Dominican friar about certain stigmatizing images of incapacity, lack, and imperfection of the Indian: his “idleness”, “bestial” character, “inferio-rity” and idolatry. For his adversative discourse, Las Casas makes use of certain refutation techniquesy some figures of aggression: retaliation, metastasis, demystification, dissociations, injury, amongothers.