Sobre avaricia y lujo de encomenderos en el octavo remedio de Bartolomé de las Casas

This text analyzes the reasons given by Bartolome de las Casas in the treatise Eight Remedy with the aim of proving that the Dominican's argumentative focus consists of encomenderos' greed and luxuries. For Las Casas, neither natural law nor law of nations provide a legitimate justification for depriving natives of their properties or for raising taxes for them beyond what the laws of Castile and the Spanish Crown had already stipulated. However, these arguments, in compliance with the economic criteria of Salamancan authors, are exceeded and radicalized by Las Casas in so far as he focuses on encomenderos' greed and luxury. The Eighth Remedy quotes biblical writings and Aristotelian texts on ethics in order to emphasize that natives' freedom implies inalienable rights of property and possession. Because of this, the Eighth Remedy puts into question the very encomiendas that were taking place in New Spain. Las Casas comes from a Salamancan school of thought, but he radicalizes his discourse by employing passages of the Old Testament in the face of the problem of exclusion, thus establishing an emancipating and liberating economic discourse in America which focuses on the opulence and greed of the ruling class. © 2020 Instituto Teologico de Caceres, Universidad de Extremadura. All rights reserved.