Bartolomé de Las Casas: uma brevíssima narrativa da natureza, dos sujeitos e dos espaços do Novo Mundo

Abstract

This work aims to analyze the biography and narratives of Bartolomé de Las Casas, concentrating on perceiving aspects of the formulation of his discourse, its structure and how its propagation has the result of producing an image about the New World in the 16th century. The argument to be defended is based, fundamentally, on the analysis of the source: Brevísima relación de la destruición de las Indias. In this section, we analyze the representation of otherness, the mechanisms of writing about the Other, and the propagation of these discourses in the period. Las Casas, in its text, presents a process of decoding, systematic deviation and translation mechanism for Europe to understand the representation on the West Indies. In this regard, it became possible to produce a study analyzing the New World constitution narrated by the dominican from the reflections of his eurocentric vision on the given territory. Being this a vision produced from the real, the contact provided by the Spanish colonization produced a "cover-up" of the Other, because, Las Casas produces in its writings a differentiated space when characterizing the discovery by Colombo with essentially european characteristics.