Origins
Cardinal Archbishop Domingo de Mendoza of Seville, heard reports of the abuse of the Americas' Indians and sent a group of Dominican missionaries to Hispaniola to try to stop the terrible treatment. Though they couldn’t physically stop it, the missionaries stirred up enough trouble that the settlers feared they would lose their property interests; Fray Antonio de Montesinos preached to the colonists that they were sinning and didn’t have the right to force the Indians to serve them, claiming they should be converted to Christianity. The colonists disagreed and decided the best way to protect their interests was to come together as a group and choose a Franciscan Friar named Alonso de Espinal to present their case to King Ferdinand II of Aragon and refute Montesinos’ accusations. Their plan backfired, though, and King Ferdinand was outraged by the abuses against the Indians; he pleaded ignorance, and to help remedy the situation commissioned a group of theologians and academics to come up with solution.
Dominican Friars, under the sponsorship of Diego de Deza, supported the scientific examination of Christopher Columbus's claims for exploring the West that he presented to the ruling Queen of Castile, Isabel I of Castile and her husband, King of Aragon Ferdinand II of Aragon. After 1508, the Friars formed a nucleus that pressured Spain to defend the aboriginal American Indians from becoming serfs or slaves of the new colonists. They obliged King Ferdinand II of Aragon and his daughter, ruling Queen of Castile, Joanna "the Mad", to approve and to be bound by the so-called 1512 Laws of Burgos. In Burgos on 27 December 1512, thirty-five laws were put into effect to secure the freedom of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and to enforce Indian Reductions governing conversions.
Read more about this topic: Laws Of Burgos
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