ABSTRACT
The human rights debates in Spain in the sixteenth century grew directly out of the Spanish encounter with the American Indians after the discovery of the New World.1 The question of whether the Native Americans were human beings, whether they could claim ownership of their land, and whether it was legitimate to enslave them was at the core of debates. The colonization of America was a colonialism avant la lettre, chaotic, brutal and unsystematic and calculated, morally debated, and legally regulated by numerous laws. According to Anthony Pagden, not only did the Spanish change; the encounter changed ‘the moral geography of the world’ (Pagden, European Encounters 7).
