3. GENERACIÓN DE RESIDUOS PELIGROSOS
3.5 Sustancias químicas de interés relacionadas con la generación de
Bartolomé de Las Casas is a critic of Modernity whose shadow covers the last five centuries. His is a worldwide critical conscience, one of the greatest magnitude, which extends beyond Europe to encompass even the Indians, the Amerindians. As part of an intercultural dialogue, he very coherently expounds a theory of a universal claim of truth—as opposed to the relativism or scepticism of Richard Rorty—for all responsible and honest participants (European or Amerindian, and even African and Arab, as we shall see). It doesn’t prevent him, nonetheless, from articulating in a distinguished manner a position not only of tolerance (which is purely negative) but of full responsibility for the Other (which is positive), of a
Las Casas, Vitoria and Suárez, 1514-1617 173 universal claim of validity1 which obligates one ethically and politically to
take “seriously” the rights (and for that matter also the inherent obligations of said rights) of the Other, in the manner exemplified up to the twenty- first century2.
In the biography of Las Casas (1484-1566) we can detect the instances of his ethical-political-philosophical position with respect to the first expansion of Modernity. Initially he is simply one more Andalusian, who departs for the Indies (1502) as a soldier. Afterwards he becomes a Catholic priest. In 1514 his existential orientation changes and he begins his fight against the injustices suffered by the Indians; in 1547 he discovers that the African slaves are suffering the same injustices. He thus experienced a theoretical maturation which we will strive to illustrate.
This first philosophical anti-discourse of Modernity arose in the face of the reality of violence which would later extend to Africa and Asia, in the face of deafness to the cry of the Other. Europe didn’t have a completely tranquil conscience; in the beginning at least, criticism was still possible. For this reason we seek to give the explicitly political philosophical thinking of Bartolomé de Las Casas the epistemological importance still not recognized by the history of modern philosophy. He would articulate the first critical discourse of all Modernity; a “localized” critical discourse, territorialized in America itself, initially from “the outside” of Europe (in its “exteriority”), continuing the discourse until his death fifty-two years later. Las Casas was an erudite critical observer. Let us consider in the first place a text among many, which operates very well as a “bridge” between two epochs: between the conception of the “ancient world”
1 Our line of argument presupposes a clear difference between “claim (pretensión,
Anspruch) of truth” and “claim of validity”. See Enrique Dussel, Etica de la liberación en la edad de la globalización y la exclusión (Madrid: Trotta, 1998), 153;
and Enrique Dussel, “Wahrheitsanspruch und Toleranzfähigkeit”, in Zur Logik
religiöser Traditionen, eds. B. Schoppelreich and S. Wiedenhofer (Frankfurt:
Verlag für Interkulturelle Kommmunikation, 1998), 267-295. This distinction is impossible in consensualist theories of the truth like those of K.-O. Apel and J. Habermas.
2 We will demonstrate the way in which Bartolomé de las Casas manages
philosophically to articulate a just and universal claim of truth in accordance with the dissidence of the Other, dissidence which the Other has a right to, and as such a just duty (obligación) to defend their position even with arms (a “just war” of defense of the Indians against the Spanish Christians) taken as far as the “Final Judgment.” As far as I know, there hasn’t been a position more coherent and critical.
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(which manifests itself vis-à-vis the Muslim world) and the “new world” as a “world system” (manifest vis-à-vis extra-Mediterranean cultures, those of the Atlantic and later the Pacific).
In 1552 Bartolomé writes the Tratado sobre los indios que se han
hecho esclavos,3 arguing on the injustice of enslaving the Indians, which
would only be justified if there had been cause for a just war, a matter on which Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda would in some ways be in accord:
That there has not been just cause [... arises]neither because of offences done by the Indians, nor because they persecute, impugn, and torment the Spanish (for the Indians had never seen or encountered them), as do the
Turks and the Moors of Africa4; nor because they possessed lands which in
another time had belonged to the Christians (they never did, or at least it has never come to light, as it did in Africa in the time of Saint Augustine,
and the reign of Granada, and as it has in the Empire of Constantinople and the kingdom of Jerusalem5); nor because they are natural adversaries
or mortal enemies6 [...] Well then, solely by the preaching and the
dissemination of the faith among the races of heathen lands [...] has there never been divine or human law which consents to and permits war, for it would be totally condemned [...lest] it should be introduced as Mahomet introduced his.7
As one can see we are at the “beginning of the beginning” of Modernity. The references are “extra” Latin-European. Nothing is needed to justify the war, the “conquest” of the West Indies, the first European “colonies,” on which will be centred the gradual accumulation of riches, of
3 Bartolomé de Las Casas, Obras escogidas de Fray Bartolomé de las Casas
(Madrid: Real Academia Española, 1957), vol. 1, 258.
4 “Because they never encountered them” is a reference to the extreme novelty of
the occurrence. Furthermore, his suggestions relate to the Mediterranean, to Southern Europe, as is obvious. The most developed countries were in Southern Europe; nothing of geopolitical importance to the “world system” could have come from Northern Europe at that moment.
5 Again all of his references have to do with southern Christian Europe, with the
Mediterranean, from Augustine to Granada, to Constantinople or to the crusaders in Jerusalem. Later, Descartes, Spinoza or Hobbes will no longer refer to the South, the Mediterranean, but to the West, the Atlantic, the “new world.” They will be protagonists of a “second” moment of Early Modernity (which passes for being the “absolute beginning” of Modernity for European philosophy even to the present.)
6 Explicit reference to two kinds of antagonists, already indicating the theme that
will occupy C. Schmitt.
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“power,” of structures of a still regional hegemony (exercised over the Atlantic Ocean, not over India or China) during almost three centuries, until the industrial revolution, which would eventually allow Europe to “surpass” Hindustan and China economically and technically. It is a criticism argued via a novel strategy in political philosophy; it is the first criticism in the very gestation of the “world system” (the origin of the process today termed “globalization”), the first criticism of the violence of the original movement to implant the new system.
In his argumentation Bartolomé de Las Casas decidedly takes the perspective of the dominated indigenous peoples as a point of departure for his critical discourse, organized logically and philosophically from the horizon of the modern scholasticism of the School of Salamanca—the most important European academic centre in the sixteenth century, based around the Dominican convent of San Esteban. His advantage over the philosophers of “santiesteban” is that Bartolomé had lengthy military and political experience in the Indies. He arrived, as we have said, on the island of Santo Domingo in the Caribbean on April 15, 1502 (18 years old at the time). In 1514—three years before the beginning of the Lutheran Reformation, and at the moment in which Machiavelli is conceiving Il
Principe—continuing the first ethical protest against the expansion of
Modernity, against the conquest, launched by Antón de Montesinos and Pedro de Córdoba in 1511 in Santo Domingo, Bartolomé changes the existential project and the “cura encomendero,” transforming him until his death into the “Defender of the Indians”8. He immediately discovers in
the material negativity of the Other9—as Horkheimer would say—the
8 The situation of this ethical change in favor of the liberation of the Indians can be
seen very clearly in his autobiographical account: “The priest Bartolomé de Las Casas [...] was going along busily and very carefully in his enterprises [business we would say today] like the others, sending the Indians to parcel the mines, to dig out gold and sow the fields, taking advantage of them as much as he could [...But one day] on Pascua de Pentecostés (Whitsuntide) [...] he began to consider [...] Ecclesiastes [Ben Sira] chapter 34: Whomsoever offers something in sacrifice that
was stolen is guilty [...] To offer sacrifice with that which belongs to the poor is the same as killing a child in the presence of his father [...] He began, I say, to
consider their misery.” Bartolomé de las Casas, Historia de las Indias (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1956), Book III, ch.79; Las Casas, Obras escogidas, vol.2, 356.
9 See Dussel, Etica de la liberación en la edad de la globalización y la exclusión
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misery to which the conquest had reduced the Indian, the “original negativity”10:
From the moment the Spanish laid eyes on them [Bartolomé metaphorically presents the Indians as sheep] they pounced on them like ravenous wolves, or tigers, or lions made cruel from many days of hunger. And they have done nothing else for the past forty years, to the present day, and they do it still, nothing save mangle, kill, terrorize, flog, torture and destroy them with the strangest and most varied means of cruelty, never seen nor read nor heard of before.11
Bartolomé is dramatic in his description of the disproportionate violence with which the Europeans treat these first colonial populations. This negative description is dialectically compared with the primitive cultural and ethical positivity of the Indian, before the arrival of the European:
God made these people, many and varied as they are, the most guileles— without wickedness or duplicity, extremely obedient and faithful to their native masters, without dissension or unrest—of any people in the world. They are likewise the most delicate people, thin and tender in complexion, the least able to endure labors, and who easily die from any infirmity.12
The contemptuous judgement of those who deny the dignity of the person and the culture of the Indian is thus false:
It has been written that they were not rational enough to govern themselves in a humane and orderly fashion [...] I have compiled the data in this book to demonstrate the contrary truth13 As far as politics, I say, not only have
10 See the sense of “original negativity” in my work, Dussel, Etica de la liberación,
1998, 209.
11 Las Casas, Obras escogidas, vol. 5, 136.
12 Ibid. The text continues abounding in the qualities of the Indians: “They are also
extremely poor people and possess almost nothing, nor do they desire to possess temporal goods [...] They are likewise of pure and free and lively understandings, very receptive and obedient to all good teaching; they are extremely apt at receiving our sancta fee [...] These tame sheep, are endowed thus by the Maker and Creator with the above-mentioned qualities [...]”. The terms “so meek”, “patient”, “humble” occur often. Las Casas, Obras escogidas, vol. 3, 3.
13 Here Bartolomé enumerates the territorial organization, the cultural, religious
and ethical structure of the American peoples, all of it constituting an immense and authentic Apología (hence its name: Apologética historia), in two enormous volumes and in two large format columns. Las Casas, Obras escogidas, vol. 4, 470
Las Casas, Vitoria and Suárez, 1514-1617 177 they shown themselves to be very wise and clever and possessed of clear understandings, prudently tending and providing for their republics… and with justice that allows them to prosper [...]14
The theoretical structure of the Lascasian denunciation begins explicitly with the “dialectic of master and slave” (two and a half centuries before Hegel). Either the Other is murdered, or under the fear of death his life is pardoned but he is condemned to “servitude”:
There are two main ways in which those who have travelled to this part of the world who call themselves Christians15 have uprooted these pitiful
peoples and wiped them from the face of the earth. Firstly, by unjust, cruel, and bloody wars.16 Secondly, they have murdered anyone who
might yearn or even think of freedom,17 or of wishing to escape the
torments from which they suffer, as is the case with all the native leaders and the adult males18 (given that the Spaniards normally spare only women
and children in war),19 crushing them with the harshest, most horrible and
brutal servitude 20 that man or beast has ever been subjected to.21
& 472. The work culminates with a description of that which is “barbarous,” and the four ways of being such, indicating that the unique title of barbarism would be that of “infidel” or one lacking of knowledge of the Christian faith. But this type of barbarism is not culpable nor does it merit any penalty, nor a “just war.” Las Casas, Obras escogidas, vol. 4, 434.
14 Las Casas, Obras escogidas, vol. 3, 3-4.
15 Notice how Bartolomé points out how they “call themselves Christians,” but in
truth they are not. Rather they are the very contradiction of this great critic’s understanding of Christianity.
16 If the “master” kills the Other the dialectic is not initiated, it is the simple
annihilation of the exteriority. Thus, the Other is murdered.
17 For Bartolomé the indigenous rebellions are originated among those who are
able “to think freely”. Only under the fear of death can they have liberty of thought. Once they are assassinated the “Colonial Order” is inaugurated.
18 Anticipating by centuries the talk of “male mankind” to distinguish from “female
mankind.”
19 This illustrious text recognizes the economic-political domination of the Indian,
the sexual violation of women, and the pedagogy of domination of children. See Enrique Dussel, Para una ética de la liberación latinoamericana (Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI, 1973), vol. 2, intro. In effect, Las Casas’ text inspired me to develop a political, erotic and pedagogical reading in this work of mine of 1973. Ibid., v. 3, 4 & 5.
20 He deals explicitly with the “slave” for life. 21 Las Casas, Obras escogidas, vol. 5, 137.
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Politically, Bartolomé demonstrates a modern and surprisingly critical position. His argumentative strategy will adhere approximately to the following steps:
a. All human beings, including Christians and Europeans, can (and should) have a reasonable, honest and responsible “universal claim of truth”. That is to say, to affirm and believe that one’s practical and theoretical position is true for everyone. That which is affirmed to be true (for human beings, period22) may be fallible, but it isn’t false until the
opposite is demonstrable.
b. When two cultures come face to face, as in the case of the invasion of America, it should be recognized that the other culture, its participants and its totality alike, also holds this universal claim of truth. To deny this right to the other is “bad faith.” The honest participant of the European or Christian culture may in his internal judgement consider the “claim of truth” of the other culture’s participant as an “insurmountable ignorance,” by which he cannot be considered culpable.
c. The atmosphere of the discussion emerging thus, it is therefore only possible to demonstrate the falsity of the other culture’s position by rational arguments and common sense (the praxis effectively articulated with the theory), and accordingly to cause the will (ethically) and the reason (theoretically) of the Other to accept the reasons, which is called consensus. Accepting the dissent of the Other, in the ambit of validity (simultaneous with granting him the right of his claim of truth) opens a space not only of tolerance (purely negative, as we have said) but of admission of the possibility of not accepting the reasons (consistent with the claim of truth) offered by the European to the Indian. The claim of validity—or of the “acceptability to the Other” of the European’s reasons—serves as a limit to the freedom of the Other: the autonomy to not accept the arguments and to persist in dissension. From the non- acceptance of the European’s arguments there follows a practical process, which Bartolomé elucidates in a surprisingly modern way.
d. At this point of the argumentation, the Indian not only has the right to still affirm his beliefs as truths (given that they haven’t been falsified), but moreover he has the obligation to observe them. Bartolomé goes so far
22 For a believer—Christian, Nahuatl or Muslim—divine revelation can be
affirmed as infallible, but its reception, its interpretation, its applications are human, and therefore fallible.
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as to demonstrate that the human sacrifices of certain indigenous peoples to their gods not only are not contrary to “natural law”, but that it is possible to place them within an infallible rational argument (at least within the argumentative resources of the indigenous cultures before the arrival of the Europeans); for this reason, to not carry out these theoretically rationalsacrifices is an ethically culpable act. Furthermore, if the sacrifice is opposed by force of arms (as Ginés as well as Francisco Vitoria affirmed), the Indians’ war then becomes a “just war,” and they therefore are justified in defending their duty to carry out such sacrifices, which to them are obligatory.
e. Bartolomé then departs from the premise by which the Other, the other culture, has the freedom by natural right to accept or not accept arguments. To wage war or violence in order to force acceptance (a matter of consensus or procedural regulations23) of the content of the European
conqueror’s truth (of his “universal claim of truth”), is irrational theoretically and unjust ethically, because nobody can or should “accept” the truth of the other without reasons (by sheer violence, fear, or the timidity to oppose him).
f. The only rational and ethical solution for one who has an honest and responsible universal claim of truth (whose criterion is the production, reproduction and development of a humane way of living24) is by
argumentation and by giving ethical examples coherent in their praxis. For if one resorts to violence he demonstrates that he doesn’t have a “universal claim of validity,” because validation is that which is freely accepted by the Other—if the Other’s freedom is denied, then a supposed truth, without validity, is imposed on him. One’s actions thus demonstrate the contradiction of claiming, on the one hand, to have the free and rational consent of the other and, on the other hand, negating that consent. The claim of validity becomes doubtful and the dogmatism, the fanaticism and the confusion of attempting to “make the other accept” one’s own truth without persuasion becomes manifest; it becomes, by contradiction, an invalidated truth. For Bartolomé, however, the time period of non- acceptance of the truth is thereby “opened,” whereby which one’s honest and responsible “claim of validity” knows how to wait for the historical maturation of the Other.
23 See Dussel, Etica de la liberación, ch.2.
24 See Enrique Dussel, Hacia una filosofía política crítica (Bilbao: Desclèe de
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This argumentation is also valid when taking the Indian as a point of departure (or the slave, the Moor or the Arab, as we shall see). It is the “maximum possible global critical conscience”—not only European but