Kao Ly Moua
Professor Hoskisson
History 1700, Section 006
Voices of Freedom
Chapter 1, Page 28 & 29
Freedom is said to be the power or the right to act, speak or think as one chooses, without being
told otherwise. But freedom wasn't always something people had, it was something often fought for.
One comparison of differences in freedom can be made by looking at History of the Indies, written in
1528 by a Dominican priest named Bartolome de Las Casas, and the Declaration of Josephe, authored by
a Spanish-speaking Indian on December 19, 1681. Both men reflect on different aspects of freedom and
how it affected people in their respective time periods. But what ideas of freedom were apparent in the
two documents?
Bartolome de Las Casas explained the ideas of freedom in 1528 as being a luxury that the
Indians did not enjoy. De Las Casas details the cruelty of the Spaniards towards the Indians - treating
them as slaves and nothing more. He went so far as to say that, "even beasts enjoy more freedom when
they're allowed to graze in the fields." This statement illustrates how little freedom the Indians were
afforded during this time period, and that they lost much more than they gained. The Indians were
worked to the point of exhaustion for days at a time. When they were finally allowed to go home, some
died, and all suffered due to their lands being deprivced of their former resources and shelter. Most
were forced to venture into the woods to find food, and starved otherwise.
To these Indians, freedom was to own and live on their own land. But that was taken away and
they were left with nothing. They were also restricted from practicing their native culture. Rather than
being able to bury their fallen according to their traditions, they were forced to watch their brothers and
sisters be disposed of according to Spanish methods. "And this was the freedom, the good treatment
and the Christianity the Indians received," de Las Casas commented sarcastically, telling us that their
freedom to practice the religion they had held on to for generations was stripped from the Indians in a
non-Christian act. These poor Indians were deprived of the life they deserved. They were stripped of the
freedoms most dear to them, of culture, land and religion. Freedom meant more to them than living the
life they wanted, but it meant living the life they deserved.
Josephe explains freedom from the Indian point of view in 1681, when he writes the Declaration
of Josephe. This was a time period when Spanish authorities still had deprived the Indians of the
freedom of religion, and Indians were forced to endure physical abuses as slaves. But the Indians had
reached their breaking point, and were no longer content to let the Spanish control them and withold
their freedoms.
The Indians eventually revolted and took matters into their own hands. They began burning
images in the Spanish churches, the chapels themselves, and anything that pertained to divine worship
within the church. "Now the God of the Spaniards, who was their father, is dead, and Santa Maria, who
was their mother, and the saints, who were pieces of rotten wood," (Josephe, paragraph 2) was the
triumphant Indian attitude. But the Indians didn't stop there, they did more than just burn chapels,
temples, crosses, and rosaries. They would go bathe in the rivers, thereby washing away their forced
Catholic baptisms.
I believe that the reason for the rebellion of these Indians was mostly due to the way the
Spaniards forced them to participate in what the Spaniards believed was the only correct religion. The
Indians wanted to show their rising generations that they should stand by their traditions and defend
the freedoms they deserve. The adults would perform a superstitious rite in which they offered flour,
feather, maguey, maize and tobacco, to give the children an understanding that their culture must
survive through future generations. Maintaining their own way of life would also maintain their sense of
freedom. The Indians fought for labor rights, freedom of religion, and the freedom to live peaceably on
their own land without danger of being interfered with by foreigners.
These two documents provided a comparison between the freedoms in 1528 and those in 1681,
each including details about how the Indians handled their freedom being taken from them. In 1528, de
Las Casas describes the Indians as being totally stripped of their freedom and left with no food or
shelter. Sadly, these Indians didn't put up a real fight for their freedom, unlike the Indians described by
Josephe in 1681. That group revolted, fighting for their freedom and stopping at nothing until they had
some sense of their freedom back. These Indians wanted to show their children the value of freedom,
and that it was worth paying any price for. It is very apparent that both groups of Indians posessed the
same freedoms at one time, but acted in very different ways when faced with losing them.