A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

The Spanish kill, torture, ransom, and enslave thousands of native people to drain the American continent of its precious metals, particularly gold. Throughout the text gold symbolizes Spanish greed as well as of the perversion of Christian ideals encapsulated by the Spanish colonial project. The symbol is particularly well served in the story of a Spanish visitador who steals the natives’ religious idols and ransoms them back to the populace for gold (67). This recalls the Old Testament story of the golden calf and God’s decree to worship no other gods save him. This allusion introduces an irony to the text: The Spanish believe the natives to be godless people who worship false idols, and so they steal these idols hoping they are made of gold. However, Las Casas presents the Spanish as the true worshippers of these golden idols; the commander Guzmán committed several atrocities in the province, “acknowledging no limits to his frenzied quest for his great God, gold” (68).

The irony that Las Casas conveys through the symbolism of gold also appears in the story of the Yucatan province, in which the Spanish actually distribute these idols to the population, who have already been converted to Christianity, in forced exchange for slaves.