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"Una disputa, o controversia: entre el
Obispo don fray Bartholome de las
Casas, ...y el doctor Gines de Sepulveda."
Ed. by Rafael E. Tarrago.
INTRODUCTION
The pamphlet "Aqui se contiene una disputa"
is owned by the
James Ford Bell Library at the University of
Minnesota in
Minneapolis. It was printed in Seville in 1552
by Sebastian
Trugillo and it contains an extract of the debate
about the
natural rights of Native Americans that took
place in 1550 in
Valladolid, Spain, between the Dominican friar
Bartolome de
Las Casas and the humanist Juan Gines de Sepulveda.
Sepulveda proposed that Native Americans were
like the
natural slaves mentioned by Aristotle in his
"Politics" and
Bartolome de Las Casas countered that Native
Amerians
were free human agents. The pamphlet has 60
leaves which
actually means 120 pages, and it is divided
in four parts.
The first part is an introduction, the second
part is a summary
of the debate by the Dominican friar Domingo
de Soto, the
third part contains twelve objections by Sepulveda
to the
summary of de Soto, and the fourth and last
part contains
replies by Las Casas to Sepulveda's objections.
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