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‘Woke’ in the 16th-Century? Maybe! On the fourth Sunday of Advent in 1511, in a rustic Cathedral in the city of Santo Domingo on the island of Espanola, a Dominican friar, Antonio de Montesinos, delivered a sermon which, for the first time, publicly denounced the encomienda system, by which the Indians were abused and exploited.
He raised a very controversial question: Did the Crown have a right to wage a just war against the Indians because they were infidels?
Despite the uproar of the local settlers, Montesinos’ sermon was able to procure some legal protections for the native population from King Ferdinand who summoned the Junta of Burgos in 1512, composed of jurists, theologians, and royal officers who gathered to discuss universal human rights issues for colonized people for the first time.
Click play to hear more about the rippling effects of Montesinos’ public denouncement of the enslavement and harsh treatment of the indigenous peoples in the New World:
