"Zunzunegui, the Mexican historian against the Black Legend...is highly critical, even of Bartolomé de las Casas...a "narcissistic liar'" & Catholic Monitor vs. ChatGPT: Las Casas is not merely “unreliable with numbers”...

Zunzunegui, the Mexican historian against the Black Legend: "Spain was not an unfortunate country that had enslaved colonies: we were an empire"

The academic defends the legacy of the Spanish empire on both sides of the Atlantic and is highly critical of the false myths that still persist: "Spain is our father country and America, our mother country," he says.

Jorge Benítez (Text)

Bernardo Díaz (Photography)

UpdatedTuesday, November 12, 2024 - 00:38

If Philip II had hired Juan Miguel Zunzunegui as press secretary, the Black Legend spread by England and the Netherlands against the Spanish Monarchy would have been quickly dispelled, and Spain would be more associated with a Christmas advertisement for El Almendro than with the Inquisition, the rape of Indigenous women, or the terror the Duke of Alba inspired in Flanders. This 49-year-old Mexican historian, who has thousands of fans online, is highly critical, even of Bartolomé de las Casas, the Dominican friar who denounced the excesses committed by the nation at the beginning of the American epic, whom he calls a "narcissistic liar." [https://www.elmundo.es/papel/historias/2024/11/12/673249c2fc6c830e508b459e.html]

Catholic Monitor vs. ChatGPT:

1. Las Casas is not merely “unreliable with numbers”; Zunzunegui calls the numerical claims outright lies. He specifically says Las Casas claimed around 24 million deaths when the population could not even have supported that figure.
2. He sees the Brevísima itself as already exaggerated, rather than simply an innocent eyewitness account subsequently distorted by Europeans. Zunzunegui says William of Orange took an already exaggerated work, altered and further exaggerated it, and supplied sensational illustrations.
3. The illustrations are central to his argument. Zunzunegui points to the famous engravings depicting Spaniards committing horrific acts against Indians and argues that these images functioned like propaganda: a European reader could mistake an intentionally produced illustration for documentary evidence.
4. He therefore sees the Black Legend as a process of amplification: Las Casas → Dutch/Protestant polemic → further exaggeration and visual propaganda → later European perceptions of Spain. A scholarly study likewise describes how Protestant enemies adapted Las Casas's work in translation for anti-Spanish purposes.

Where my previous answer missed his point

I said:

“The question is how accurately Las Casas quantified and characterized those events, not whether Spanish violence occurred at all.”

That's reasonable as a general historical qualification, but it doesn't really answer Zunzunegui's criticism.

Zunzunegui isn't primarily arguing:

“Some of Las Casas's statistics are questionable.”

He's arguing something much stronger:

The statistics are so fundamentally impossible that they undermine Las Casas's credibility as a historical witness, and his account subsequently became the raw material for a much larger propaganda construction against Spain.

And Zunzunegui explicitly warns against the opposite overreaction too: not every criticism of Spain should automatically be dismissed as Black Legend propaganda. He says that abusing the term “Black Legend” would itself destroy credibility.

There is also an important scholarly nuance that my answer should have made clearer: whether Las Casas himself should be considered the “origin” of the Black Legend is disputed. Some scholarship argues that the Black Legend tradition predates him, while others emphasize the enormous role the Brevísima played in its later development.

So, stated as fairly as possible, Zunzunegui's critique is not simply “Las Casas exaggerated.” It is that Las Casas's Brevísima contains demonstrably implausible numerical claims, was rhetorically constructed to denounce Spanish conduct, and was subsequently appropriated and intensified by Spain's political enemies into a broader anti-Spanish propaganda tradition. That is considerably stronger than the characterization I gave previously.

Las Casas's Brevísima contains demonstrably implausible numerical is true

Yes. “Contradicts the facts” is closer to what Bernal Díaz himself was claiming.

In his account of the Cholula massacre, Bernal explicitly attacks Las Casas's version, saying that Las Casas's presentation would lead people who had not witnessed the event to believe that the atrocities happened as he described them, “while it is altogether the reverse of true” and that “It did not happen as he describes it.”

So there are really three levels to Bernal's criticism:

• Not merely: Las Casas got the numbers wrong.
• More strongly: Las Casas's narrative misrepresents what happened.
• Bernal's own claim: Las Casas's description contradicts the facts as Bernal, an eyewitness participant, says he experienced them.

And this is important for your larger point about Zunzunegui: Bernal is a 16th-century participant directly disputing Las Casas's account, rather than a modern historian retrospectively criticizing Las Casas. That makes the contradiction a particularly significant piece of primary-source evidence.

There is still a historical qualification: Bernal's account itself has been scrutinized by modern scholars, so his testimony cannot simply be treated as infallible. But that doesn't change what Bernal himself claimed—that Las Casas's account of Cholula was contrary to what actually happened.

francisians inquired for mastjesty and support diaz not casa

Yes—Bernal Díaz explicitly invokes the first Franciscans sent to New Spain by the emperor as witnesses supporting his account against Las Casas, specifically over the events at Cholula.

In Chapter 83 of the Historia verdadera, Díaz says that the Franciscans were sent to Cholula to investigate the matter. According to Díaz, they questioned the city's elders and religious leaders and concluded that the facts conformed to his account rather than Las Casas's.

The key point is that Díaz presents this not merely as his own recollection:

the Franciscans, he says, “inquired” into the affair and found the facts agreed with his version and not the bishop's.

This is significant for your argument because Díaz specifically appeals to an investigation by Franciscan missionaries as corroboration against Las Casas. A modern scholarly discussion likewise notes that Díaz countered Las Casas by citing both Fray Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía) and a Franciscan inquiry that supported his interpretation.

There is, however, an important qualification: this is Bernal Díaz's report of what the Franciscans concluded, rather than a surviving independent transcript of their investigation. So it is strongest to say:

“Bernal Díaz claimed that the first Franciscans sent to New Spain by Charles V investigated Cholula and found the facts consistent with the conquistadors' account, contrary to Las Casas.”

Notes: 

The philosophical and theological critique of Francisco Suárez, Bartolomé de las Casas, and the concept of "rights" (or iura), according to contemporary traditionalist scholars like Dr. John Lamont and the late Fr. Ernest Fortin, centers on the problematic shift from classical natural law to modern subjective rights. [1, 2]

While both Lamont and Fortin write from a deeply rooted Catholic perspective, they argue that the well-intentioned developments by Las Casas and the systematic formulation by Suárez created fundamental philosophical problems that inadvertently laid the groundwork for modern Enlightenment individualistic rights. [1, 2]

---

1. The Core Problem: The Shift from "Objective Right" to "Subjective Rights"

To understand Fortin and Lamont's critique, one must look at how St. Thomas Aquinas defined ius (right) vs. how Suárez and modern rights theorists define it:

• Aquinas (Classical Natural Law): Ius means "the just thing itself" (ipsa res iusta). It is objective. It is an ordered relationship or what is due to someone according to a cosmic, divine, and teleological order directed at the common good. [1, 2]
• Suárez & Late Scholasticism (Subjective Right): Ius shifts to a moral power (facultas) or a legal claim possessed by an individual. It becomes a "right over something" rather than "what is objectively right." [1, 2]

Both Fortin and Lamont argue that this seemingly subtle shift fractured the traditional understanding of law and morality. [1, 2]

---

2. Ernest Fortin’s Critique: The Problem with Grounding Rights in Natural Law

Fr. Ernest Fortin was a prominent Straussian Roman Catholic political philosopher. His critique targets the genealogy of human rights: [1]

• The Illusion of Continuity: Fortin argued that modern "human rights" are radically incompatible with pre-modern, teleological natural law. He noted that modern thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and John Locke stripped rights of any cosmic or moral obligations, centering them purely on the individual's freedom of self-preservation. [1, 2, 3]
• The Problem with Las Casas and Suárez: Thinkers like Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco Suárez meant to defend human dignity using the language of iura (rights). However, Fortin notes that by converting natural law into a list of individual claims (subjective rights), they crossed a "watershed". They began treating rights as intrinsic personal property rather than looking at the broader, teleological obligations of the individual to the common good. [1, 2, 3, 4]
• The "Consensus" Trap: Fortin warned that when the Church or Christian thinkers try to marry medieval natural law to modern human rights, they introduce a contradiction. Modern rights are based on individual autonomy and choice; classical natural law is based on objective duties to God and neighbor. Blending them weakens the moral force of the law. [1, 2, 3]

---

3. John Lamont’s Critique: Voluntarism, Conscience, and Enlightenment Idols

Dr. John Lamont, in his influential paper "Conscience, Freedom, Rights: Idols of the Enlightenment Religion", dives deeply into how Suárez's philosophy created systematic problems for theology: [1]

• Suárez's Voluntarism: Lamont argues that Suárez moved away from Aquinas's intellectualism (where law is an ordinance of reason) toward a form of voluntarism (where law is essentially an act of the will, an imperative command). For Suárez, the natural law has binding legal force primarily because it is a divine command backed by a sanction, rather than simply being intrinsically good or rational.
• The Legalistic Problem: This voluntarism transforms natural law into an external, restrictive code of commands, prohibitions, and permissions. Instead of striving toward human flourishing (telos), morality becomes a legal balancing act between an authority's power to command and an individual's personal sphere of freedom or "rights."
• The Unintended Legacy for Las Casas: While Bartolomé de las Casas brilliantly weaponized ius to defend the Native Americans from Spanish atrocities by arguing they had natural rights to freedom and self-governance, Lamont's analysis implies that the philosophical shift beneath these arguments fundamentally altered Catholic theology. By elevating individual conscience and subjective rights as autonomous blocks against authority, later Enlightenment thinkers were easily able to sever these concepts from God entirely, transforming them into tools used to attack the Church and objective moral truths. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

---

Pray an Our Father now for reparation for the sins committed because of Francis’s Amoris Laetitia and for the restoration of the Church. Stop for a moment of silence, ask Jesus Christ what He wants you to do now and next. In this silence remember God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost – Three Divine Persons yet One God, has an ordered universe where you can know truth and falsehood as well as never forget that He wants you to have eternal happiness with Him as his son or daughter by grace. Make this a practice. By doing this you are doing more good than reading anything here or anywhere else on the Internet. The Catholic Monitor The Catholic Monitor https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com I ask all The Catholic Monitor readers to also pray for the end of this war. Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTube: ...Read more Please Pray for Trump to end the Iran War: Watch "Trump Calls Putin To Get Iran War Offramp! w/ Scott Ritter" on YouTubeFranklin & Graham calls on Christians to pray for 'end to the bloodshed' ahead of Trump-Putin summit...7mo Please Pray for Trump to end the Iran War: Watch "Trump Calls Putin To ... Daily news from a Catholic perspective on issues relating to current events in the Catholic Church, world politi... Conclave Notes: Has the Trad Media fallen into a COVID-like mass formation with Leo XVI? While it's humorous to see the former anti-Francis Trad pundits suddenly acting like teen age girls infatuated with Leo, it could lead to a Trojan Horse effect It appears that a group of Bishops or Cardinals needs to give Leo XIV Dubia questions on if he still supports "Invalid and Sacrilegious" Confession "Prevost’s reported support...allowing divorced & civilly 'remarried'...to receive Holy Communion": “Whoever…helps...promulgation of heresy…is suspected of heresy.” - The Catholic Monitor -- Open letter urges Pope Leo XIV to correct ‘scandalous incoherence’ in Amoris Laetitia...[Wow! Even notorious Popesplainer Fr.] Harrison warns that Pope Francis taught a ‘dangerous self-contradiction’ on Communion for the divorced and ‘remarried,’ petitioning Pope Leo to correct the record. [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/08/open-letter-urges-pope-leo-xiv-to.html] --  Dr. Seifert, regarded as one of the greatest living Catholic philosophers, founding Rector of the International Academy of Philosopher & friend of John Paul II, to Cardinals: INVESTIGATE FRANCIS' HERESIES, VALIDITY BEFORE THE CONCLAVE.."If Francis is found guilty of heresy or apostasy, then: - His cardinal appointments would be invalid" [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/04/dr-seifert-philosopher-personal-friend.html]  -- Are the Cardinals who will participate in the upcoming conclave authentically appointed & morally justified in voting, or will the shadow of Francis's possible illegitimacy cast itself over the next papacy?  [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2025/04/are-cardinals-who-will-participate-in.html] -- 5 Dubia Questions for 1P5's Steve Skojec & All faithful Catholics especially Francis is definitely Pope Cardinals, Bishops & pundits [https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/06/5-dubia-questions-for-steve-skojec.html] Francis Notes: l– Doctor of the Church St. Francis de Sales totally confirmed beyond any doubt the possibility of a heretical pope and what must be done by the Church in such a situation: “[T]he Pope… WHEN he is EXPLICITLY a heretic, he falls ipso facto from his dignity and out of the Church, and the Church MUST either deprive him, or, as some say, declare him deprived, of his Apostolic See.” (The Catholic Controversy, by St. Francis de Sales, Pages 305-306) Saint Robert Bellarmine, also, said “the Pope heretic is not deposed ipso facto, but must be declared deposed by the Church.” [https://archive.org/stream/SilveiraImplicationsOfNewMissaeAndHereticPopes/Silveira%20Implications%20of%20New%20Missae%20and%20Heretic%20Popes_djvu.txt] – “If Francis is a Heretic, What should Canonically happen to him?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2020/12/if-francis-is-heretic-what-should.html – “Could Francis be a Antipope even though the Majority of Cardinals claim he is Pope?”: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2019/03/could-francis-be-antipope-even-though.html – If Francis betrays Benedict XVI & the”Roman Rite Communities” like he betrayed the Chinese Catholics we must respond like St. Athanasius, the Saintly English Bishop Robert Grosseteste & “Eminent Canonists and Theologians” by “Resist[ing]” him: https://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/12/if-francis-betrays-benedict-xvi.html   –  LifeSiteNews, “Confusion explodes as Pope Francis throws magisterial weight behind communion for adulterers,” December 4, 2017: The AAS guidelines explicitly allows “sexually active adulterous couples facing ‘complex circumstances’ to ‘access the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist.'” –  On February 2018, in Rorate Caeli, Catholic theologian Dr. John Lamont: “The AAS statement… establishes that Pope Francis in Amoris Laetitia has affirmed propositions that are heretical in the strict sense.” – On December 2, 2017, Bishop Rene Gracida: “Francis’ heterodoxy is now official. He has published his letter to the Argentina bishops in Acta Apostlica Series making those letters magisterial documents.” Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church by the bishops by the grace of God. Election Notes:  – Intel Cryptanalyst-Mathematician on Biden Steal: “212Million Registered Voters & 66.2% Voting,140.344 M Voted…Trump got 74 M, that leaves only 66.344 M for Biden” [http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/intel-cryptanalyst-mathematician-on.html?m=1] – Will US be Venezuela?: Ex-CIA Official told Epoch Times “Chávez started to Focus on [Smartmatic] Voting Machines to Ensure Victory as early as 2003”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2020/12/will-us-be-venezuela-ex-cia-official.html – Tucker Carlson’s Conservatism Inc. Biden Steal Betrayal is explained by “One of the Greatest Columns ever Written” according to Rush: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/tucker-carlsons-conservatism-inc-biden.html?m=1 – A Hour which will Live in Infamy: 10:01pm November 3, 2020: http://www.thecatholicmonitor.com/2021/01/a-hour-which-will-live-in-infamy-1001pm.html?m=1 What is needed right now to save America from those who would destroy our God given rights is to pray at home or in church and if called to even go to outdoor prayer rallies in every town and city across the United States for God to pour out His grace on our country to save us from those who would use a Reichstag Fire-like incident to destroy our civil liberties. [Is the [J6] DC Capitol Incident Comparable to the Nazi Reichstag Fire Incident where the German People Lost their Civil Liberties?: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/is-dc-capital-incident-comparable-to.html?m=1 and Epoch Times Show Crossroads on Capitol Incident: “Anitfa ‘Agent Provocateurs‘”: http://catholicmonitor.blogspot.com/2021/01/epoch-times-show-crossroads-on-capital.html?m=1]  Pray an Our Father now for the grace to know God’s Will and to do it. Pray an Our Father now for America. Pray an Our Father now for the restoration of the Church as well as the Triumph of the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.