David Thomas Orique's book is a welcome addition to the burgeoning field of Lascasian studies. Recent scholarship on Las Casas's works has been characterized by expanding the canon to include lesser-known texts. The volume under review exemplifies this trend. Orique's book comprises three chapters and the first complete annotated English translation of the 1552 Confesionario by Las Casas. This treatise, surrounded by controversies since its beginnings, is a strong denunciation of the conquistadors’ abuses against the Amerindians. Las Casas portrays the realities confronted by indigenous people in the Americas, while also offering a critique of the models of colonization. Orique does a superb job in examining the ways in which Las Casas provides a detailed account of historical events and offers a theological, legal, and moral critique of these events. Orique provides an in-depth analysis of a key issue in Las Casas's treatise: the uses of the sacrament of confession as an ecclesiastical tool in the fight for justice. Also included in his study is an informative discussion about the connection between political conquest and Spanish cultural practices.
Chapter 1 provides a detailed account of Las Casas's cultural and religious background, from 1514 to 1546, in order to better understand the doctrine and practice of restitution. While the most obvious purpose here is to summarize existing knowledge on the subject, the author breaks new ground by bringing together fresh research on the analysis of culture and politics in Lascasian studies. Chapter 2 successfully frames the work in the context of previous studies and offers a comprehensive overview of the ideas of sacrament as foundations of the Confesionario between 1546 and 1547. Chapter 3 presents a thoughtful analytic commentary of the 1552 Confesionario, which helps the reader to understand the importance of Lascasian theological ideas and how scholars have interpreted them. The main section here is the annotated edition of the Confesionario, with rich historical, literary, and cultural notes that illuminate Las Casas's thought.
The detailed analysis of the Confesionario constitutes Orique's most valuable cultural, literary, and theological contribution, and is essential for a deeper understanding of colonialism in the Americas, providing the reader with a firsthand testimony on the long fight for justice in Latin America. The work contains the most comprehensive annotation available and is one of the few that can be considered a real critical edition. Las Casas's Confesionario translation gives scholars a more in-depth look at his doctrine of justice, but much still remains to be done in this area. Another difference in Orique's book is that previous research on Las Casas is largely focused on particular issues without taking into consideration the broader circuits of intellectual thought that allowed for multidirectional flows of knowledge and representations. Orique's informative sources provide fertile soil for future research in the field of religious studies, legal studies, and indigenous studies, representing an attempt to move the discipline forward and attesting to the new vitality of interdisciplinary research in Latin American colonial studies.
The main contribution of Orique's book is that it aims to transcend the barriers that separate religious and legal studies in colonial Latin America. Such a perspective will enrich an emerging field of inquiry by incorporating new interdisciplinary areas into the analytical framework. This book is intended for a broad academic audience in the fields of religion, history, anthropology, law, and political science, as well as for those interested in comparative studies of colonialism. It might be used in undergraduate and graduate courses on the Americas.
