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The European sailors and explorers who “discovered” America showed no doubt regarding the fact that the natives belonged to the human species and their attitude to be Christianized. The same can be said about Papal and Spanish Royal text which legally legitimated the conquest, but the actual behaviour of conquistadores and colonists showed a process of gradual dehumanization of the natives. The main characters of the debate about the legitimacy of the Conquista did not negate the humanity of the Indians. Rather, according the Aristotelian anthropology, included them in a lower level of humanity, so justifying both their servitude and the paternalistic burden by the Christian to submit them in order to make them humaniores. That reveals the dangers and the “unexpected dialectic” connected to the notion of humanity. But in the same years Bartolomé de Las Casas acknowledged the mature humanity of the natives, their full rationality and political virtue together with the value of their ways of life and legal system: he initiated a symmetrical, pluralist and inclusive approach to cultural difference.
Humanity; Conquest of the Americas; Human Rights; Forced Labour; Just War
