Thursday, January 3, 2013: 1:20 PM
Bayside Ballroom C (Sheraton New Orleans)
Erin Stone, Vanderbilt University
In 1513 Bachiller Hernán Súarez received twenty grammar books, several reams of paper, and other books with which he was to begin a school for the “hijos de caciques” in the Monastery at Verapaz on the island of Española.
[1] The school, the first of its kind in the New World, would provide the island’s future leaders with training in Catholicism and the Spanish language, perhaps even to create a group of native clergy. While the school closed within a decade, it first produced one famous alumnus, cacique Enriquillo. Enriquillo spent most of his childhood living with Franciscan friars in the monastery at Verapaz where he learned to read and write.
[2] Regardless of his education following the Repartimiento of 1514 Enriquillo, along with one hundred and nine of his Indians to San Juan de Maguana, was forced to relocate across the island, a move that would ultimately lead the cacique to rebel in 1519.
[3] Still, even after the cacique’s violent revolt and escape to the Bahoruco Mountains, he remained friendly with the island’s Franciscans, even visiting with friar Bartolome de las Casas in 1531.
Beginning with the school at Verapaz, and following the friendship between cacique Enriquillo and various Franciscan friars (including Las Casas), this paper examines the relationships between Española’s indigenous populations and the Franciscan friars during the early years of the colony. Specifically I focus on the links developed during religious instruction that survived and perhaps even prospered during years of conflict and rebellion.
[1]“Orden al doctor Sancho de Matienzo” 1513. AGI Indiferente 419, L.4, F. 124v.
[2] Lynne Guitar, A Cultural Genesis: Relationships Among Indians, Africans and Spaniards in Hispaniola, First Half of the Sixteenth Century (PhD diss. Vanderbilt University, 1998),Guitar 1998, 346-347.
[3] Fray Cipriano de Utrera, Polémica de Enriquillo, (Santo Domingo: Editora del Caribe, 1973), 136.
