Abstract

FAJARDO SANCHEZ, Luis Alfonso. Fray Antón de Montesinos: his narrative and the indigenous peoples' rights in the Constitutions of our America. Hallazgos [online]. 2013, vol.10, n.20, pp.217-244. ISSN 1794-3841.  https://doi.org/10.15332/s1794-3841.2013.0020.13.

This essay makes a follow-up to the sermon I am a voice crying in the wilderness by Fray Anton de Montesinos, that reflected the thinking of the small Dominican community settled on the island La Española. The work is developed based on the historical context in which the sermon was declared and, according to experts, it coincides with the birth of human rights in our America and the New Laws of the Indies, in which, for the first time, the Spanish Crown censored and punished abuse, death and enslavement of the Indians. We proceed to show how these ideals of freedom have also been developed by universities and convents in America, within the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which in turn have resulted as a product of the neoconstitutionalism by the Latin American legislation, like in the Constitutions of Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia. This article shows how the friar's complaint should be extended to all human beings who suffer from violence, famine, enslavement, torture and death, that is, to all those who suffer from human rights violation.

Keywords : Montesinos; Indian law; indigenous rights; freedom; neoconstitutionalism; American Constitutions; the right to the history.

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