{ "id": "castilian-language-question-in-the-indies", "type": "entity", "name": "The Castilian question: whether the Indians should be made to speak Spanish", "summary": "Whether to compel the peoples of the Indies to abandon their languages for Castilian was argued in the Council of the Indies. The compiled law settled it on the side of persuasion: masters for those \"que voluntariamente la quisieren aprender\", at no cost to them, while parishes went only to priests who knew the Indian language well. Solórzano prints the rule and dissents, reaching for Rome and for the ban on Arabic imposed on the Moriscos of Spain.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "language", "colonial-law", "education", "church", "indigenous-peoples", "americas", "spanish-empire", "seventeenth-century", "translation" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "recopilacion-de-leyes-de-indias" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "solorzano-politica-indiana" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "catedras-de-lenguas-indigenas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "tercero-catecismo-de-lima-1583" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "acosta-de-procuranda-indorum-salute-1588" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "inca-garcilaso-de-la-vega" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "obras-perdidas-de-lenguas-indigenas-de-america" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "spanish-language" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "republica-de-indios" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "olmos-arte-lengua-mexicana-1547" } ], "questions": [ "Did Spain force indigenous people in the Americas to speak Spanish?", "Why were catechisms and sermons in the Spanish Indies written in Nahuatl and Quechua?", "What did Spanish law say about teaching Castilian to the Indians?", "Was there a debate in the Council of the Indies about indigenous languages?", "What did Solórzano Pereira argue about the languages of the Indies?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The question was a live administrative one, not a modern reconstruction. Solórzano opens libro II, capítulo XXVI of the Política Indiana — \"SI SERA, Y HUVIERA SIDO CONVENIENTE, obligar á los Indios, á que dexadas, y olvidadas tan varias lenguas, como usan, habláran solo la nuestra Castellana\" — by recording, on printed page 193 of the first tomo of the 1736 impression, that \"en el Real, y Supremo Consejo de las Indias, y en otras varias juntas de Varones Doctos se ha puesto en questión: si huviera sido conveniente, ó lo será oy… les obliguemos, á que forzosamente aprendan, y hablen nuestra lengua, de tal suerte, que olviden, y dexen del todo las suyas: ó por el contrario nos acomodemos nosotros á aprender ellas\".", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The compiled law answers it with a voluntary school. Libro VI, título 1 of the Recopilación, ley xviij, on printed page 193 of tomo II of the 1791 fourth impression, is headed \"Que donde fuere posible se pongan Escuelas de la lengua Castellana, para que la aprendan los Indios\", with the margin \"El Emperador D. Cárlos y los Reyes de Bohemia Gobernadores en Valladolid á 7 de Junio y á 17 de Julio de 1550\". Having recited that the mysteries of the faith cannot be expressed in the Indian languages without \"grandes disonancias, é imperfecciones\", and that the chairs founded for priests are \"no es remedio bastante, por ser mucha la variedad de lenguas\", it resolves that Castilian should be introduced and then orders only this: \"que á los Indios se les pongan Maestros, que enseñen á los que voluntariamente la quisieren aprender, como les sea de ménos molestia, y sin costa\"; the work is proposed for sacristans, \"como en las Aldeas de estos Reynos enseñan á leer, y escribir, y la Doctrina Christiana.\" The declared preference is assimilationist; the operative command is voluntary, free and unfunded.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "The same royal instruction that proposes Castilian teachers insists in the opposite direction about the clergy. Solórzano quotes it on printed page 195: \"Y assimismo tendreis particular cuidado, se guarde, lo que está mandado, cerca de que no se provean los Curatos; si no en personas, que sepan muy bien la lengua de los Indios, que huvieren de enseñar: que esto, como cosa de tanta obligacion, y escrupulo, es, lo que principalmente os encargo, por lo que toca á la buena instruccion, y Christiandad de los Indios\". The crown's language policy therefore ran on two tracks at once — optional Castilian for the governed, compulsory vernacular competence for those who governed their souls.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "The ecclesiastical rule pointed the same way. Solórzano finds \"que el Concilio Limense III. manda, que les enseñemos las Oraciones, y les catequizemos en su lengua, sin obligarles, á que aprendan la nuestra: si no que algunos lo quieran hacer de su voluntad, como ya lo han hecho muchos\" — the Third Council of Lima of 1582-83, whose own catechism and confessionary were printed in Quechua and Aymara alongside Spanish. He names Acosta and Garcilaso as holding \"que no se les puede quitar su lengua á los Indios, y que es mejor, y mas conforme á razon, que nosotros aprendamos las suyas, pues somos de mayor capacidad, y entramos con esta obligacion, y carga de predicarles\".", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "Acosta's argument as Solórzano reports it turns the burden of effort into a moral point: the difficulties of learning an indigenous language \"vencemos, ó toleramos, quando entramos á buscar los mas Barbaros, y remotos por la codicia del oro, ó la plata, acomodandonos, como podemos, á su lenguage\". To it Solórzano adds Anacharsis before the Athenians — every nation stammers in the languages of others, so the most barbarous the better deserve pardon — and the practical objection: since we do not despise the textiles and other precious things that come from them, \"por qué no sufrirémos sus voces barbaras?\"", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The scale of the problem is given in the same chapter and is the strongest argument against compulsion. Solórzano reports, from Genebrardo on Vespucci's account, that in the Indies \"en cada cien leguas ay diferentes lenguas\", and from Acosta that in Peru alone \"ay en él mas de setecientas lenguas diferentes, y que apenas se habita valle, ó collado algo ancho, que no aya introducido la suya\". He grants that laws must be fitted \"no á lo que es facil de decir; sino á lo que en acto practico se puede facilmente obrar\", that it does not appear so great a number of Indians in their own land would leave the languages they were raised in, that merely hearing the foreign one \"les suele ser muy odioso\", and that against this \"no basta el imperio del que los pudo vencer\". These figures are a seventeenth-century estimate relayed at second hand, not a count.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "Solórzano nonetheless dissents from the rule he has just set out, and the object records his side in his own words: \"Yo siempre me he inclinado mas á la opinión contraria, y tengo para mí, que en los principios de las poblaciones de estas Provincias de Indias, huviera sido fácil, y conveniente, haver obligado á todos los Indios… que aprendieran la Lengua de ella\". His grounds are the Spanish precedent — Spaniards under Rome forgot their own ancient tongue so completely \"que no ha havido, quien con certeza pueda averiguar, ni decir, qual era\" — and Matienzo's device of compelling only the caciques, \"porque de ellos penden los demàs\".", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "His argument reaches its most uncomfortable point on printed page 196, and it is printed there rather than paraphrased here. He invokes as confirmation a law of the Castilian recopilación forbidding the newly converted Moors of Spain to speak or read books in Arabic \"por ningún caso en público, ni en secreto… sino en la nuestra\", holds that compelling the language of the victor \"no ha havido cosas mas antigua, y frequente en el Mundo… assí para mostrar en esto el derecho de su dominio, y superioridad\", and extends the proposal to dress and customs. In the same breath he concedes what the Romans did: they gave their language and clothing to the conquered, and this favour \"mirado á otra luz, era parte, ó especie de servidumbre, como se echa de vér\". The counterpoint to the crown's tolerant rule is thus stated by its own jurist, together with his admission of what it would have cost.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.9 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "The chapter also preserves, from a hostile witness, evidence of indigenous linguistic attainment. Solórzano writes that it has very ordinarily been achieved that the Indians, \"por rudos, que les hacemos\" — for all the rudeness we impute to them — have come not only to speak Castilian \"con toda perfeccion, y propiedad\" but Latin as well, citing the letter to Pope Paul III of the bishop of Tlaxcala, whom this printing names \"D. Fray Juan Garcés\" where the bishop is ordinarily called Julián, and further examples in Torquemada. The remark is made in support of compulsory Castilian, which is what gives it evidential weight against the incapacity it elsewhere assumes.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "Two datings of the same words do not agree, and the object does not resolve it. The Recopilación prints ley xviij with a 1550 margin; Solórzano quotes what is almost the same text — the examination of whether the mysteries can be explained in the Indian tongues, the chairs as an insufficient remedy, the masters for those who voluntarily wish to learn, the sacristans, the phrases \"de menos molestia\" and \"sin costa\" — as the words of a cédula given at Toledo on 3 July 1596 and ordered complied with by another of Ventosilla of 25 July 1605 addressed to viceroy Luis de Velasco, and his editor keys the passage to \"L. 18. tit. 1. lib. 6. Recop.\" Either the clause was reissued or one of the two printings has misattributed it; nothing read here decides which, and the claim is held below 0.9 for that reason.", "sources": [ "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2", "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c11", "text": "What was ordered is not what happened, and these sources say so themselves. Solórzano records that the bishop of Cuzco, Fray Fernando de Vera y Zúñiga, petitioned the Council of the Indies for the Castilian schools and was answered that it was already so provided, \"y que por falta de los Ministros Espirituales, y Seglares de aquellas partes quedaba sin execucion\". Nothing read for this object shows a single such school founded, staffed or attended; there are no enrolment figures, no accounts, and no statement from any indigenous party about whether they wished to learn Castilian or not. Neither the cédulas of 1596 and 1605 in their own printing, nor the acts of the Third Council of Lima, nor the 1770 order of Charles III on the extinction of the indigenous languages — which falls outside both volumes read — were opened here, and no claim is made about them.", "sources": [ "solorzano-politica-indiana-1736-t1", "recopilacion-indias-1791-t2" ], "confidence": 0.9 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "primary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "industry_observation" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "English-language answers to \"did Spain impose Spanish on the Americas\" are usually a bare yes or a bare no, and the rare sourced ones cite the 1770 cédula of Charles III without the two centuries of law that preceded it. Here the operative statute is quoted whole from the 1791 printing, with its heading, its margin and its exact wording — masters only for those who voluntarily wish to learn, at no cost — and set beside the chapter in which the crown's leading jurist argues the opposite case at length, names the Third Council of Lima, Acosta and Garcilaso as his opponents, reaches for the Morisco ban on Arabic as his precedent, and concedes that the conqueror's language is a species of servitude. Both the tolerant rule and its most powerful contemporary critic are on the page, in Spanish, with page numbers, so the reader can weigh the policy instead of being told its verdict.", "confidence": 0.85, "last_verified": "2026-08-19", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/castilian-language-question-in-the-indies", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/castilian-language-question-in-the-indies.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "The Castilian question: whether the Indians should be made to speak Spanish", "description": "Whether to compel the peoples of the Indies to abandon their languages for Castilian was argued in the Council of the Indies. The compiled law settled it on the side of persuasion: masters for those \"que voluntariamente la quisieren aprender\", at no cost to them, while parishes went only to priests who knew the Indian language well. Solórzano prints the rule and dissents, reaching for Rome and for the ban on Arabic imposed on the Moriscos of Spain.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/castilian-language-question-in-the-indies", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-19", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Recopilación de leyes de los reynos de las Indias … Quarta impresión — Tomo Segundo (Libros IIII a VIII)", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=Lt41mzCz8zEC&pg=PP5" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Política Indiana, compuesta por el Doct. D. Juan de Solórzano Pereyra, dividida en seis libros — first of the two tomos (Libros I-III)", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=huEykw_YtzYC&pg=PA56" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "The Castilian question: whether the Indians should be made to speak Spanish" } }