Protector of the Indians

[3] The report by Fray Bartolome de las Casas to Cardinal Cisneros is probably the first documented attempt of those efforts when the bishops took upon themselves the task of exercising protective actions on the native population.

For over fifty years, while traveling to and from the New World and the court of Spain, Bartolomé de las Casas used his books, letters, and preaching to defend native peoples and reveal the harshness of such unjust conquests.

Still, the wars of the New World did not fit these contexts Las Casas based many of his ideas on previous historians and philosophers such as Aristotle, Juan Gínes de Sepúlveda, and Gratian.

Zumárraga proposed in 1529 to appoint a trusted group of secular officials from different religious orders to be elected as such protectors and intervene in Indian civil and criminal cases.

However, the Crown would not yield to the regular clergy full sovereignty over the indigenous population and, in 1530, decreed that all issues regarding the natives were to be handled by government officers elected by the local Audiencia.

The first provisions directly addressing the Protector de Indios as such are first known to appear in the Cedulario Indiano compiled by Encina Diego in 1596,[9] and later in the Compilation of the Laws of the Indies, Volume II, Book VI, Title V.[10] Other related provisions within the Laws refer to the treatment of the Indian subjects, their conversion to Christianity via evangelization[11] and the good care of their lives, with specific instructions to not oppress them in any way and to regard them as vassals of the Crown.

It also required from the prosecutor of the local Audiencia to watch over the treatment given to the natives by colonial representatives with the obligation to punish any violation of the law and notify the Council of the Indies.

The term Audiencia is defined by the universal Merriam-Webster dictionary as a high court of justice in a Spanish colony frequently exercising military power as well as judicial and political functions.

On April 9, 1591 the Crown issued a Royal Decree and a letter to Luis de Velasco, viceroy of New Spain, that laid down the legal basis for the creation of a specific agency dedicated to the defense of the natives in the colonies.