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Testing the limits of derecho indiano & the decolonial turn: when Caciques answered the Requerimiento as a piece of law
11. November 2025
Max-Planck lecture in legal history and legal theory
Date: 03.12.2025, 16:45 - 17:45
Speaker: Arnurl Becker Lorca (European University Insitute Florence)
Place: Max-Planck-Insitute for legal history and legal theory, (Frankfurt am Main), Z01
The talk presents some of the responses that indigenous leaders –caciques– gave to the Spanish requerimiento. In the 16th century, the requerimiento
became a central legal document laying out the reasons invoked by the
Spanish Crown to justify the conquest of the lands discovered in the
Indies. The requerimiento, however, was more than a formal legal
document, it was a ritualistic protocol part of the Spanish mechanics of
conquest. On behalf of the King, the head of a military band authorized
to discover and conquest new lands, and through a notary or a friar,
reads aloud a summon that invites caciques to become part of the Crown of Castilla or face the consequences of refusal: war, enslavement and dispossession.
If the requerimiento
was a legalistic façade or a candid exposition of the Crown’s legal
titles to conquest, has been discussed ever since. While commentators
debate endlessly about the nature of the requerimiento, they have mostly assumed that indigenous peoples did not understand the Spanish ritual. This assumption is shared by both derecho indiano and
decolonial scholars, the former emphasizing the role of law in the
protection of indigenous peoples, and the latter signaling law as
effecting epistemological domination. Caciques, however, did answer the requerimiento.
Spanish chronicles and indigenous writings document a few direct and explicit responses to the requerimiento. But if the requerimiento
is understood not just as a formal legal text, but as a piece of law in
action, encapsulating the justifications and practices of Spanish
expansion and conquest, then indigenous responses abound. This essay
examines five types of responses: silence –avoiding the summon;
disruption –resorting to an indigenous equivalent of the summon;
disputation –direct challenge of the content of the summon; engagement
–dealing with the arguments behind the summon; and agreement –accepting
the content and negotiating its consequences. These responses give voice
to indigenous actors, but more importantly, they offer a more complex
picture of the role of law in the Spanish-Amerindian encounter. A
picture where legal discourse enables domination, resistance and
engagement between the Spanish and Caciques.