Psycopathia lascasiana: un “delirio paranoico”

Within the framework of a broader investigation —“Conquest and cruelty”— which addresses some chronicles of the Conquest as propitious materials to document, from an “aesthetic” point of view, the living matter of genocide, this essay constructs a vision of what Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, in his Breve relación de la destrucción de las Indias, called “exquisite ways of cruelty.” And all that, starting with the detailed analysis of an article by Ramón Menéndez Pidal —“An abnormal norm of Father Las Casas”—, its psychiatric ramifications and some unexpectedly surrealist connections, from Jacques Lacan and Minotaure magazine to the “critical paranoia” of Salvador Dalí.