In January 2001, before the Conference on Latin American History decided to link its annual luncheon address to the recipient of its Distinguished Service Award, I had the honor of speaking at the CLAH luncheon, and in that previous talk I briefly discussed the circumstances that led to my becoming a Latin Americanist. Here I return to the theme of becoming a historian of Latin America, but this time I will be drawing not on my own rather unremarkable experience, but instead on my current research for an intellectual biography of the renowned Latin Americanist Frank Tannenbaum (1893–1969), whose path to specialization in Latin American history was considerably more remarkable.

A prevailing idea in the scholarly literature is that the New Laws of 1542 outlawed the enslavement of indios (Indigenous people of the Spanish Indies, a category invented by Europeans) in Spanish America. Many see the enactment of this legislation as emblematic of the Spanish crown's exertion of imperial authority over the conquerors who had caused irreparable damage to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This article contests this prevailing narrative. It explores how and why the Council of the Indies (the governing council of the Spanish possessions, reporting directly to the king), the Spanish king, and viceroys (or audiencias with viceregal approval) mandated Indigenous slavery for life or for a temporary period. Mandates affected at least 15 Indigenous groups in at least ten locations throughout the Spanish-occupied Western Hemisphere in the seven decades following the passage of the New Laws. I focus on this period to explain the conditions, rationales, legal channels, and procedures used by vassals and local and imperial authorities to authorize the enslavement of targeted Indigenous peoples.

In the Spanish monarchy, corporations, religious orders, and other petitioners kept procurators in Madrid to lobby the royal councils on their behalf. Drawing on an efficient network of information, the Madrid-based Jesuit procurators were known for their insistence on solving the financial and personnel needs of several missions throughout the New World. This article analyzes a series of petitions composed by Antonio Ruiz de Montoya in the late 1630s on behalf of Jesuit missions in Paraguay. These missions had been harassed by Portuguese slavers, who captured tens of thousands of natives in this region. Ruiz de Montoya's petitions reveal that the Jesuits’ lobbying actions had a much greater impact than has been assumed. Far from confining themselves to asking for material and human resources for the missions, the Jesuits proposed that the Spanish crown make a large-scale intervention in the administration of Portuguese domains in the South Atlantic, a program that Madrid would have implemented were it not for Portuguese independence in 1640.

Lillian: Let's start with you telling a little about yourself.

Franklin: I was born in 1942 in Jamaica. I went to elementary school, of course, and took the mandatory “Eleven-Plus” general examination in 1953. I then left elementary school and for a year attended a small private high school with my two older brothers. The school system was a little different from the United States. I know that well, because when I came here and told a group of Wisconsin school kids that I had spent six years in high school, they said, “You must have been very dumb.” To which I replied that “that was not the opinion of my teachers.” I didn't realize then that in the United States students spend four years in high school. In Jamaica we spend six, combining middle and high school years. You get in at age 12 or 13 and graduate at 18 or 19.