Abstract

The present study aims at offering a glimpse into the complex tangle of ideologically driven motives characterising the body of texts left by the first chroniclers delving into the first phases of the process of colonization of the New World, as well as the works of contemporary historians and anthropologists more or less consciously inscribing themselves into revisionist positions dictated by a victimhood culture looking for convenient historical scapegoats in order to further political agendas alien to a scientifically sound debate. By adopting the Taíno population as case study, special attention is devoted to the thought of Bartolomé de Las Casas and the way in which it is still proving capable to shape the contemporary controversies, for instance by crucially inspiring a tremendously successful work such as the People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn