TEHRAN-The play “The Valladolid Debate” directed by Houshmand Honarkar and based on the novel “The Controversy of Valladolid” written by Jean-Claude Carrière will be staged at City Theater’s Ghashghaei Hall in Tehran from October 16.

The French novelist and screenwriter Carrière (1931-2021) wrote the novel based on historical facts. He penned the book in 1992 to mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival to America, ISNA reported.

The Valladolid debate (1550–1551) concerned the treatment of natives of the New World. Held in the Spanish city of Valladolid, it opposed two main attitudes towards the conquests of the Americas. Dominican friar and Bishop of Chiapas, Bartolomé de las Casas argued that the Amerindians were free men in the natural order and deserved the same treatment as others, according to Catholic theology.

Opposing him was fellow Dominican Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, who insisted the Indians were natural slaves, and therefore reducing them to slavery or serfdom was in accordance with Catholic theology and natural law. Las Casas and Sepúlveda each later claimed to have won the debate, but no record supporting either claim exists. The debate had no clear effect on the treatment of the natives, it did ensure that the 1542 New Laws, which were initially designed to abolish the encomienda system, were to remain in effect.

Carrière’s fierce attack on the Catholic Church for its policies on human slavery makes for a refreshing change. Although based on a Spanish papal tribunal of 1550, Carrière’s stern historical drama hits a resounding contempo note with its revelations of how the church agonized over its ultimate conclusion that indigenous American natives were children of God after all—after invading their land, destroying their culture, plundering their natural resources and subjecting thousands of people to servitude, torture and death.

In his book, Carrière succeeds in bringing serious ideas in a lively debate and in providing just the appropriate level of historical details. The theological part is easy to understand for a modern reader and the description of the historical context is really interesting. Of course, as Carrière is a scenarist, he is skilled at creating an atmosphere and bringing new developments to keep the attention of the reader.

Besides directing, Honarkar also acts in the play along with Jalil Farjad, Mehdi Vosughi, Mohammad Rabbanipour, Alireza Abbasi, Farid Golriz, Sarina Ghasemzadeh, Roham Rezaei, Abdollah Ajparin, and Yeganeh Attar-Ouliaei.

SS/SAB