Biografías de los hombres de Dios.Fray Tomás de la Torre y la primera experiencia evangelizadora de los dominicos en Chiapas y Guatemala (siglo XVI)

Abstract

In 1545 Bartolomé de Las Casas departed to America to take up his bishopric. He was accompanied by a group of missionaries, among which was fray Tomás de la Torre. This Dominican teacher in Salamanca wrote a diary, where he registered the collective experience of the large trip and the hard starting of the spiritual conquest of Chiapas and Guatemala. In his writing De la Torre explains the evangelizing work through the behaviour, actions and emotions of who were involved in it: beside the religious, mainly the Spaniards and the indigenous. In this article I evaluate the diary of De la Torre as a biographical source, and analyse methodological issues related to the historical subjects’ identification and the recognition of their agency. Finally, I suggest a chorographical biography as an alternative to the choral biography for the study of subjects and spaces that has been marginalized in history and by historians.