Literature of the Americas Literature of the Americas 2541-7894 2542-243X IWL RAS https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-7894-2024-17-140-153 Research Article Articles Notes on the Origin of Jorge Luis Borges’ Bartolomé de Las Casas 2024 Copyright © 2026, IWL RAS 2026 The 1935 short story collection A Universal History of Iniquity is a foundational stone in Jorge Luis Borges’ (1899–1986) remarkable narrative career. Its first tale, “The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell,” prefigures some of the Argentine’s stylistic peculiarities and lifelong thematic inclinations, which continue to spur specialized scholarship today. Cultural and literary critics alike have studied the story’s opening allusion to the Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas (1484–1566) to claim that the Spanish priest mirrors the murderous life of Lazarus Morell (Lawrence; Warnes), thus showing the often-problematic connections between North and South American history (Waisman; Green). Such scholarship, however, has uncritically accepted Borges’ traditional view of Las Casas as the original instigator of African slavery in the New World. Similarly, the source of this customary view has yet to be addressed in depth. This brief article postulates a clear source for Borges’ literary portrait of Las Casas by tracing and contrasting some of the author’s well-known personal readings. It ultimately suggests that Borges derives his character both from the entries concerning slavery in the prestigious Encyclopædia Britannica (1911), as well as from William Robertson’s (1721–1793) historiographical work on the Americas. The conclusion likewise shows that Borges consciously distorted Las Casas’ historical record in order to fit the Universal History’s aesthetic project. 1. Adorno 1992 — Adorno, Rolena. The Intellectual Life of Bartolomé de Las Casas. New Orleans, LA: Graduate School of Tulane University, 1992. 2. Adorno 2007 — Adorno, Rolena. The Polemics of Possession in Spanish American Narrative. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. 3. Balderston 2016 — Balderston, Daniel. “Biografías infames: reflexiones sobre cuatro manuscritos de los cuentos de Historia universal de la infamia.” Variaciones Borges, no. 42 (2016): 217–231. 4. Christ 1976 — Christ, Ronald. “Jorge Luis Borges.” Writers at Work. The Paris Review Interviews. Fourth Series, edited by George Plimpton, 109–146. New York: The Viking Press, 1976. 5. Clayton 2011 — Clayton, Lawrence A. Bartolomé de las Casas and the Conquest of the Americas. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 6. Giménez Fernández 1953 — Giménez Fernández, Manuel. Bartolomé de Las Casas. Vol. I: “Delegado de Cisneros para la reformación de las Indias (1516–1517).” Sevilla: Escuela de Estudios Hispano Americanos, 1953. 7. Green 2016 — Green, Bryan David. “La geometría política y la lectura posthumanista en Historia universal de la infamia.” Taller de Letras, no. 58 (2016): 29–46. 8. Jenckes 2007 — Jenckes, Kate. Reading Borges After Benjamin. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. 9. Lawrence 2011 — Lawrence, Jeff. “An American History of Infamy.” Variaciones Borges, no. 31 (2011): 161–179. 10. Molloy 1994 — Molloy, Sylvia. Signs of Borges. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994. 11. Penick 1989 — Penick, James Lal. “John A. Murrell: A Legend of the Old Southwest.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 48, no. 3 (1989): 174–183. 12. Waisman 2005 — Waisman, Sergio. Borges and Translation: The Irreverence of the Periphery. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005. 13. Wagner, Parish 1967 — Wagner, Henry Raup y Helen Rand Parish. The Life and Writings of Bartolome de las Casas. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1967. 14. Warnes 2019 — Warnes, Christopher D. “The Universally Recurring Patterns of ‘El atroz redentor Lazarus Morell’”. Variaciones Borges, no. 47 (2019): 25–42.