Me vs. ChatGPT: Las Casas is not merely “unreliable with numbers”; Zunzunegui calls the numerical claims outright lies. He specifically says Las Casas claimed around 24 million deaths when the population could not even have supported that figure.Not merely: Las Casas got the numbers wrong. More strongly: Las Casas's narrative misrepresents what happened. Bernal's own claim: Las Casas's description contradicts the facts as Bernal, an eyewitness participant, says he experienced them.

1. Las Casas is not merely “unreliable with numbers”; Zunzunegui calls the numerical claims outright lies. He specifically says Las Casas claimed around 24 million deaths when the population could not even have supported that figure.
2. He sees the Brevísima itself as already exaggerated, rather than simply an innocent eyewitness account subsequently distorted by Europeans. Zunzunegui says William of Orange took an already exaggerated work, altered and further exaggerated it, and supplied sensational illustrations.
3. The illustrations are central to his argument. Zunzunegui points to the famous engravings depicting Spaniards committing horrific acts against Indians and argues that these images functioned like propaganda: a European reader could mistake an intentionally produced illustration for documentary evidence.
4. He therefore sees the Black Legend as a process of amplification: Las Casas → Dutch/Protestant polemic → further exaggeration and visual propaganda → later European perceptions of Spain. A scholarly study likewise describes how Protestant enemies adapted Las Casas's work in translation for anti-Spanish purposes.

Where my previous answer missed his point

I said:

“The question is how accurately Las Casas quantified and characterized those events, not whether Spanish violence occurred at all.”

That's reasonable as a general historical qualification, but it doesn't really answer Zunzunegui's criticism.

Zunzunegui isn't primarily arguing:

“Some of Las Casas's statistics are questionable.”

He's arguing something much stronger:

The statistics are so fundamentally impossible that they undermine Las Casas's credibility as a historical witness, and his account subsequently became the raw material for a much larger propaganda construction against Spain.

And Zunzunegui explicitly warns against the opposite overreaction too: not every criticism of Spain should automatically be dismissed as Black Legend propaganda. He says that abusing the term “Black Legend” would itself destroy credibility.

There is also an important scholarly nuance that my answer should have made clearer: whether Las Casas himself should be considered the “origin” of the Black Legend is disputed. Some scholarship argues that the Black Legend tradition predates him, while others emphasize the enormous role the Brevísima played in its later development.

So, stated as fairly as possible, Zunzunegui's critique is not simply “Las Casas exaggerated.” It is that Las Casas's Brevísima contains demonstrably implausible numerical claims, was rhetorically constructed to denounce Spanish conduct, and was subsequently appropriated and intensified by Spain's political enemies into a broader anti-Spanish propaganda tradition. That is considerably stronger than the characterization I gave previously.

Las Casas's Brevísima contains demonstrably implausible numerical is true

Yes. “Contradicts the facts” is closer to what Bernal Díaz himself was claiming.

In his account of the Cholula massacre, Bernal explicitly attacks Las Casas's version, saying that Las Casas's presentation would lead people who had not witnessed the event to believe that the atrocities happened as he described them, “while it is altogether the reverse of true” and that “It did not happen as he describes it.”

So there are really three levels to Bernal's criticism:

• Not merely: Las Casas got the numbers wrong.
• More strongly: Las Casas's narrative misrepresents what happened.
• Bernal's own claim: Las Casas's description contradicts the facts as Bernal, an eyewitness participant, says he experienced them.

And this is important for your larger point about Zunzunegui: Bernal is a 16th-century participant directly disputing Las Casas's account, rather than a modern historian retrospectively criticizing Las Casas. That makes the contradiction a particularly significant piece of primary-source evidence.

There is still a historical qualification: Bernal's account itself has been scrutinized by modern scholars, so his testimony cannot simply be treated as infallible. But that doesn't change what Bernal himself claimed—that Las Casas's account of Cholula was contrary to what actually happened.

francisians inquired for mastjesty and support diaz not casa

Yes—Bernal Díaz explicitly invokes the first Franciscans sent to New Spain by the emperor as witnesses supporting his account against Las Casas, specifically over the events at Cholula.

In Chapter 83 of the Historia verdadera, Díaz says that the Franciscans were sent to Cholula to investigate the matter. According to Díaz, they questioned the city's elders and religious leaders and concluded that the facts conformed to his account rather than Las Casas's.

The key point is that Díaz presents this not merely as his own recollection:

the Franciscans, he says, “inquired” into the affair and found the facts agreed with his version and not the bishop's.

This is significant for your argument because Díaz specifically appeals to an investigation by Franciscan missionaries as corroboration against Las Casas. A modern scholarly discussion likewise notes that Díaz countered Las Casas by citing both Fray Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía) and a Franciscan inquiry that supported his interpretation.

There is, however, an important qualification: this is Bernal Díaz's report of what the Franciscans concluded, rather than a surviving independent transcript of their investigation. So it is strongest to say:

“Bernal Díaz claimed that the first Franciscans sent to New Spain by Charles V investigated Cholula and found the facts consistent with the conquistadors' account, contrary to Las Casas.”