Noted historian chronicles Spain's conquest and colonization of the New World.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Anne Bartlett

``Rivers of Gold: The Rise of the Spanish Empire, from Columbus to Magellan'' by Hugh Thomas; Random House ($35)

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In a sense, the modern human rights movement started in Cuba around 1510, in a Taino Indian town near Camaguey. Father Bartolome de Las Casas, a young Spanish priest from a converted Jewish family, was so appalled by the My Lai-type massacre perpetrated there by his fellow Spaniards that it inspired him to became the crusader for the protection of the Indians whom we remember with reverence.

But unfortunately for Las Casas' posthumous reputation, he wasn't an equal opportunity humanitarian. As he fought the more bloody-minded Spanish imperialists, he was among those who came up with an ugly solution to the oppression of the Indians. Las Casas wanted African slaves imported to do the dirty work instead.

That's the yin and yang of Spain's New World empire. For every act of courage and piety, we find an act of greed and intolerance. Whatever you make of the result, it's a great story, told with verve by Hugh Thomas in this history of the empire's first 30 years. It's a chronicle likely to have particular resonance with South Florida readers: the period from 1492 to 1522 was precisely the time when Spain conquered the ancestral homelands of our immigrant communities _ the Caribbean islands and the Colombia-Venezuela coast.

Thomas, the dean of English-language historians of the Spanish world, takes a conservative narrative approach that will appeal to a wide audience. He doesn't break any ground, and he largely ducks the hot controversies among his colleagues about the true causes of the Inquisition or the demographic collapse of the Indians. He just briefly outlines the debates and lets us make up our own minds.