New Laws

The New Laws or New Laws (originally Laws and ordinances newly made by His Majesty for the governance of the Indies and good treatment and conservation of the Indians ) are a set of laws promulgated on November 20, 1542 in Barcelona that sought to improve the conditions of the indigenous people of Spanish America, providing a series of rights to the indigenous people so that they could live in a better condition. The New Laws extinguished the encomienda system, replacing it with that of repartimiento.

Precedents

Since the beginning of the 16th century, critics arose in Spain with the situation suffered by the indigenous people in the territories conquered by the Spanish in the Indies, that is, present-day America. Thus, the denunciations made by Bartolomé de las Casas, Antonio de Montesinos or Francisco de Vitoria. Previously, Queen Isabella the Catholic had recorded in her will that she treated the indigenous people well.

The Junta de Burgos and its legislative fruit, the Laws of Burgos (1512-1513), tried to reconcile the right to conquer America with the prevention of abuses through, among other things, the creation of the encomienda, which did not managed to completely prevent the abuses committed.

This legal figure, inspired by the Spain of the Reconquista, had three clear objectives: on the one hand, to respect the status of vassal of the King of Spain (that is, not a slave) of the Indian; on the other, to evangelize it, a task that corresponded to the settler in charge of the parcel; and finally to make productive the colonized lands through the work of the Indian, to which he was linked. However, this legal figure did not turn out as expected, since some settlers in America transformed these parcels into covert instruments of indigenous slavery.

The Laws of Burgos have no precedent in American colonial history. They are the first legal instruments created for the protection of the inhabitants of colonized territories, and precursors of international law. However, these laws were premature for their time. In the whole of America, individual freedoms and rights did not arrive until the 19th century. For this reason, this avant-garde legislation was not always complied with in the Spanish overseas territories. The laws legalized an already existing situation in which some Indians were forced to work for encomenderos.

Summon

During the reign of Carlos I of Spain, the debate was revived. The king, influenced by the writings and arguments of the Dominican friar Bartolomé de las Casas, commissioned a review of the colonial legislation. Las Casas's purpose was to abolish the encomienda, since he considered that the Indians were being degraded, forcing them to abandon their environment natural and settle in the encomiendas, while the introduction of money broke the social and communal structures of the same. His position was not an isolated fact, but was framed within a debate about the very legitimacy of the conquest and colonization.

The influence of Las Casas was seen in the drafting and focus of the new legislation. However, he was not the only one who influenced the Salamanca junta, since, in fact, the Dominicans, the order to which Las Casas belonged, was a humanist order that advocated removing the bishops' power over the indigenous population, since that according to them, it should be evangelized in the primitive style, downplaying the clergy and promoting lay evangelization.

The emperor convened for 1540 a legislative meeting that was housed in the University of Salamanca, to initiate the reorganization that the humanists had been asking for decades before. Influential legislators and religious figures such as the lawyer and economist Francisco de Vitoria were invited.

Vitoria ruled in two re-elections, called "de Indiis", in which he studied seven titles dictated to justify the king's rule in the Indies. Vitoria presents an argument based on the ideas of Thomas Aquinas, through which he denies the legitimacy of such titles. In the end he proposes other titles, called "legitimate", with which he justifies the American company. His argument is based on the bull & # 34; Sublimis Deus & # 34; dictated by Pope Paul III.

The New Laws were promulgated on November 20, 1542, in the city of Barcelona, under the name of Laws and ordinances newly made by His Majesty for the governance of the Indies and good treatment and conservation of the Indians.

Content

In 1542, the critics of the encomienda achieved their goal through the promulgation, by the king, of the New Laws (November 20). The main resolutions were:

• Take care of the conservation, government and good treatment of the Indians.
• Several measures aimed at reorganizing and ensuring the proper functioning of the Indian Council, the Indian government and the real hearings.
• That the royal officers (from the viceroy to the bottom) were not entitled to the commission of Indians, as did religious orders, hospitals, communal works or fellowships.
• That there was no cause or motive to make slaves, or war, or rebellion, or ransom, or otherwise.
• That the existing Indian slaves should be released if the full right to keep them in that state was not shown.
• To end the bad habit of making the Indians serve as shippers (tamemes), without their own will and with due retribution.
• That the Indians were not taken to remote regions under the pretext of pearl fishing.
• May the encomiendas given to the first conquerors cease completely to the death of them and the Indians were placed under the Royal Crown, without anyone being able to inherit their possession and dominion; and that the first conquerors and colonists with corrections and other mercedes be rewarded.
• That to make discoveries mediate prior license, and the discoverers comply with the real laws for the treatment of the Indians.

Application and consequences

The legislation caused a stir in America, especially in the Viceroyalties of Peru and New Spain (present-day Mexico), since in these two dependencies of the Crown the encomendero concentrated a lot of political power, and consequently the abolition of many The powers of the encomienda clashed widely with their interests.

Peru

At the same time that the New Laws were approved, the Viceroyalty of Peru and the Royal Audience of Lima were also created. Blasco Núñez Vela was chosen as the first viceroy of Peru, and he energetically applied the new legislation. The encomenderos protested indignantly and organized a rebellion, choosing Gonzalo Pizarro, a wealthy encomendero in Charcas, as their leader.

The oidores of the Royal Audience were inclined to defend the rights of the encomenderos, took the viceroy prisoner (September 18, 1544) and shipped him back to Spain. Pizarro triumphantly entered Lima on October 28, 1544, at the head of 1,200 men. The oidores named him Governor of Peru.

Viceroy Núñez Vela managed to escape and organized an army. However, he was defeated at the battle of Iñaquito, on February 18, 1546, taken prisoner and beheaded on the battlefield. Pizarro also achieved another victory over loyal forces, at the Battle of Huarina, near Lake Titicaca, on October 20, 1547.

However, Pizarro's power waned when the new representative of the crown, the priest Pedro de la Gasca, appointed president of the Royal Court, offered pardon to the rebels and repealed the New Laws. Gonzalo Pizarro's forces began to desert and join Gasca. Both armies faced each other in the battle of Jaquijahuana, in the Anta or Sacsahuana pampa, on April 9, 1548, where the rebels were defeated and summarily executed.

New Spain

In Mexico, visiting judge Francisco Tello de Sandoval was sent to apply the New Laws. However, the visitor chose to suspend its application, at the requests of the City Council of Mexico City, Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and even Bishop Fray Juan de Zumárraga and the provincials of the religious orders, while they sent their appeal to Spain.. On October 20, 1545, the king suspended the chapter that prohibited the inheritance of parcels. The norm that survived was the concession for "two lives", that of the owner and his heir. The other provisions remained in force.

The promulgation of the New Laws caused an uprising of the settlers of Peru (led by Gonzalo Pizarro), who came to eliminate the Viceroy Blasco Núñez Vela himself, who tried to apply them (although it is probable that this rebellion only took the issue of the elimination of the parcels to try to achieve more independence from the Spanish crown). In the Spanish court the alarm spread and Carlos V was convinced that eliminating the encomienda would mean economically ruining the colonization. Finally, on October 20, 1545, chapter 30 of the New Laws was suppressed, where hereditary entrustment was prohibited.

A consequence of this was the convening of a new Junta, the Junta de Valladolid (1551-1552) where the positions of Bartolomé de las Casas and Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda clashed, all framed within the intellectual controversy known as the fair titles or controversy of the natives, in which illustrious authors, such as Francisco de Vitoria, had intervened.

Since then, Spanish colonial legislation tried to improve the condition of the Indians in America. This legal corpus has often been described as hypocritical, since it could not prevent the exploitation of the Indian by settlers and officials. The positive point would be that, at least, they existed and were not always a piece of paper while they were in force.

Spanish colonial legislation of the Indies

The Spanish legislation that was developed for the administration and good government of the Indies, as well as in relation to the commercial monopoly between the peninsula and the overseas possessions, was made up of Royal Certificates, Royal Orders, Pragmatics, Instructions and Letters related to the public law of Latin America:

a) The Royal Certificates were exposed to the King by the Council of the Indies; they referred to a certain issue and were clearly characterized by the formula: I the King, make it known….

b) The Royal Orders: They were created at the time of the Bourbons and emanated from the Ministry by order of the King.

c) The Pragmatics This was the name given to those decisions with general force of general law that had the purpose of reforming some damage or abuse.

d) The Ordinances They were dictated by the Viceroys or by the Royal Courts and legislated on issues that in some cases came to constitute true codes.

The peculiarity of Indian legislation is that it was intended to legislate for each case and each place. The fact of not integrating an organic government program, added to the enormous distances between the metropolis and its overseas domains, caused frequent confusion. This was common in some cases when the authorities applied provisions that had already been repealed, which occurred because they were not aware of them.

Because many times the authorities in charge of issuing the laws were unaware of the real social, political and economic conditions of the American milieu, the provisions were inapplicable, becoming a source of resistance and even rebellion before the law. The authorities in charge of enforcing it opted for theoretical compliance by declaring its validity suspended. In these cases, the Viceroy provided the famous phrase at the end of the text:

It is complied with but not complied with.

All these inconveniences were noticed by various officials and jurists who advocated achieving an ordering and codification of Indian legislation and thus eliminating the abundant legal overlaps and contradictions that make government tasks difficult.